The JTA's finest hour

Daniel Thwaites, Contributor

This column is 1,000 per cent behind the JTA in this bangarang with the education minister. Having a little math in Jamaica is a (class) privilege and looks to remain that way, with only 20 per cent passes last year.

Well, I got enough of it to count, particularly votes. And by my count, the JTA is well organised, single-focused, and has thousands of active voting members. Yuh can't show mi a 1,000lb lion-heart cat in the ring, and a likkle white mongrel in de corner, and waan mi back de dawg.

You might ask yourself: What about the 80 per cent of students who last year did NOT pass math? Yes, you might! But that's 'education'. We're talking 'politics'. My unsolicited (and unheeded) advice to Minister Thwaites is to avoid all confrontation with the JTA. As a rule, people bellow for 'change' but don't really want it. The status quo is so for a reason, because invested groups keep it that way.

So I'm with the JTA. Why should a teacher be forced to get qualified in the subject they're being paid to teach? Ridiculous! And why shouldn't a teacher get tenure after just one year on the job? Out of order! Why should the ministry be able to deploy teachers from empty schools to schools where the students actually go? Bright!

And why should teachers taking paid leave have to study something that benefits the school system and their students? Bright and feisty! And why should pay increases be attached to improved outcomes? Kiss mi neck! Dem tink dis a slavery days?

What the minister, taking a cue from Mr Seaga (who has endlessly championed it), is FAILING to understand is that if early childhood education was important, three-year-olds would have the right to vote. But I don't see them lining up to join any PNP group or JLP branch. So why pull resources away from registered and voting leave-takers and tertiary students to put towards that? It's absurd.

PAY TEACHERS MORE

Instead of increasing the early childhood allocation from three to 15 per cent of the education budget in one year, and wasting money on non-voters who can't even go to toilet by themselves, quit the rubbish about investing in the future and doing it right the first time and blah, blah, blah. Pay teachers more NOW! Be popular! Amen.

I say increase the leave benefit! After one year, teachers should take the second year off, fully paid, to pursue whatever study they wish, regardless of the taxpayer or the student. It would only be a slight improvement on the current situation, but every little bit counts. In fact, if the money can stretch, I'd even throw in an all-inclusive weekend for two inna 'Ochi'.

I even agreed when the JTA's St Elizabeth chapter issued a high-level communiqué to the JTA Politburo attacking the minister as a modern-day "backra massa ... acting in a manner as if he has assumed the mantle of kingship", which is JTA-speak for pointing out that he is a whitey, and 'de whitey betta nuh trubble we! A whoa!

We later learned that whitey was also a cocaine-addled mongrel. Honestly, the cocaine part ketch me by surprise. It just goes to show that you never really know a mongrel, eh!? Can't swear fi noo-baddy!

Let's be clear: I have also advised him strongly against being white. And this is not a 'today' advice - long, long time I've been harping on it.

Remember that, like everything else, race is now a matter of choice. Nuff bleaching cream and cake soap inna Jamdung. On the other hand, and racing (so to speak) in the other direction, white people can turn black as well. Journalist John Howard Griffin did it by taking Methoxsalen. But my God, man, this is Jamaica! Lay dung inna de sun an get a tan! Really, being of the Caucasian persuasion is a chosen disability, and the minister must stop trying to pass off the blame.

All the same, the timing of JTA's commentary on Minister Thwaites' colour disability was strange because the country was just busy congratulating Floyd Morrison - another disabled person - for his elevation to Senate president. I wouldn't expect anyone disagreeing with Floyd Morris to say, "Senator Morris, you are the blind leading the blind - yuh not looking at this issue correctly, and yuh failing to see the obvious." Floyd woulda start fi si red!

Once in the same high school that didn't teach me much math, I was losing a hot debate to another student who, luckily for me, happened to have many extra pounds. Being completely cornered and having nowhere else to go, I shot at him: "How yuh so FAT? I bet yuh can't even see yuh marriage kit sake a yuh belly!" Well, I didn't win the argument, and I did come across as an uncivil ignoramus, but it aroused a fair deal of merriment.

It's all about the company you keep. Parliament is full of undisclosed, perhaps undiagnosed, disabilities. Quite a few look kinda whitish. Another few suffer from Tourette syndrome, ejecting curse words and statements without any control. Growing numbers have ichthyosis, where the skin turns scaly and a man basically turns into a fish. Don't even start with counting the mentally challenged!

On the matter of mongrelisation, suppose it wasn't meant as an insult? Remember that even Mr Obama called himself a "mutt", which is the Yankee term for mongrel. It's a growing demographic.

Plus, I (and maybe Doran Dixon?) have always harboured immense admiration for the Jamaican mongrel as a hardy, disease-resistant creature, capable of hunting, foraging and sustaining itself through adversity. While the black and brown dawgs are more numerous, I've noticed white varieties well integrated in the packs. They're even known to interbreed and produce a particularly rugged (and handsome) stock - that struggles with math. I'm guessing the actual street mongrels are less colour-obsessed than the JTA Subcommittee for Racial Purity, but that's because they haven't been to Mico's social sciences department!

President Clayton Hall lapsed by cheering enthusiastically from the parliamentary gallery, but that was before draculaic Paul Adams, and self-described big pussy(cat) Doran Dixon 'draped' him up to remind him that regardless of logic or sense, or even previously agreeing to the content, his job is to riot for his constituency. That constituency does not include students. Or parents. Or taxpayers. Or business. Or even all the teachers.

So this column supports the JTA in this its finest hour. As noticed by The Gleaner in a number of searing editorials, it has completed the case for root, stem and branch reform of its own stranglehold on education policy better than any puss, dawg, minister, commentator, or frustrated parent could ever have done.

Daniel Thwaites, son of Education Minister Ronald Thwaites, is a partner of Thwaites Law Firm in Jamaica, and Thwaites, Lundgren & D'Arcy in New York. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.