COMMENTARY

School Daze in Jamaica

by Ann-Marie Adams, an award-winning journalist who lives in Connecticut. She is writing a book on school segregation and its impact on Caribbean immigrants.

Friday, July 1, 2005

I received a world-class education on a tiny island, smaller than the tiniest state in the United States: Jamaica. It sits like a tiny exclamation dot on the vast globe, so my chest heaved with pride when I flew from the U.S. to celebrate my alma mater’s 105th anniversary.

Though it was heartwarming to see the continuing tradition, education embroidered with discipline and deportment, I was somewhat dismayed. I knew the quality education I had received was not accessible to many of today’s Jamaican students.

Many students lack certain basic skills, including discipline and deportment. The embarrassing evidence exists aplenty but has been ignored by many of us who cling to nostalgia. We boast about the quality of education in Jamaica and other islands, and about how graduates go on to breeze through schools abroad. Candid talks with teachers and parents, however, can rudely interrupt our reverie.

St. Hugh’s High School mathematics teacher Kim Wilson, an alumna, gives a bitter dose of reality. Some of today’s students, she says, lack focus on academic excellence.

Of course, other things are factored in: cuts in education, overcrowded schools using the two-shift system, pop culture distractions, less parental guidance and less exposure to intellectual stimulation – despite the vastly greater access to information via the Internet.

All have taken a serious toll on the island and have left it vulnerable. To counteract the distractions, teachers have to be more vivacious and multi-talented to match the intensity and excitement students live with in today’s society. And they must instill discipline.

“St. Hugh’s has taught me a lot in terms of discipline,” Wilson says. “The younger teachers tend to tolerate the indiscipline. Now you find more girls from lower classes, and they carry the dominant attitude, which is impacting the school, as opposed to the school impacting the children.”

This situation is not confined to St. Hugh’s; in fact, the national picture looks decidedly bleaker. The Jamaican Minister of Education Maxine Henry-Wilson notes that a significant number of Jamaican students leave primary school without being able to read, write or do math. Few of those students who migrate abroad try to catch up, particularly in the embattled American city public schools. This is a colossal fact.

Hope, however, is kept alive. The Jamaican government, it seems, is working to uphold a quality education structure and to keep it from eroding further. Henry-Wilson says more than ninety percent of all children under the age of six are enrolled in some early childhood program, now a model for other countries and the government is partnering with Jamaicans abroad.

Those away from the homeland can and should effect change. Under the new Jamaican Diaspora movement, one group has decided to make a difference. The Northeast education committee, chaired by Temple University Professor Trevor Sewell, has taken up a bold endeavor: to find a low-performing school, to study its characteristics and to implement a plan of action; so it can become a model to replicate throughout the country.

In June, Sewell and his team visited Montego Bay High School, which is one of the lowest performing schools in Jamaica. There, school officials say, students have adopted an inferiority complex. They recalled one student saying: “You guys don’t care about us anyway. That’s why you put us at this school.”

Enough said. For Sewell and his group, failure to transform this school is not an option.

But that’s just one group. Other groups like the National Association of Supportive Organizations (NAJASO) are doing its part. To reverse the trend toward ignorance and self-doubt, we all must take action.

Those of us who were privileged to receive world-class education in the Caribbean must release our hold on nostalgia, roll up our sleeves and do the hard work required. We can become mentors, or donate money for books and school buses; the needs and possibilities are many.

Better yet, we should simply pick up the telephone, call a school principal, and ask: “How can I help?”

  Back...

  Most popular articles: viewed, printed and e-mailed

  Printable version