Ronald Thwaites | Biancy faces life

Her name is Biancy. That’s how the auntie spelled it when her birth information was given to the registrar. Her father’s mother is trying to raise her. He, a little bike delivery man and part-time security guard, really loves his high-school sweetheart babymother but , as she put it, “ him can’t do nuttin for me. Love only fi mek baby. It can’t buy anything”. She is pretty can’t done: like her baby-fadda has no CSEC subjects and now has walked away from the relationship. “When me find a big man, somebody over 40, who can give me the money I need, me will take care of Biancy”, she reasons.

The child is beautiful and has started school but reading is going to be the problem. There is no stimulation at home. No books, no nursery rhymes or simple prayers but plenty pictures of her patron saint, Beyoncé. Her father has given her a small tablet. She watches plenty cartoons and some videos which will only force-ripe her. Fortunately, unlike thousands of others, she has enough food, even though full of salt and sugar.

I met Biancy recently when her grandmother came to beg help to get her into a Catholic school this coming September. That school just got over 2,000 applications for less than 300 available places. Her chances are slim. “Do Rev, help har. She don’t have no madda and the fadda trying. Him will pay the school fee. Government say school is free but we know nuttin can go so”.

Biancy is heading to grow up illiterate or at best marginally literate. Her most likely hope is a low-paying call centre or, with her inherited looks, a menial hotel job: or to migrate. English is not her spoken language and her vocabulary is a few hundred words. Her first teacher has only a HEART Level Two certification and the early childhood curriculum is weak on socialisation, spirituality and life skills. Biancy’s state is that of some 20,000 Jamaican children in each year’s cohort. Go figure the compounded effect over the years.

CULPABLE WASTE

It is a sinful tragedy to waste human, and therefore divine, potential. This largely unattended problem of early childhood deficiency is what has spawned the gang culture, the diarrhoea of disillusionment and migration, the waste of ‘free’ education big money and the sick lie of the ‘5 in 4’ promise.

The Ministry of Education means well but, as things stand, has no capacity to effectively remediate. There will be no cadre of social workers, additional guidance counsellors, remedial literacy experts and Christian living preceptors, available to help Biancy and her type - for now. The best we can hope for is to creatively fill the ever-increasing number of vacancies in the existing establishment. And that is not enough.

ACT NOW!

I beg and plead – do what I and other ministers failed to do. Stop the automatic promotion of illiterate misfits. We need the verve, the commitment and the resources to stop postponing the transformation of early childhood and primary education. Let the spirit of the JAMAL of 1974 rise again in 2024 – this time in our schools.

We don’t need a year of tribal diatribes and deflecting responsibilities for one’s failures by pointing to the sins of the other side, as is this administration’s current playbook. We need a political campaign towards universal literacy where every primary school becomes like the one Biancy’s grandmother so desperately wants her to attend.

POST-PRIMARY

At the Grade 7 level, flip the script and ensure language, numeracy and social competence is sufficient to make high-school studies, STEM, robotics and all the easily mouthed frills, bear fruit. Deconstruct and repurpose HEART with its huge guaranteed budget.

Churches, come out of your gilded sanctuaries into the tabernacles of your schools. PNP, people say the tide is turning in your favour. But do you have a plan and the commitment to address Biancy’s predicament?

IT CAN BE DONE

It was so refreshing to attend the ground-breaking for the high school of the Christel House group of schools last week. All their students are drawn from the weakest quintile of the socio-economy. Christel House invests probably five times the spend per child elsewhere. This means that Biancy’s type will have the “chance of a good education” as Chairman Steadman Fuller put it. The same thing is happening for differently abled children at the Rockhouse Schools in Savanna-la-Mar. But where else?

Trouble is that good education, our only salvation, should not be left to chance or the admirable philanthropy of Crystal de Hann or the Rockhouse benefactors. It is our responsibility. This is what the nation must spend money effectively on. Nothing is more important. Nothing.

OF SHORTFALLS AND WASTE

The shortfall of revenue disclosed last week is the lesser of Nigel’s problems. The big one he does not dare to handle (and will the PNP?) is the waste of so much of what we do have. Notice also that it is the corporations who are not paying tax on time. We the consumers can’t postpone paying taxes like them. PAYE and GCT are up by more than 20 per cent. Is so is set! “Bubbling economy” - for who?

INFERIOR BUILDERS?

What a blow is being sent to the construction industry by the announcement last week that no longer will any local contractors have a part in the extensive and expensive infrastructure works in St Thomas. Is this an admission that only the Chinese are competent and honest enough to build roads? Isn’t this what used to happen in colonial days? Who were the local contractors, how were they chosen, and what were their failings? Silence … .

ON TOURISM

Listening to Minister Bartlett chronicle the flourishing of the tourism sector is very encouraging. Commendation is due him and all concerned. The direct tax take is impressive. But, how much of the rest of the big money stays in Jamaica? Is it our interest to know any more than we knew when slave labour, sugar, banana and bauxite earnings were (and are) enriching the metropoles?

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.