Ronald Thwaites | Of land and education

There are but two ultimate sources of flourishing available to us. The wit and effort of all our people and the fruitful use of this land. They are connected.  Everything else is derivative. The news last week found us wrestling uncomfortably as we engaged with both these gifts.

First, Dr Kevin Brown, the clear-thinking president of the University of Technology, reminded us that only 6,000 of our 30,000 high-school leavers attain required standards for tertiary training. 

If that were not catastrophic enough, the reality suppressed by the ministry behind those figures is that significant numbers of students are not deemed fit to sit matriculation examinations and that, of those who “pass” much diluted external tests, most achieve the lowest acceptable grade.

WASTED EXPENDITURE

‘Big Spending, Modest Returns’ was the charitable headline given to CAPRI’s report on the efficiency of the huge annual allotment to education by each Budget.  “We spend like a rich country but we’re not getting the outcomes of one”.

“What happens in the first three years leaves a mark that no subsequent investment can fully erase … Jamaica is investing at the wrong end of the development timeline,” CAPRI concludes.

How do the nation and its leaders respond to these ineluctable truths?  How high a priority are we placing on the promotion and infrastructure of family life – the perfect setting for rearing children for which there is no substitute? 

The women who are the mothers of the children at my school had their first child within seven years of their graduation. None of them are married. Only a few acknowledge stable relationships with their first child’s father. They are cramped by the burdens of parenting. All are struggling with financial and emotional problems. Most would like to migrate.

Easily one-fifth of the Grade 7 cohort exhibits significant social and learning challenges with little hope of diagnosis, let alone remediation. Whatever their grades and behavioural issues, all these kids will be promoted in September, burdened at great public and personal expense with multiple subjects which they cannot master because, as CAPRI observes the obvious: “Education spending cannot deliver its potential returns where the foundations were not built”.

Even for those who can read and compute, any assessment of Jamaican education must question the relevance of the curriculum. Cramming eight and 10 subjects for children with limited home and community interactions, whose main preceptor is their smart phone? With teaching geared towards exam cramming: Really! Where do they learn to be good people?

“If education doesn’t teach you to resist injustice, it has failed” (John Dewey). At my school, subject teachers are employed so the children have to do the subjects whether they can manage them or not. Whose interest is the expensive system with the poor outcomes serving?

The ablest and fortunate of my graduating girls get a job in a call centre. Juggling the hours, the child, the small wages and relationships, demands exhausting effort. Enter the PIOJ. Last week, the agency warned that over 50,000 working and middle-class jobs face high risk of being replaced by the advent of Artificial Intelligence.  While sundry ministers crow about “advancing digitization” of the economy, what understanding and consequent action is at hand for the “approximately 22 per cent of Jamaicans workforce which face high-to-medium automation exposure”? (UTech study)

This impending tsunami demands as much concern as the preparation for today’s start of the hurricane season.  

It is in our choices more than our abilities which determine who we really are.

THE LAND

I estimate that close to 40 per cent of Jamaicans’ dwindling population live on land for which they have no tenure.  Melissa is making the situation worse. It is very difficult to keep a family together, culture relationships, raise children properly and care for the vulnerable without a stable place of abode. 

In six decades of public engagement, I have witnessed numerous couples whose desire for committed relationships have been dashed by the unavailability or unaffordability of a decent place to live together.

I was present years ago in the days of Operation Pride when the late, great Minister Donald Buchanan declared an end to squatting. Prime Minister Holness echoed similar sentiments last week. 

Ever ask why people squat and why so little is done to prevent illegal occupation? Who knows the extent of government-owned land, and what plan is there for portions to be used to meet the basic needs of the real owners for whom the State is merely the steward?

When subdivision is rendered so expensive by high-chested infrastructure requirements that lot prices are beyond the reach of most, what do we expect people to do? Tell the truth, too, some members of parliament have condoned and even encouraged squatting, often because there are no alternatives.

Since there is scant management of public lands, (check the Water Commission’s and Railway) there have been some agency employees who “roast” from selling the lands they are supposed to supervise. The provisions of the Land Utilization law are in abeyance. Why?

Slum clearance has devastating political impact on slim electoral margins. Clearing Back O’ Wall only created a similar enclave at Windsor Heights. 

As we pretend to build back better, why not include a settlement area near to each urban site where house lots with registered titles are sold with 100 per cent NHT financing, basic infrastructure established with covenants for orderly and expandable housing designs? Then the proposed far-reaching Shared Communities Bill, properly administered, will bring healthy order to the face of Jamaican society.

Revolutionised education structure and content, and the strategic use of land for human flourishing would emerge, as Pope Leo teaches, “from looking at our world through the eyes of those who suffer, the orphan, the exile … to bring about the civilization of love in our lives”.  I hold that real progress towards these ideals is achievable within our present resources, were we to use them in a united and inclusive fashion.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.