Ronald Thwaites | We can do better for education

Let’s face it. Our schools will reopen this week with no real improvement over last year. In fact the teachers loss makes it worse. Even in the extremely doubtful event that most vacancies have been filled, the loss of experience and quality cannot have been repaired. The result will be lower-standard education. It’s inevitable.

Last week, too, the Ministry of Education tried to chide one of our highest-performing schools for strongly requiring parents who can, to contribute to the $90-million gap between what is needed to assure excellence and the sum contributed by Government.

The appropriate reply to the ministry should be to demand a cheque for the shortfall. Only that would obviate the necessity for parental and other contributions. Notice, also, the inherent contempt by the Government of the Patterson Report, which calls for the collection of auxiliary fees from those who can afford it, both to fill the yawning gap in school budgets and to provide for those who genuinely can’t afford to contribute. The ministry offers no alternative.

As it is, the State, with its skewed-up thinking, ends up supporting underfunded education, while deluding themselves, and some of us, that what schools get from them is really enough to ensure quality and relieve the poor.

UNDERPAID

We really must do much better for ourselves. Schools are reopening on a shaky financial footing, and teachers remain underpaid at the same time as $11 billion is committed to repair the stadium complex, and corruption is exposed in multiple state agencies. There is money to do better.

Then, too, many parents, besotted with the dependency syndrome and freeness mentality, spend multiples of billions to drink, smoke, gamble, buy hair and nails and go to party, but ‘hitch’ to pay school fees.

This country is going nowhere with this behaviour on the part of this administration and members of the public. And does the Opposition object?

And while some ministers impose this folly on people who have no choice, they same ones insist on the best placement for their children or send them to the most expensive private schools. They are not prepared to compromise their childrens’ prospects to defend the political gimmicky they foist on the rest of us.

So it’s OK for the banks to charge people any fees they want so as to maximise their profits, but the schools must beg or do without in the cause of excellent, liberating education?

Instead of trying to talk down the good-teacher shortage, pay for excellence and require accountability. For instance, how can there ever be any improvement in early- childhood education if teachers in that sector do not have the money to pay for upgrading their skills and see a path to better remuneration.

Mrs Williams promises more money for education when there is economic growth. But how do we get that economic growth without an educated populace, please and thanks?

Can someone tell the JTA that the problem is not the Teaching Council law, which actually gives pedigree to the profession, but the unwillingness on almost everyone’s part to recognise the real cost of quality education and the financing mechanisms needed to meet them.

Parents, benefactors and all people of goodwill, please contribute to your child’s school as much as you can. It’s the best investment you could make.

BUYING SPORTS TALENT

It’s a very bad thing to buy high-school sports talent.

Last week, this page featured another excellent article by Dr Lascelve Graham pointing out the negative consequences of enticing or bribing sports talent from weaker schools to those which pitch their notoriety on winning football or Champs or some other sport. I am told it’s done widely, but scarcely acknowledged by school officials. The word is that alumni pay for the practice. Last week came the confirmation of one high school recruiting from elsewhere in the Caribbean.

This is so wrong. Our schools are not sports clubs. When I served in the Ministry of Education and heard reports of the rank commercialisation of schoolboy sports, I asked the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association to develop a policy to discourage the industry. There was no response. They waited me out until someone else came who supported the practice.

School spirit and character building must be enhanced by nurturing sportsmanship among students who come in the natural course of assignment to any school, not pampered imports. Any school doing this invites disrespect, especially when their academic performance is far from stellar. If unchecked, we will soon have a transfer mechanism for big money to complete the commodification of our youth.

When you buy talent, you communicate the clear message that winning and fame are the priorities of life, and that money can buy you in or out of school teams.

The much-respected principal Myrie has the right posture when he affirms that Kingston College is not a sports school but a school where sports is played. I am relieved to learn that St George’s has now formally adopted a firm policy that no student will be admitted on the grounds of athletic prowess alone, and that all funds raised for sport enhancement will be devoted to developing talent within the existing student cohort. All schools should be held to similar standards.

What is the position of the Ministry of Education on this important issue, which goes to the very heart of the ethics and morals of education?

ANOTHER STEP BACKWARDS

It is disappointing that Mr Lee-Chin’s much-heralded agricultural project on Inniswood’s prime soil is being scuttled because housing will make more money. This is a very bad sign for food security. That farm was supposed to point the way to use capital and science for responsible development. Sure, more houses are needed.There are many other places to build them. Fix the inner cities. Take back the fertile land and engage other agro-capitalists. Let’s see whose pocket the State is in. Any bets?

We really can do better for ourselves on all these matters.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.