Pay teachers better, then hold bar higher

The seemingly never-ending public commentary on the inelegant and ill-timed utterances of veteran educators Doran Dixon and Paul Adams, two esteemed practitioners for whom I have the deepest regard, has largely derailed the relevant discourse on education and the urgent need for long-term reform.

I am of the firm view that where we are in education is not because of the ghastly "mongrel dawg" rhetoric but for the most part because we have paid our Jamaican teachers so badly for so many years that it embarrasses the intellect of the nation.

I harbour no grudge that the society, media practitioners, the Church, parents and other stakeholders are demanding their pound of flesh from teachers. In fact, they demand all they want from a corps of workers who have significant impact on human beings.

But I dare say, we, in this country, PAY for what we GET. The latest reportage from the National Education Inspectorate points to "unsatisfactory teaching support and leadership and management in 205 schools" it inspected in the just-concluded cycle. This is the most far-reaching competency index.

Many who have no experience are quick on the draw with their tongues and pens to berate teachers, claiming that they are non-performers because of dismal showings in the national exams administered under the National Assessment Programme as well as in the regionally administered CSEC.

HIGH BAR, LOW PAY

We pay for what we get. We hold the bar high, yet we pay our teachers so low and poorly. Yet some have made the most audacious proposal that we adopt the much-vaunted Finland education model.

We pay for what we get. Most of the people (shallow-thinking teacher-haters in my view) who are making the most radical proposals for education and teacher reform have never prepared a lesson plan, let alone taught a 35-minute-long single-session class of 45 rowdy, poorly socialised students, especially boys, with special-learning challenges at the third-form level in an underfunded and under-resourced secondary or primary school.

Some of these students can barely find money to buy lunch to keep their bodies nourished in order to keep alert and eager to progress in a school where a starting teacher gets a measly $47,000 monthly, with the Students' Loan Bureau breathing down their back to get their $30,000 or more every 30 days for five years.

PAY THEM HANDSOMELY

You pay for what you get. Pay our teachers handsomely and the country will not regret it in the long run. In my view, organisations like the Jamaica Teachers' Association should have been far more unflinching in their fight for better teacher remuneration and benefits which, in The Gleaner's wrongly placed view, are encroaching on the public purse, making heavy weather of the $2.4 billion the ministry sets aside to pay teachers on study leave and to pay locum tenens.

We taxpayers should be forking out more to master-train all teachers, pay them masterly salaries, hold them to masterly high standards, and boot non-performers from the classroom.

For the most part, poorly paid primary- and secondary-trained teachers in Jamaica are educating poorly socialised students who are from poorly resourced communities which are festooned with failing families - the ugly root of our social ills.

Let's stop being hypocrites and focus on the real issues. Days ago, I held a discussion with some of my students about my unreserved support for my school's decision to raise the pass mark to 70 per cent. They were fierce in their opposition but agreed that teachers in Jamaica were badly paid and they would never want that "kind of work" because it could not feed their families.

If we do not give this serious and rational reflection and pursue strategic and meaningful action and do away with this stupid "mongrel dawg" comment, the education landscape in Jamaica will be doomed - and our children with it.

Darien G. Henry is an educator and broadcast journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and teacherhenry@yahoo.com.