On school-prison link - Principals in denial

Ian Boyne, Contributor

What's all this fuss from school principals about their schools being "maligned" because a research report shows that some criminals come from predominantly non-traditional high schools? Why do we have this obsession with denial, this hostility to inconvenient, though self-evident, truths?

We prefer soothing illusions to uncomfortable facts. Our wishful thinking leaves things hidden in plain sight. It was pathetic to witness high-school principals in such public displays of myth-making and blindsiding. If I am to be generous to the teachers, I would have to say their emotions overwhelmed their cognitive faculties. Otherwise, I would have to ascribe to them very poor comprehension skills. (Which seems to be a major deficiency of our school system, judging by most of the online comments I read in response to articles in this newspaper.)

Besides, it seemed clear to me by listening and reading those teachers interviewed that they had not read the report. Either they were irresponsible to be commenting so definitively without reading the report, or if they did read it, they failed utterly to understand what they read. Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) President Mark Nicely talked of "hypocrisy" on the part of the Ministry of Education to highlight this report while seeking to rebrand upgraded non-traditional schools.

PRODUCING INMATES

He accused the ministry of "labelling the schools as producing inmates". If you read the ministry paper or listened to the minister, you could get no such impression. How can we have serious discourse in this country if even our teachers refuse to read before engaging in dialogue? If Nicely had waited to read the report before speaking fully, or if he had just spoken tentatively, he would have dealt nicely with the issue. Instead, he spoke irrelevantly and demolished his own straw men.

'JTA slams report on prison-school link,' The Gleaner reported last Thursday. The report said Nicely "has described as faulty and hypocritical a government study revealing that most persons in penal facilities attended poor-performing schools". Now think for just a second: Did you really need this study to tell you that most criminals came from non-traditional high schools, if they went beyond primary or all-age school at all? Were you really shocked about the

names you heard apart from Jamaica College, the one traditional high school listed? (whose discipline we knew had declined before it went back on the upswing as a result of extraordinary leadership.)

What the dickens is Nicely
denying? What all of us already know anecdotally? We all knew that
poverty breeds crime and that most blue-collar criminals come from
inner-city communities and schools nearest those communities. Duh! We
didn't need a study to tell us that. What are these principals wailing
about? I don't know who these principals and the JTA president think
they are fooling. I empathise with them. But that does not mean we can
declare the emperor fully dressed when he is stark
naked.

The JTA president, according to an
Observer report, talked about the socio-economic
environment from which those students come, the need for social
intervention in those communities, etc. Indeed. But that's irrelevant.
The study nowhere makes the point that it is the schools themselves
which are producing criminals. The study does not locate the problem in
the schools. The study simply says that's where we can find and
intercept those most likely to commit crimes.
Commonsensical.

CORRECTIVE
INTERVENTIONS

They are not in church. Parents are not
at home to guide them (most students come from female-headed
households), and we can catch them in these school spaces. That is where
we must work with them. And the ministry sets out how it intends to use
that captive audience to instill certain values and to provide
corrective interventions. Excellent.

Teachers should
provide examples of deep analytical skills, rationality, and calm,
dispassionate intellectual discourse. We were not treated to that by
those who spoke last week. Just visceral, glandular, reflexive and
defensive responses. The premise of the ministry paper seems to be
captured in its second paragraph: "Every child goes to school at some
time. There is no other institution with such potential for positive
socialisation. As such, law-abiding habits ought to be expressly
connected with the school experience." The ministry paper lays no blame
on these schools, nor does the study itself.

Nicely
said he wanted to hear of Government's initiatives to deal with
inner-city communities "because it is all of these factors that are
manifesting themselves in the schools". There is absolutely nothing in
the study which says otherwise.

Nicely's point about
the report negatively affecting perceptions of the schools and even
parents' willingness to send their children there is on definitely on
target. Emotional intelligence perhaps should have led the ministry to
have deleted the names of the schools. Nicely and others are right that
publishing those names does nothing to motivate patents to send their
children there or to help students' self-esteem - vital for learning and
achievement - and might have set back the ministry's own efforts to
rebrand and market those schools.

But, for Heaven' s
sake, man, argue your case better than that! Don't blast the ministry
for what we all know: These non-traditional schools get the
lowest-performing students from the most disadvantaged socio-economic
backgrounds. Criminals largely come from those
schools!

PRIVATE RESOURCES

And those
schools are not adequately financed because they don't have the private
resources of schools like Campion, Immaculate, Wolmer's, Ardenne, etc.
Vauxhall principal Angela Chaplin's lament that "we are not producing
criminals" totally misses the point and shows she had not read the
report but was simply relying on media. (Thankfully, Nationwide's Emily
Crooks read extensive portions of the report to educate her listeners.)
All of the schools listed in the report need help (perhaps JC less so).
Let's concentrate on getting that help to them and hold the ministry to
that, rather than merely being concerned about image and reputation. The
study just confirmed what we all knew.

We love
fantasy in this country. Our religious propensity gives us a 'name it,
claim it' mentality. We declare this or that non-traditional school
'excellent' by faith. We 'speak things into being'! Well, it ain't so in
the real world. Wake up and smell the coffee. There are failing
schools, as Andrew Holness rightly declared, and was needlessly opposed
by Thwaites. The Ministry of Education must fix the problem, and the
teachers, rather than wasting their energy on smoke and mirrors, must
work with the ministry to do so.

Ian Boyne is a
veteran journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and
ianboyne1@yahoo.com.