Coming sunday
Published:Friday | October 14, 2011 | 12:00 AM
IMF bandwagon
In Focus columnist Ian Boyne takes his knife to the sacred cow called the IMF and reduces it to beef. Ian's advice: Resist the Fund's negative programmes.
"IMF policies have harmed not just the poor and marginalised but have set back development and have been counterproductive. ... The IMF is fallible and it has no monopoly on sound economic thought. We should not be mesmerised by IMF technocrats."
Math misery
Why do Jamaican students generally perform so badly at mathematics? According to Dr Tamika Benjamin in Public Affairs, one of the reasons is that many math teachers aren't competent in the subject.
"Many of the teachers currently deployed to the system lack the levels of mastery needed to support meaningful learning. As a result, their students are not exposed to instruction which will support them mastering foundation mathematics ideas."