Peter EspeutTHE NUMBERS tell us that we are in a new dispensation (year, decade, century, millennium), but, of course, nothing feels any different. We are faced with the same challenges of the last years, with the same resources and the same cast of characters. Will we now be able to do better?
One's first reaction is to be pessimistic. All the evidence points to more of the same. But at times like these we must have hope that somehow we can break the cycle of under-achievement, lack of accountability and frustration.
I wonder if we have our goals clearly before us? How we analyse the problems that face us should determine our national priorities and immediate goals, and where we spend scarce tax dollars. I believe, however, that in large measure, short-term considerations have been driving government spending. It's like a person who wants to own a house or a car, and finds that he never has enough money; ask him his goals and he says he wants to get his house or car, yet ask him how him how he spends his money and he tells you about his Granny's funeral expenses, the 'loan' (bailout) he gave to his comrade, his new clothes, the good time he had at the Dancehall, his smoking habit and the rounds of drinks he buys every Friday night for his friends.
In the mean time, his children don't have school books, and there is no money to take them to the optician to test their eyes.
One of our greatest national failures is that our real priorities what we actually spend the money on does not match our stated priorities.
From where is future economic growth to come? From the financial sector? From corporations already operating in Jamaica? If that is what the government believes then it explains why so much money has been spent on bailing out the larger elements in the private sector, and especially the financial institutions. That will explain why our education system has been carefully crafted to produce cheap, slightly-literate labourers skilled in the use of the machete.
Some people (like myself) believe that the only real future for Jamaica lies in her people, and not in any soppy, romantic sort of way. If Jamaica's education system turned out graduates who were not just literate, but capable of starting business enterprises, and capable of inventing new commodities and new, better and cheaper ways of doing things, our economy would grow by leaps and bounds! We will then have to import labour to do the more menial jobs, as too many of our people would have joined the middle class by virtue of their education and their income. People will be beating down our doors to immigrate to Jamaica. We, up to now, have not invested in this sort of education for our people, and we are paying for it in underdevelopment and poverty and crime.
I do not want to clutter the agenda for the first decade of the new century and the new millennium. It seems to me that our Number One national priority must be education of this sort.
Human capital
Every dollar spent in this way, every person who learns to read and to compute, every person who learns how electricity flows in wires and in nerves and in chemical solutions, is an investment in the future of Jamaica. I believe that money used to save Jamaica's human capital, is better spent than when it is used to save the investments of the private sector elite.
Maybe I am naive, but I believed the government when it said there was no money to invest in education. And then came the financial sector collapse, and billions were found in the space of a few months to bail them out. And more billions were found to bail out other interests in agriculture and industry. Now I know that we were lied to! Money can be found for whatever the government feels to be important. Money can be found to make over our education system into the engine of growth for our economy and the vehicle for upward mobility of our people. But only if education becomes a matter of national priority.
And so my call for the new decade of the new century and new millennium is for education for the first time in our history to become the Number One development priority; not just on paper but in terms of how money is spent! This is putting people first in deed rather than in word.
If people are taught how to think and to manipulate numbers and ideas and the instruments of technology, maybe the achievements of this new decade can far exceed any decade of the just concluded 20th century.
But this is the same challenge which faced us at the beginning of the last century, and the players we now have are cast in the same mould as the ones which have failed us for the last 100 years.
Don't give up hope! But believe it or not, it's largely up to you.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
