TEXACO CARIBBEAN has pledged $50 million over a three- year period to help in the teaching of science at the primary and secondary school levels, a donation which Mr. Michael Chen, Texaco's general manager, said was a response to the poor results in this subject in the CXC examinations.
Mrs. Maxine Henry-Wilson, Minister of Education, was right in pointing out that donations of this kind, as important as they are to education generally, will redound to the benefit of Texaco itself, a company which depends on a pool of scientific talent for its continued progress.
We agree with the minister, who spoke at the presentation ceremony, that Jamaican students should not be afraid of science, thinking of it as esoteric subject reserved for bespectacled geniuses in white coats. The importance of science to civilisation is the logic it brings to bear on every day phenomena in nature and the human environment, a logic based on inductive reasoning and experimentation.
In a record poll conducted by the British Broadcasting Corporation to determine, by a worldwide voting system, who is the greatest Briton, Sir Isaac Newton, the scientist, was ranked as the winner, ahead of Sir Winston Churchill and William Shakespeare. Whereas it would be virtually impossible to assess the genius of Churchill or Shakespeare without the defining influence of their English background, there is nothing particularly British about Newton's great scientific contributions to the world. It could just as well have been a Jamaican, exposed in his or her early years to the process of scientific thinking, who might have defined the laws of gravity and motion.
The Texaco contributions is to be apportioned over a six-point programme including a series of primary school quizzes, secondary school essay competitions, science fairs and a teacher awards component. In outlining the scope of the donation, Mr. Chen pointed out that without exposure to science in early-childhood education, Jamaica's tertiary institutions will be starved of suitable candidates for higher degrees in scientific subjects, a dismal prospect at a time when Jamaica is struggling to keep up with the developments of technology in the modern world.
We applaud Texaco for its generosity and congratulate its management team for its farsighted sense of corporate responsibility.
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