Early childhood is where this focus expenditure and emphasis should be. You build a house by first getting the foundation lined up correctly.
Education in Jamaica is completely misunderstood and has no long-term coherent aim and objective of building a nation in line with global realities. There is also a concomitant failure of what is called intellectualism to clearly define education for our people as having holistic relevance to enhancing a highly productive socio-economic and cultural environment for the Jamaican people.
Going back to address early childhood deficits allows us to understand even in part how Jamaica became the 10th most illiterate country in the Caribbean with 88% literacy.
Male literacy is at the appallingly low level of 83% with women who just celebrated International Women's Day is tantamount to a pyrrhic victory in Jamaica with an impressive 93% literacy rate.
Focus must now be on boys' literacy starting at the early childhood level.
Illiteracy is now a national crisis level.
Look at Cuba at near 100% then Barbados at 99.8 Trinidad is third up in the high 90s.
Jamaica is being led into the dungeons of decadence as we focus on 6th form and Republicanism for votes and leadership bragging rights.
At #10 in Caribbean literacy, two countries separate us from our Haitian brothers and sisters.
The increased crime, brawling murders, and high profile multimillion robberies are not unrelated to education, illiteracy, and an ill-defined aim and objective for knowledge acquisition institutions focussing on the functional application of knowledge translating into intelligence.
Sixth form while having a place is not a panacea. Perhaps literacy is the foundation of any country's development and progress. I recommend an appropriate education commission that transcends political party life cycles to objectively direct education for the development of Jamaica.
Mics 🖊️pen
16/04/23
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Thanks so much for voicing this concern. I strongly support them as well as many others. As well as many others .
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ReplyDeleteWhile I do not advocate dismantling the focus on 6th form education ( which is primarily funded by the school’s initiatives and increased fees). I do support a stronger attention and more resources being deployed to basic, pre-primary and primary education , if we are to stem the slide in the long term. I remember denouncing all the resources that were deployed to Adult Literacy and suggested that the bulk of these be transitioned to basic/pre-primary and Primary Education which represented the mill of our woes at source.
ReplyDeleteThe education system needs revamping. More and more students are leaving high schools illiterate, resulting in low quality workers and impacted productivity levels. Extending the number of years in high school can not fix this problem. The country needs to figure out what it wants to accomplish at each level of education and put programs in place to achieve same. Yes. The focus should be at the early childhood level. It is time to stop allowing students who lack the basic reading skills to move on to the next grade. It is better to hold them back than to allow them to progress thinking they have met the requirements to move on to another grade level.
ReplyDeleteYou are not holding them back. You are allowing them to be competent at a level before moving them to a more advance level.
DeleteThe solutions to the problems we have with our " education system " is well known and documented, I am not sure that we have the will to deal with it !
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