Dennis Minott | Before STEM comes literacy

Sometimes an entire national debate can be transformed by a single observation. Such was my experience recently when Dr Beverly Brown-Sands responded to my concerns regarding the growing STEM preparedness crisis confronting Jamaica's universities and colleges.

Her argument was deceptively simple. We may be looking in the wrong place. Educational excellence, she observed, cannot be reduced to examination-entry scores or examination-exit scores. More importantly, what many of us have come to describe as a STEM crisis may be a literacy crisis.

Then she uttered a lament that should trouble every minister of education, university administrator, school board chairman, and parent in Jamaica.

Access to community libraries, school libraries, reading rooms, and even bookmobiles has quietly receded from our national priorities.

That observation deserves far greater attention than it has received. For it raises an uncomfortable possibility.

What if Jamaica's STEM crisis actually begins with the disappearance of reading culture?

For months, university leaders have been expressing concern about declining preparedness among students entering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programmes. Most recently, UTech Jamaica President Dr Kevin Brown highlighted the troubling reality that increasing numbers of students arrive at university insufficiently prepared for the rigours of STEM study.

His concern is entirely justified. Yet it may not go far enough upstream. Universities do not manufacture STEM readiness, they inherit it – or increasingly, they inherit its absence.

Across Jamaica and CARICOM, tertiary institutions report growing weaknesses in mathematical reasoning, analytical writing, scientific literacy, reading comprehension, laboratory preparedness, and problem-solving. Employers voice similar concerns. Lecturers encounter them daily. Students themselves often experience the consequences painfully.

These are the symptoms, which are not causes. The deeper question remains: What produces STEM readiness in the first place? The answer is surprisingly simple.

Every scientist, engineer, and physician begins as a reader.

Scientific advancement is fundamentally a conversation conducted through reading, writing, questioning, analysing, and communicating. Long before a student enters a laboratory, that student must learn to navigate complex texts, follow intricate arguments and sustain intellectual concentration.

A child who struggles to comprehend sophisticated prose will eventually struggle to interpret scientific literature.

A student who lacks the stamina to read challenging books will struggle to sustain concentration through advanced chemistry, engineering, medicine, or physics.

Literacy is not separate from STEM. It is the foundation upon which STEM is built. This reality becomes especially visible when viewed through the lens of Portland.

As a son of Port Antonio, I grew up during an era when Titchfield School enjoyed a reputation extending throughout Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. For decades, it produced extraordinary numbers of doctors, engineers, scientists, and university scholars.

The reasons for that success have often been misunderstood.

Portland was not among Jamaica's wealthiest parishes. Most students came from modest homes. Yet the parish nurtured a culture of intellectual aspiration that transcended income.

The names remain memorable: Fulton in chemistry; Ketwaroo, the physics giant from Guyana; Ram, the mathematical innovator and master timetabler; Principal Lloyd Chin, whose unforgettable declaration, "How oonu fi learn biology widout si blud?" reflected his insistence upon experiential learning; the gracious and gifted biologist Valsamma Thomas; and numerous other educators whose influence extended far beyond any syllabus.

These teachers cultivated curiosity, encouraged questioning, assigned reading, and introduced students to ideas larger than themselves. Most importantly, they created a culture in which intellectual accomplishment was admired.

Yet that culture did not exist solely within classrooms. It was reinforced by libraries.

Publicly funded parish libraries, school libraries, church libraries, and community reading spaces constituted one of Jamaica's most powerful educational equalisers. A child from a struggling household could gain access to the same books, ideas, and intellectual stimulation available to children from far wealthier families.

Libraries transformed scarcity into opportunity. They democratised aspiration. They made intellectual ambition accessible. Today, however, we often confuse information abundance with literacy.

Every smartphone theoretically provides access to more information than entire libraries once contained. Yet information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not understanding. And understanding is not wisdom.

The ability to search is not the ability to analyse. The ability to consume content is not the ability to comprehend it. Many educators now report growing difficulties among students with sustained reading, extended concentration, analytical writing, and critical reasoning. These are precisely the intellectual muscles upon which STEM achievement depends.

Consequently, the present crisis should surprise no one.

Part of what A-QuEST's longitudinal observations have repeatedly suggested over several decades is that many capable students are not failing because they lack intelligence. They are failing because the intellectual ecosystem surrounding them has weakened.

Too many are trained to memorise rather than investigate. Too many encounter educational systems preoccupied with examination management rather than intellectual development. Too many spend years navigating environments that reward short-term performance while neglecting long-term curiosity.

The result is predictable: diminished reading, diminished curiosity, diminished confidence, and diminished scientific ambition.

The implications extend well beyond Jamaica. Throughout CARICOM, future prosperity increasingly depends upon knowledge-intensive industries. Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, renewable energy, climate resilience, cybersecurity, medicine and advanced agriculture all require populations capable of sophisticated learning.

No society can innovate beyond the intellectual capacity of its people. And no people can sustain intellectual capacity if reading itself becomes marginal --- simply secondary to scrolling.

At this point, many readers may assume that the world's great STEM powers achieved their success principally through investment in laboratories, engineering schools,, and elite universities.

That assumption contains an important truth, but it is not the whole truth. The most revealing evidence comes from India.

When Jamaicans think of India, they think of software engineers, physicians, artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals, advanced mathematics, and space exploration. They think of the celebrated Indian nstitutes of Technology and the country's remarkable position within the global knowledge economy.

Few, however, consider the educational philosophy underpinning that success.

Despite confronting educational challenges on a scale vastly exceeding Jamaica's, India continues to treat libraries as public educational infrastructure. School libraries, librarians, and library grants receive support primarily through state governments, supplemented by national initiatives such as Samagra Shiksha (Holistic Education).

The underlying assumption is profound that literacy is a strategic national asset.

India's policymakers appear to understand something Jamaica increasingly forgets. Before students can solve differential equations, design bridges, innovate appropriate green renewables, write algorithms, analyse genomes, argue with Elsa Leo-Rhynie, discuss Andre Haughton, debunk Eric Williams, drop in on the beautiful mind of Cooper, or develop artificial intelligence systems, they must first learn to read deeply, think critically, and sustain concentration over complex ideas.

In other words, the road to the laboratory begins in the library. That observation should give Jamaica pause.

If a nation of more than one billion citizens regards libraries as worthy of sustained public investment, what exactly are we signalling when discussion of school librarians, community libraries, and bookmobiles scarcely features within our own educational discourse?

Can a nation realistically aspire to STEM excellence while neglecting the infrastructure that nurtures literacy?

The evidence suggests otherwise. This is why Dr Brown-Sands' intervention deserves national attention. She reminds us that the road to medical school often begins with a child discovering the joy of reading.

The road to engineering frequently begins with curiosity nurtured by books. The road to scientific innovation often begins in a library long before it reaches a laboratory.

If we genuinely wish to strengthen STEM preparedness, we must begin much earlier than CSEC, CAPE, sixth form or university admissions. We need thriving school libraries and trained librarians. We need accessible community libraries, mobile libraries serving rural communities. We need reading programmes extending beyond examinations. We need internationally benchmarked measures of literacy growth.

We need stronger mathematics preparation and better science laboratories. But above all, we need to restore reading as a cherished national habit.

The lesson from Portland's educational history, championed for decades by the late parish librarian Carmen Munroe of Anchovy is evidence.

Educational excellence cannot be manufactured through rankings, branding, selective admissions, or examination filtering alone.

It emerges when societies create cultures of reading, inquiry, aspiration, and disciplined thought. Dr Brown-Sands, therefore, compels us towards an uncomfortable but necessary conclusion.

The crisis confronting Jamaica's universities is not principally a university crisis or a mathematics crisis. It is a literacy crisis. It is a reading-culture crisis. It is a library crisis. It is an intellectual-ecosystem crisis.

Until we confront that reality, our universities will continue inheriting students who are less prepared than their talents deserve.

Before a young Jamaican becomes an engineer, physician, physicist, programmer, or innovator, that child must first become a reader.

The road to STEM has never begun in the laboratory. It has always begun in the library.

Dennis Minott, PhD, is the CEO of A-QuEST-FAIR. Send feedback to: a_quest57@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.