Dawn Ritch, ContributorThe People's National party (PNP) seems determined to obscure the origins of education for poor people in Jamaica, once the British had departed.
Education for working class people in Jamaica is a product of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government of the 1960s. Specifically it was Edwin Allen, then Minister of Education who introduced "grant-in-aid" into secondary schools. In this way the children of the poor were introduced into the classrooms for the rich, and exposed to the same, then excellent, quality of secondary education throughout the country. He was also the one to introduce technical high schools throughout the parishes.
Edwin Allen, B.A. did these things, and they have made him and the JLP unalterably the political fathers of mass education in this country.
When Michael Manley, then Prime Minister of Jamaica, introduced free education at all levels in the 1970s, Edwin Allen crossed the floor and shook his hand in hearty congratulations.
How times have changed. Today the JLP calls for the abolition of cost-sharing at the secondary level, and there's a great big hullabaloo from the Government benches. They are desperately trying without success to pooh-pooh the idea.
The facts are that the PNP Government introduced free education in the 1970s right up to and including university level. When the Seaga-led JLP Government came to office in 1980, they continued that programme without alteration, save and except towards the end of the decade of the 1980s.
That was when a cess was introduced by the then JLP Government on university education. Not least because some students were repeating their exams six times and over, since it was free. This will make a mockery of any baccalaureate programme.
Education remained free up to and including secondary school throughout the JLP decade of the 1980s. And there was never any problem affording it. During that period Edward Seaga, then Prime Minister, also focused on and encouraged early childhood education through DRB Grant, who was internationally recognised for his work in the development of these modules.
Against that historical background, the PNP's charge that the Opposition's promise of free secondary education is cynical opportunism is nothing but ludicrous. The JLP did it before, and they can do it again.
The political party that finds itself however, incapable of doing so is the governing PNP. This is the administration that introduced cost-sharing during the 1990s. It isn't working, but the Patterson administration never admits when it's wrong. Instead they give an endless stream of excuses, excuses, and more excuses on every radio station and from every podium.
Dr. Paul Robertson, PNP campaign chairman, and PNP Ministers of Government Burchell Whiteman and Danny Buchanan, have all stepped up to bat on the issue of free education. They don't seem to realise that they've already been clean-bowled on the subject, because they're the ones who started charging for it in the first place. They are the ones who found that they could not live up to Michael Manley's legacy.
Columnist D. K. Duncan recently pointed out in this newspaper, that as far back as November 2000, the JLP is on record saying "The JLP believes that education is a right, not a privilege and that every child deserves to have the opportunity to attend school up to the secondary level." These words were contained in the G2K document entitled "A Vision of Hope". How can this be political opportunism now, much less cynicism? Only last week G2K said at a press conference that their research was unable to find anywhere else in the world with a cost-sharing programme.
The Government spokesmen and PNP party bigwigs are making a terrible mistake when they claim that the issue is one of affordability. Under the new Charter of Rights which they are developing themselves in collaboration with the Opposition, education is a human right, and not a privilege.
Once you start charging for education at secondary level, you are denying that right to those who can't afford it.
Sadie Comrie, the new President of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), is therefore a welcome breath of fresh air. The JTA president made a call among other things, for prompt payment of teachers' pensions and libraries in every school. She also went straight to the nub of the free education issue by saying "The issues also surround the fact that education is a fundamental human right which is critical for sustainable development... We believe that the Government has a responsibility to provide free tuition to all students at the secondary level".
If I were the PNP, I would run away from the argument. Not only is this one they cannot win, but even now they are in breach of the international spirit of human rights. Is this why the Charter of Rights has yet to be enacted? And would the Government care to say at whose insistence the "right to education" was included?
This issue is nothing but a shame upon the People's National Party. The Manleys, both father and son, must be turning in their graves. It was PNP founder, Norman Washington Manley, who spearheaded the establishment of the university at Mona, and his son who made education at this university free. Now we live to see the unbelievable spectacle of their party fighting against free education for poor people's children.
