Delroy Chuck A SOUND education is a basic requirement in our competitive, globalised and hostile world. Through education, an individual can properly perform, secure his place, and make the right choices from school graduation to the grave. Enough cannot be said, therefore, that every child deserves and is entitled to a decent education. The present debate on the exposure of weaknesses and failures in our education process is therefore a blessing, and from which much can be learnt.
We need to seize the moment. From the discussion on the performance of our children at the CXC level, we need to move forward with gusto to lift our education standards, at every level. When we think of our children's education, the people who teach them, the indiscipline in schools, the learning environment, can we truly say that education is attracting and celebrating the brightest and the best? If education is so important for the well-being of the whole society, why is it not given the support, importance and resources for our children to excel? We pay lip service to education while covering up the realities, inadequacies and weaknesses. Because a few students do very well, we celebrate, and ignore the vast majority who barely pass or leave the schools functionally illiterate and incapable of performing in the real world.
EDUCATION MAKES
THE DIFFERENCE
Where do we start? I think we need to convince the whole society, especially the uneducated and reluctant, that education makes the difference. It provides the hope and means for escape from the ignorance, injustice and hardships, especially in the lower, less-favoured social and economic groups. It is through education that our children move upward, attain status, bring parental satisfaction and secure a better quality of life. Education is definitely everybody's business. When people value and get a good education, the society benefits. When the children of our gardener, helper or inner city stranger fail to get a sound education, remain illiterate and ignorant of basic social values, they become a burden instead of a benefit to their family and the society.
It becomes obvious, therefore, that the middle and privileged classes must not only be concerned with the education of their children but with the education of all our children, to at least a good high school certificate. Interestingly, education should be accepted as a life-long process that never really stops. Every citizen, of whatever age or circumstance, should seek to learn something new and different, delving into books, perusing magazines, reading and listening to the daily news, surfing the Internet, active in social clubs, etc. to improve his or her worth. If our children discern that their parents value and love education, then they, too, will come to love and enjoy learning. It is through the love of learning that we pass on from an early age the mental stimulation so vital to preparing our children for formal schooling. Without that early mental stimulation, children are deprived of an easy passage to academic excellence, and many will forever be left behind.
FORMATIVE YEARS
Actually, if we want to find the main reasons for the failures and weaknesses in our education process, they can be found in the formative years, long before GSAT and CXC examinations. To his great credit, the Leader of the Opposition, Edward Seaga, has been the most vocal on the national stage for the state to take over the formal education of children from an early age. While it is well recognised that children benefit from a good home environment and, in most countries, basic and nursery schools are private institutions, Mr. Seaga argues that in poor countries like Jamaica, we cannot leave it to poor people to secure the mental stimulus needed in the formative age group of 2-6 years when a child's mental acumen and strength are substantially determined.
Naturally, while the privileged classes will argue that poor people must have fewer children or have only those that they can take care of and properly educate, the reality is that poor people around the world have more children than the better-off classes. In fact, if we really want poor people to have fewer children then history teaches that the best means to do so is to lift their quality of life and provide the opportunity for them to escape from the evil and burden of poverty. Well, education provides, or should provide, such an opportunity for upward escape for these children of poverty-ridden families and communities.
CYCLE OF IGNORANCE
At the present time, many nursery and basic schools are private institutions operated for profit and, in spite of their best effort, fail to provide the needed mental stimulation to develop and excite young minds. What is urgently required is for at least one trained basic schoolteacher in every one of these institutions, which is not now the case. In addition, through financial hardship, many children of the poor cannot afford and, therefore, are deprived of the mental stimulation in nursery or basic schools and enter primary school mentally inadequate and behind. From a disadvantaged position, the children of the poor struggle continually throughout the system, finally leaving school uncertified and probably no better than when they entered. It is this cycle of ignorance and poverty that we need to break, and education is the surest means to do so.
Delroy Chuck is an attorney-at-law and Opposition Member of Parliament. He can be contacted by e-mail at Delchuck@hotmail.com.
