Ronald Thwaites | Facing uncomfortable truths

Leroy, a 14-year-old yout’ from the hills of Westmoreland was talked about in Parliament last week. He has been getting $2,000 a week during term time from the church his mother attends to help with transport and lunch money.

He is/was in Grade 8. On average, he used to attend four days a week. This means that 20 per cent of his learning time is lost. He struggled with English and maths but liked social studies and science.

His mother says she was told that Leroy is probably “on the spectrum” because he confuses letters and numbers, but she doesn’t really understand what “spectrum” means or what to do about it. She comforts herself that Leroy can run “fas’ fas’”and hopes that that talent will allow him to go abroad one day “and sen’ back nuff money to tek mi out a paverty”.

ESCALATOR OF FAILURE

Leroy will be promoted to Grade 9 in a few months. French will be on his syllabus! There, he will be asked to choose seven or eight subjects to eventually sit CSEC exams two years later. His failure is already assured. Though unspoken, his mother and he have already figured that out. Thus their desperate reliance on his athletic prowess.

Leroy understands basic English when you speak to him, but he cannot express himself in that language. The expensive, self-limiting education system presumes that he can. His phone is full of voice messages and short, largely English-ungrammatical texts. He has never read a book from start to finish. His intelligible vocabulary is limited. Plenty of “Zeen, Yow, Dawg” and expletives ending in “Clart”. His mother consoles herself about his weak score in mathematics by declaring that her son can “count money good good”.

As happened in the COVID-19 years when Leroy was in primary school, he has skipped classes since Hurricane Melissa tore down the wire fence of his uncle’s goat pen. Now, he gets a small money and sometimes a little food for minding the animals. Leroy thinks life is better for him than going back to school although he misses the track and field exposure.

The high school guidance counsellor was supposed to check on Leroy, but she has to attend to more than 700 other children, and since Leroy doesn’t yet show real disruptive bad-boy tendencies, he has, so far, escaped her attention. In any event, when teachers are routinely absent without forewarning, the principal requires the guidance counsellor to substitute in the classrooms.

MISGUIDED

Last week, the education minister alerted the nation to the thousands of young people like Leroy. The society fidgeted at the news, yawned, and continued the waste talk about increasing productivity by technology and eliminating crime by superior force.

Why “waste talk”? Because unless we deal with Leroy’s diminished life prospects, there is little prospect of Jamaica’s rapid and inclusive growth no matter how much we fren’-up the Emperor. The corrective measures outlined by the earnest Minister Dixon are inadequate.

The ratio of guidance counsellors in schools has to be revised downwards immediately and their upskilling better related to the severe and chronic malsocialisation affecting the majority of school populations.

The JTA is right. There should be a suitably trained dean of discipline in every school over 300 students as well as an educational social worker whose main duty is to bring parents into intense engagement with their children’s entire school experience.

Sounds impossible and too expensive? Not at all. A detailed revision of the Education Code, allowing principals flexibility to alter the National Standard Curriculum to fit the needs of particular students and a reworking of the contractual arrangements with teachers can provide much of the space and means required within the existing establishment.

RESPECT AGENDA

Help the Leroys of this nation to value themselves, respect others, read, and compute instead of pressing his mother to buy the French book. Relate education targets to economic development objectives as Sir Ronald Sanders correctly counsels in last Saturday’s writing in this space. This involves moral education as well as academic and vocational prowess.

This can only happen with the combined initiative and passionate leadership of both political parties so great will be the opposition of vested interests and the unconcerned fascists among us.

In around 2004, Messers Patterson and Seaga agreed that education had to be placed outside the partisan fray. That commitment was never fully realised. It needs to be made real now. The door is no longer ajar for the likes of Leroy to migrate. Education transformation cannot succeed unless policy, expenditure, and performance have unyielding, united national focus. No one political tendency has the equity to lead the process alone.

The year-long proof of concept of the Grade 7 Academy shows us the prerequisites and methodology for sharply correcting school-based illiteracy and innumeracy. The Ministry of Education and the private sector have acknowledged this. The challenge now is to move from the pilot effort to systematize change in all schools where Leroys attend.

Their big gap is attitudinal. There is no workable strategy for behavioural management. The common expression of anger between students and, many times, rude boy to teacher is “Go suck yu mumma”. Some teachers are in no position to convince adolescents about balanced sexual behaviour.

“DANCE A YARD”

Last week, our prime minister is reported to have spoken eloquently about regional unity of purpose and programme in the face of a hostile and unpredictable external environment at a conference in Panama. We need him to bring this advice back home and apply it where it can have more bite. The broad resolve needed to effect systemic change in education requires nothing less. Pride, disunity, and arrogance rob us of leaders who are effective change agents.

The warning last week by the Independent Fiscal Commission that public sector wage pressure without productivity gains will derail the budget and reduce capital expenditure should convince the political class of the futility of their resurgent tribalism.

Otherwise Leroy’s corner is dark. And ours!

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.