THE EDITOR, Sir:JAMAICA IS indeed a strange place. We have a minister of education and we have two junior ministers of education, yet it was still necessary for the Prime Minister to appoint a task force to study and advise the government on what to do to correct the problems in education.
It gets even more ridiculous as the task force sits and comes up with some recommendations on what needs to be done to correct the problems, and the Prime Minister then appoints another committee which will later advise the Prime Minister how to finance the plans made by the previous committee.
ANOTHER COMMITTEE
Just where does this idiocy stop? Will we then have another committee appointed to decide how to implement the measures decided on by the second committee which stemmed from the recommendations of the first committee? While all of this is taking place, we have the Ministry of Education telling high schools in northern Jamaica that it is not their business to be providing 6th form education to the children of poor tax paying Jamaicans, and that instead these students should find a community college and be made to pay their way.
THE VISION
What exactly is the vision of this government on education? Why does Dr Omar Davies feel that he has to wait until he is prime minister to bring some sense and direction to this rudderless ship? Where is Dr Peter Phillips in all of this, and does he not realise that this is where his problem in national security all starts?
Of course, many of the recommendations from this first committee are nothing new and will never be implemented because the truth is we really don't care. Teachers being paid by performance will cost the government votes and so they dare not bell the cat, and they continue to
fiddle by appointing more and more committees, task forces and commission more studies. "Rome continues to burn".
I am, etc.,
JEROME HENRY
Buff Bay P.O., Portland
