Obstacles to prosperity
Peter Espeut
RECENTLY, SOME comprehensive school principals and teachers have complained that the students which they are to get from the new GSAT Examination appear to be as poor academically as those they were getting from the Common Entrance Examination. What did they expect? Anyone who expected to get better students overnight is living in a dream world. The fact is that possibly more than half the students going to Grade 7 from primary and all-age schools cannot read at the Grade six level - but they have to go somewhere. Whether they are placed by GSAT or CEE they will end up in comprehensive schools. It is a fact of life! Get used to it! Unless, of course, we change the system of promotion, and only promote those students to the next highest grade if they have proved their competence. As long as we continue to promote students whether they pass or fail, we will be in problems. We must reward competence and achievement, not mediocrity and failure. And that goes for the teachers too. We pay teachers their salaries for coming to school, and give them awards for long service. Whether the students they teach actually learn anything is not a factor in determining their remuneration. The thousands of teachers who produce illiterates get the same salary as those who produce good readers. That also, is a fundamental problem. We give competence and achievement the same reward as mediocrity and failure. Dunce Suggest to teachers that it should be different and you get a chorus of excuses. "Don't blame us for the deficiencies in the children. When they come to us they can't read or are educationally sub-normal. We get the dunce ones, the failures. Blame the students!" Precisely! The job of teachers is to take the students they are given and to make of them the best they can be. If you get alumina, you turn it into aluminium. If you get bauxite, you still must make aluminium. If you get bauxite to start with, buckle down and do the job you are paid for. Don't complain! It seems that teachers want only bright students; then they will have very little work to do; bright students can learn on their own. Give the teachers under-achievers and you hear: "Dem doah have the brain". I remember well the first meeting of a new secondary school board I attended; I was reminded by a vice-principal that this was not Campion College or St. George's. My expectations were too high, she was claiming. This is a major part of the problem with the education system in Jamaica. The teachers hold the students in low esteem and have low expectations of them. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. They come in at Grade 7 having underachieved at the Common Entrance: they leave at Grade 11 (or earlier) as underachievers. I cannot blame the students for being illiterate after spending 11 years in school. I blame the Ministry of Education and I blame the teachers, which is almost the same thing, for the officers of the Ministry of Education are former teachers (and mostly former JTA activists). Clearly there is a problem at the primary level, but not with the students. The education policy, curriculum and teaching methods are producing illiterates, and will continue to do so unless there are fundamental changes. I wonder if the incumbents have the courage to admit the weaknesses everyone else can see, and make the necessary changes? For those illiterate students who have already passed through the primary system, what is needed is a serious remedial reading programme at the secondary level, but particularly at Grade 7 so that the problem is not passed along to the higher grades. The problem is so severe that in my opinion it is worth suspending teaching in other subjects until the children can read. This is what authorities in the comprehensive high schools should have been doing all along, and should be preparing to do now, rather than complaining that they are getting poor quality students. How else is the problem going to be solved? I think it is a scandal that we put so much effort into graduations and awards ceremonies and so little into the basics! A major part of the solution to the problem is challenging teachers to do more: to work for eight hours per day like everybody else, and to work for at lease 11 months of the year like everybody else. We have a crisis of illiteracy on our hands, and the Minister has suggested that the school year should be extended to give the students more. Predictably, the JTA has objected. Are they going to be a part of the solution or remain part of the problem? Please don't blame the poor students, who are the victims in all this. Let us put the blame where it truly lies.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
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