Ronald Thwaites | A ‘garrison’ frame of mind?

Mr Speid of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) got very annoyed last week when Cliff Hughes congratulated him on assuming leadership of the most powerful ‘garrison’ in the nation. The description came in the context of a discussion on the need to pay incentives to teachers with scarce skills to encourage them to stay in the classrooms of a nation with a debilitating math and science crisis.

First, there was a denial of the crisis because no study has been done to verify it, and then a flat refusal to entertain any thought of recognising market forces and so justify a special premium. Maybe recalling retired teachers was as much as could be conceded.

This posture is sheer backwardness and if not changed right now, will result in the same inadequate outcomes in the Primary Exit Profile and Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams, the disappointment of personal aspirations and the cramp of national growth prospects. Every member of Cabinet, every private sector investor and every hopeful parent should react to the intransigence of the teachers’ union.

I had hoped that, with full evidence of the predicament by the time they went into their conference last week, the main item on the JTA’s agenda would have been their detailed proposal and demands for upgrading all the weak areas of the education system over which they preside. What else could have been more important to the future of the country and the profession? I had wanted the JTA to have led the charge and made the money by organising and undertaking the retraining exercise, the continuing professional development which every teacher must undertake.

Instead, the Jamaica Teachers’ Association appears to have become satisfied with the slow and fitful improvement of the teaching and learning process – just like the Government which tolerated (and may well get away with) sinecures for satraps and parties for ministers while schoolchildren go hungry, the shift system persists, and teachers get paid a relative pittance.

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Shouldn’t we have expected more than a squeak of protest from arguably the most powerful trade union in the country in the face of the diarrhoea of corruption festering in the education ministry between March and now? Aren’t they the ones who ought to be leading the effort to clean up what is still stinking? Contrast the vigour displayed to recover their own stolen money.

Could we depend on the JTA to advocate that the derisory flat budget for education this financial year and the plan to salvage capital expenditure in the sector over the next three years are insults to teachers and a death threat to hopes for ‘prassperty’?

Instead, in an uncharacteristic surrender and a betrayal of their own history, just when the nation has the money and the imperative to pay good, accountable teachers what they deserve, their union caved in to a four year wage agreement which puts them in a worse financial position than they were before.

After the supineness of the outgoing JTA administration, who offered no challenge to an inadequate ministry and genuflected regularly before its leader, it was the hope of many that the new president would have been clear in his charge for reform, both of the organisation and the school system. His utterances last week, from his posture on teacher incentives to his mindset, resplendent in his lurch back to the slave era, and forward to Trumpism and Duterte regarding whipping people into good behaviour, show no such prospect.

One of the characteristics of a garrison is that it represents a group who follow a leader or a tendency unquestioningly. It would be to the peril of the nation if that cap fits the head of this organisation.

For this is the reality which faces us next Monday morning. Little or nothing has been done to improve the lot of those who will attend inadequate basic, primary and high schools. The ministry is trying its best to cope with its own internal confusions, and the recruiters are busily paying out the bonds and poaching even the first graduands of the 2015 math and science teacher training programme.

Please do not expect that the reform impulse will come from either political party. Both are hostage to the undoubted political influence of the spokespersons for some 27,000 teachers who have sustained reach into the minds and homes of the entire electorate.

How about becoming a garrison for the good, for rapid and thorough educational transformation and thus, the betterment of the lot of both teachers and students!

Ronald Thwaites is member of parliament for Kingston Central and opposition spokesman on education and training. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.