Needed: greater input to boost educational output

Hilary Robertson-Hickling, Contributor

As Bethlehem Moravian College celebrates its 150th anniversary, we are reminded of the importance of strong educational institutions to the development of this country and its people.

Bethlehem has trained hundreds of thousands of educators who have served this country as well as worked overseas with distinction.

The Moravian ethos, from its origins in Germany, provided strong Christian values, an ethos of excellence and a requirement for service. It was not government but a denomination, its ministers and adherents who helped to spread the work across the country and the world.

Instead of looking at vision, precept, practice, policy and measuring the outcomes, the discourse on educational institutions seems to be mired in a stream of excuses and an unending litany of woes.

Best and brightest

We cannot provide an excellent education on the cheap. We have to devise ways of attracting the most talented Jamaicans to the classroom. The countries which are excelling in the world, from our own region to a country as far as Finland, have found a way to attract some of their most able minds to the classroom.

The current strategies for training teachers are far from adequate. We need more university-trained teachers who have experienced much more than new curricula, as today's student at the primary and secondary level is likely to be in need of more as the home is providing less care and the other elements requisite for success. We need new and better partnerships with stakeholders, parents, past students, churches, members of the community, the media and employers. We cannot continue to embrace mediocrity andexpect excellence.

We are now faced with the challenge of preparing our large population of young people with the values, skills and attitudes necessary to prosper in a world filled with competition.

Not making the grade

On the sports news recently, Neville 'Bertis' Bell, the coach and commentator, noted that talent scouts had scholar-ships to offer footballers but too many of the would-be recruits just did not have the academic founda-tions to benefit from a scholarship to a tertiary institution, either locally or internationally.

Whether we become entertainers, sportsmen and women, educators, business persons, pro-fessionals and farmers, we need a much better level of education, as this is the foundation of a prosperous society where we deploy knowledge for development. Our young people and our county must compete in a complex world.

In order to strengthen the existing educational institutions, we require a revolution, a holistic, well-articulated policy which results in lifelong learning, where the learner and his/her family takes responsibility for learning as much as the institutions.

If ever there was a time that we needed strong institutions, that time is now.

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