Tweet
Education in deep trouble
Published: Friday | May 8, 2009
I know that Education Week has deteriorated into a big fete and national pat on the back for our teachers, but our education system is broken and in deep trouble, and I believe the best way to spend Education Week is to reflect on how we can fix it.
Never in our history has it been government policy for all the Jamaican population to be properly educated. During slavery, the only high schools were for children of the slave masters, and Emancipation did not change that. The planters - who ran the government - needed labour, and it was unthinkable that the majority should be able to read. Who then, would cut cane, pick coffee or weed bananas? A system was constructed providing elementary education for the masses focusing on "practical training". Proper high schooling was reserved for the elite.
My own school career is a perfect example of what I am talking about. My parents taught me to read at home before I was five years old; when I went to a private preparatory school in the 1950s (for which my parents had to pay) I was promoted to the third class in the first week. After taking the Common Entrance Examination, I received a free place (a full scholarship at taxpayers expense) in the 1960s when I was ten years old to attend what was then a little school called Campion College.
Scholarship I took the UWI Scholarship Examination and won a Government Exhibition Scholarship in the 1970s to study the natural sciences. In the 1980s, I received a full scholarship to do graduate studies in the social sciences at UWI.
Our elite education system favours children from better-off families, who will be catapulted higher and higher through the system, and after several graduations, will have access to the best jobs (if they want them). Children from poor rural or urban families will struggle through poorly-funded basic schools and primary schools where they will be lucky to learn to read and write.
If they ever get a cha
nce to run in the GSAT sweepstakes, only about 18 per cent of them will be able to find a place in a high school (as opposed to an upgraded secondary school). The chances are that those who make it to secondary school will end their career without even one CXC subject pass.
Jamaica's education system works well for the elites, but works against the poor, and no government since Independence has had the political will to change the system. We have pleaded lack of resources to fund education properly, but we have spent billions on highways for illiterates to drive on, and billions to bail out banks. Our priorities since Independence have been profoundly misplaced.
Something is wrong here
The same parents who pay plenty to send their children to prep school, find that they pay much less to send them to the best high schools. Something is wrong here! And then after millions of tax dollars are spent training high-school students to graduation, so many up and migrate overseas to use their education to benefit First World economies. This problem needs to be fixed!
There is a major problem with the teaching profession. A large percentage of the teachers in the system should not be there! Why do we inflict on our bright-eyed and ambitious young people, persons who are only in teaching because they can't do better? There are many good teachers in the system, but, by and large, they are resented by the lazy ones, and made to feel uncomfortable.
If the JTA were really a professional association it would be working for an increase in the accountability of teachers, and for the improvement of the system and the children, rather than for the personal advantage of its individual dues-paying members. I sympathise with the present minister of education who I believe is trying to make some changes; but he has to contend with the JTA every step of the way, and many of his ministry staff are former JTA activists.
I believe that if the JTA were fully engaged in reforming our education system to achieve better performance, it would have happened long ago! Then we should fete the teachers!
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.
Published: Friday | May 8, 2009
I know that Education Week has deteriorated into a big fete and national pat on the back for our teachers, but our education system is broken and in deep trouble, and I believe the best way to spend Education Week is to reflect on how we can fix it.
Never in our history has it been government policy for all the Jamaican population to be properly educated. During slavery, the only high schools were for children of the slave masters, and Emancipation did not change that. The planters - who ran the government - needed labour, and it was unthinkable that the majority should be able to read. Who then, would cut cane, pick coffee or weed bananas? A system was constructed providing elementary education for the masses focusing on "practical training". Proper high schooling was reserved for the elite.
My own school career is a perfect example of what I am talking about. My parents taught me to read at home before I was five years old; when I went to a private preparatory school in the 1950s (for which my parents had to pay) I was promoted to the third class in the first week. After taking the Common Entrance Examination, I received a free place (a full scholarship at taxpayers expense) in the 1960s when I was ten years old to attend what was then a little school called Campion College.
Scholarship I took the UWI Scholarship Examination and won a Government Exhibition Scholarship in the 1970s to study the natural sciences. In the 1980s, I received a full scholarship to do graduate studies in the social sciences at UWI.
Our elite education system favours children from better-off families, who will be catapulted higher and higher through the system, and after several graduations, will have access to the best jobs (if they want them). Children from poor rural or urban families will struggle through poorly-funded basic schools and primary schools where they will be lucky to learn to read and write.
If they ever get a cha
nce to run in the GSAT sweepstakes, only about 18 per cent of them will be able to find a place in a high school (as opposed to an upgraded secondary school). The chances are that those who make it to secondary school will end their career without even one CXC subject pass.
Jamaica's education system works well for the elites, but works against the poor, and no government since Independence has had the political will to change the system. We have pleaded lack of resources to fund education properly, but we have spent billions on highways for illiterates to drive on, and billions to bail out banks. Our priorities since Independence have been profoundly misplaced.
Something is wrong here
The same parents who pay plenty to send their children to prep school, find that they pay much less to send them to the best high schools. Something is wrong here! And then after millions of tax dollars are spent training high-school students to graduation, so many up and migrate overseas to use their education to benefit First World economies. This problem needs to be fixed!
There is a major problem with the teaching profession. A large percentage of the teachers in the system should not be there! Why do we inflict on our bright-eyed and ambitious young people, persons who are only in teaching because they can't do better? There are many good teachers in the system, but, by and large, they are resented by the lazy ones, and made to feel uncomfortable.
If the JTA were really a professional association it would be working for an increase in the accountability of teachers, and for the improvement of the system and the children, rather than for the personal advantage of its individual dues-paying members. I sympathise with the present minister of education who I believe is trying to make some changes; but he has to contend with the JTA every step of the way, and many of his ministry staff are former JTA activists.
I believe that if the JTA were fully engaged in reforming our education system to achieve better performance, it would have happened long ago! Then we should fete the teachers!
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.
Comment