THE EDITOR, Sir:ACCORDING TO a report in The Sunday Gleaner of March 27, many of the Jamaican teachers who migrated to the United States and United Kingdom in recent years did so because of either indiscipline, overwork or underpay, or a combination of all three factors.
Now, the report also said that these teachers confess that the children there (U.S. and U.K.) are more indisciplined than the ones here (Jamaica) - as hard to fathom as that may seem. Plus, the overall education system here is better, so they say.
That alone truly answers the question for me: the Jamaican teachers are willing to face whatever in a foreign land because of one thing - better pay (who blames them?).
I believe and I say it often to students, that the education system in Jamaica is in a dilemma, caused partly by the government of course, but a major part of it is by the students themselves and probably the society they grow up in.
The indiscipline that teachers here face plus the low pay are enough to make up one's mind when an opportunity comes to leave.
Then comes the old adage, 'Patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels'.
More weight is given to the ideas of Ivan Illich from his book Deschooling Society 35 years after its writing - that the drop-out rate of teachers in schools is higher than that of pupils for the simple reason of their (teachers') inability to cope with indiscpline.
The sociologists would say 'the classroom is a mere microcosm of the whole society' where the authorities are also failing to conquer the deviant forces.
I am, etc.,
NICHOLAS ALEXANDER
nic7lex@hotmail.com
