Ronald Thwaites | Of dying and rising

In this mystical season where it appears that evil and death prevail then life, abundant life, eternal life, is restored, let us pause and re-examine our human purposes. What do Jamaicans really want for our one another?

Can an economy grow and inclusive social peace be attained when fully 60 per cent of those entering the workforce are inadequately prepared or permanently ill-equipped to function efficiently?

This is the most crucial question facing the nation and which is yet to be confronted either by policy makers or civil society interests.

Last week’s news reported that St Elizabeth Homecoming Committee committed to provide transportation assistance to the students at Newell High where the pre-and post-Hurricane Melissa attendance figures are seriously compromised by the cost and availability of transportation. A year or so ago requests were made to the Ministry of Education to provide this help.

Like the renovated bathrooms promised at Holy Trinity High, which make the difference between dignity and squalor, help with taxi fares determines attendance or absence for two or three days of school each week. In neither instance has the official aid been forthcoming. In both cases, private sector and voluntary contributions have done the job.

The officials in government have good intentions but little accountability. The sincerity and resolve of the Minister of Education is not doubted. It is the turgid bureaucracy, the inbred absence of nimbleness, low trust and the distraction of power which prevents the effective use of existing resources.

Insufficient focus centres around school attendance. Stop diluting the problem. Many more than a few hundred are unaccounted for at school since the storm. There are thousands and thousands of young people who miss classes at least one day each week. When they are not in school the likelihood is that they are learning the wrong things.

This is the educational equivalent of a chronic haemorrhage. If not cauterized, death results. While we spend millions to cavort at carnival, many of our children are facing the pox of poor outcomes and no certification. School principals need to be trusted to be the accountable custodians of PATH funds which they can dispense to facilitate needy students.

Any national attendance level below 90 per cent of enrolment is a recipe for future national disaster.

EARLY CHILDHOOD

The promise by Mrs. Morris Dixon for a government- paid trained teacher in every early childhood institution by later this year is the right focus. The dream of Dudley Grant and Edward Seaga will be closer to attainment when that happens.

I hope her undertaking means that such teachers would be university or HEART Level Three trained with emphasis on early stimulation, special education and have love for little children.

Is that achievable though? Where is the money in the Budget for the 2,000 or so practitioners required? And who is doing the work to upgrade the early childhood curriculum to emphasize civic and social skills and identify neurodivergence? What is changing in our teachers’ colleges?

EXTRACTION

So much of the recently concluded Budget Debate has been about how to extract more revenue from citizens instead of decisive scrutiny of how prudently the trillion plus dollars is being spent.

Dr. Stokes’ idea of enticing private capital to rebuild schools is good, especially in the emergency of Hurricane Melissa’s destruction. But this will likely be a hard sell for the money changers in the temple courtyards of New Kingston. Will Interest rates for pension money be affordable?

Given demographic shifts, decreasing population, varied transportation choices and the scarcity of specialist teachers, this is a good time to reassess school places and change the ways children are assigned. This while straining to leverage new capital.

Also, instead of trying to find a J$1.5 billion to build each STEM school; a promise which has been shamelessly recited for almost a decade with nothing to show, spend the same sum to expand the STEM capacity in five high performing, but space and equipment- limited, high schools, already staffed. Enable one such in each parish and achieve the desired penetration at affordable cost, shorter time and better use of scarce capacity.

UNDERMINING OURSELVES

Having heard my insistent argument of how essential parental contributions are to rebalance the misaligned school spend, a group of onion, cucumber and tomato cultivators sought me out to contend, among other concerns, that their capacity to pay auxiliary fees is due to the unfair competition of imported product resulting in depressed prices and high spoilage for their production. They left boxes of unsold vegetables at the church door.

Years ago, after quite a fight in parliament, I obtained a list of the recipients of licenses to import chicken backs. Complex research followed to identify the ownership of the favoured companies. The connection between the secret grant of import permits, economic advantage and political power is undermining national recovery and spills over into every area of life.

We are led to become the architects of our own misfortune. We enrich external commerce and a few well-connected locals at the expense of our own producers, spewing self-promoting Hosannas at each step towards Calvary.

Why not invite the churches to increase their footprint in educational content and infrastructure? Last week the Prime Minister acknowledged the need for religious and moral principles for wholesome value-rich instruction. How else do we propose to improve the social fabric of a nation riven with distrust and corruption?

Where else other than in Christian-oriented school curricula is that infusion likely to be achieved? This requires urgent and intentional effort which is currently absent.

The schools engaged in the Grade 7 Academy project will conduct Easter and summer schools this year to discern cognitive and emotional challenges among existing students and to emphasize behaviour modification and school culture for incoming pupils. Without that, the regular school term will continue to be infected with disciplinary and attention-deficit distractions.

Once again: given the extent of learning loss, please do not waste this summer. Lengthy idleness causes learning regression and incubates disorder and attention problems.

POSTSCRIPT OF GRATITUDE

When the supreme leader of the most powerful country, takes exception to judicial decisions he opposes, judges are called rouges and criminals. Thankfully, no politician in Jamaica could dare to do that. Despite terrible lapses, we still have manners and respect to shame the arrogant. It will not be the first time in history that an empire falls on the sword of its own hubris.

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