Education performance
Jamaica Gleaner
October 20, 2003
LATE INTO the night last Tuesday, Parliament came to what Leader of the Opposition Edward Seaga has described as an 'historic agreement' on the future of education.
A lively national debate has been running over the past several weeks about the state of the education system and what to do about it. Much of that debate has been initiated and sustained in the pages of The Gleaner. Indeed, Mr. Seaga may have sensed with his keen political nose that, with the lively national debate running, it was the best of times to return to Parliament with his old concerns for education.
One area in the education debate that has received much less attention than it really deserves is the responsibility of parents and students. The historic parliamentary agreement of last Tuesday night essentially represents the response of the state to the problems of education, and most of the publicly presented solutions, at bottom, call for the intervention of the state in one way or another. Even the matter of home work has become the subject of political horse trading. A part of the Government/Opposition agreement achieved is the organisation of supervised study and home work time at school.
But a number of letter writers to The Gleaner have raised the underplayed issue of student and parental responsibility. Students must want to learn and must strive to learn, encouraged and supported by their parents. The school can only do so much. Parental involvement is one of the most overlooked aspects of education in Jamaica today, one contributor stated. The misplaced priorities of many parents and their children in spending scarce resources were raised by another contributor, while a third pointed out what should be obvious that teaching and learning are different things and both sides have clear obligations.
The fundamental premise of Mr. Seaga's original resolution opposing cost-sharing was that parents having to share the cost of their children's education at the secondary level is a deterrent to performance. But even with tuition-free education and free books and meals and whatever else, home support and the desire to learn on the part of students remain critical factors.
We must not sweep under the rug of historic political agreements the fact that performance in the education system is also reflecting, perhaps to a larger degree than we care to admit, the cultural situation with child-having and child-rearing, the social situation of crime and violence and general disorder which disrupt community life supportive of educational achievements, and the lure of highly visible alternative pathways to beating the books for success in life. The solution to educational under-achievement must extend well beyond the political and the economic and take on board these critical social and cultural deterrents.