Ronald Thwaites | Good in this Nazareth

There was a fight at the Revival Primary School in west Westmoreland last Wednesday. One little boy told another, “Yu black like pot.” Is it surprising that issues of skin tone are still part of the mental slavery which afflict many of us? After all, it should be a compliment to refer positively to a person’s natural colour or hair texture. But are we teaching our children not to be self-obsessive or exhibitionists but to love and value themselves as they are – beautiful daughters and sons of a wise and loving God? Being ‘black like pot’ or ‘white like sheet’ is not to be the children of Ham.

Happily, positive reinforcement of identity is what they are encouraging at that remote, rural school. It is a faith-based institution, where instilling wholesome values and attitudes are given equal time and emphasis as all of the conventional subjects. This is what it takes, so we can stop asking ourselves how did we get so coarse.

When we visited, the students were busily engaged in collecting and separating for recycling all the day’s refuse. And they could explain why they were doing it. Doing useful chores, they were lively but not frenzied, as I have seen in similar locations recently. And they responded quickly to instructions.

The board and administration make sure that every child gets a good breakfast, as well as lunch. The pride of the day was the bunch of bananas and the hand of plantains which had been brought by a parent to support the effort. This kind of thing is a regular occurrence. They are breaking the cheesy snacks and bag juice culture which inevitably leads to the epidemic of non-communicable illnesses later in life.

DEEPLY INVOLVED

The sponsoring church is deeply involved in the affairs of the school. And not just for devotions, as important as those are. Volunteers were readily available to manage the classes, so that the teachers could meet with us to learn about a novel programme of Christian living, which will be introduced in 2023.

At Revival, despite all this, 20 per cent of their pupils are absent every day. Why? The staff reports that the absenteeism is connected to dysfunctional parenting, and it is those same pickney who exhibit poor behaviour and weak academic performance, particularly in reading skills. The teachers report having regular class conferences with parents, where the challenges of individual children can be identified and, hopefully, remedied.

The staff understand the futility of automatic promotion. Fortunately, they have space to accommodate repeaters and offer serious individual attention. Having a guidance counsellor gives the institution a great advantage, as does the lively, calm leadership of the young principal.

The teachers complain that they are evaluated by the ministry officials on academic results alone rather than on the whole social product, which is the only worthwhile outcome. That’s a problem. Good education and exam passes are not one and the same thing.

The proper remit of primary education in post-COVID-19 Jamaica is to ensure that ALL children, by grade six, can read and compute at a reasonable standard and that – more than anything else but connected to everything else – they have been socialised into being decent humans. There must be no compromise on these basic standards.

Then we visited Sav Inclusive, the Rockhouse Foundation-sponsored suite of inclusive schools being developed in the belly of Savanna-la-Mar. This is a partnership between a private-sector hotel which believes in sharing its profits with its staff and community; the Ministry of Education; and the Catholic Church.

A clean, joyous, superbly equipped infant school catering to differently enabled children is fully functioning, and the construction of a primary school is under way. A high school will follow. The offerings are so unique and excellent, the need for special-education spaces so acute, that there are as many children on a waiting list as there are enrolled.

TEMPLATE

The Rockhouse partnership ought to be the template for every sizeable business and religious entity in Jamaica. Then we would stop consigning challenged children to the dump heap of education opportunity. Watch the special children developing character by helping each other. Look at the young staff and parents acknowledging what the rest of the nation hesitates about – the respect and cherish of every human, no matter their physical appearance or mental capacity.

The point of these stories is that it is possible to operate effective educational opportunity right now. Of course, more money is needed at Revival and, of course, the ministry must deliver on the significant outstanding promises made but not yet kept at Sav Inclusive. And Church members must engage themselves in schools, especially in all matters affecting behaviour modification and character formation.

At both schools described in this writing, the presence of strong policy-forming and monitoring boards is evident. Being a school board member is to be considered a high civic duty and honour and requires training, the gift of time, and a genuine interest in children.

Equally important are the strong principals we encountered. Men and women who enthuse their staff, and who make it their business to know each of their students and to have a link with their home situation. These are not principals who spend much of their time in their offices processing the reams of instructions coming from head office. They are not branch managers of some town-based enterprise, but instructional and moral leaders who are accountable to God, the nation and parents for quality outcomes.

None of this is easy and no school is perfect, but at different ends of the economic spectrum, both at Revival and Sav Inclusive, good things are happening largely through exemplary dedication and human commitment.

Why accept less? There is good in this Nazareth!

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.