Ronald Thwaites | Tale of two Jamaicas

The two mature ladies were conversing in the inner-city school yard. Then they were approached by two bright, sassy 14-year-olds girls. “Miss, you alright? Who you is, a teacher”? “ No” was the reply. “ You fava principal”? “No, I’m a Board Chair” was the attempt by one of the elderly ladies to explain herself. “What name so Miss”? was the puzzled follow-up.

Then the other girl had her turn. “Miss, you pretty”! After a little pause and whispering between themselves: “you could buy wi one a dem cream mek wi look bright like you?

There followed some banter about what makes a woman attractive which revealed some vastly contrasting standards about the allurement of ‘tall hair’ versus the natural hair styles of the older women. There was also curiosity about the prevailing fashions of “ring in yu nose-hole whey mek you fava cow; wire in a yu mouth mek yu cyant eat”, and “eye-lash mek yu face cyant wash”.

SUMMER SCHOOL

This was happening after one summer school session where students who had been chronically absent during the term and those who simply needed more attention than was possible even in a class of only 25, could come for four weeks and receive individual tutoring from volunteers – old and young.

This exercise added 20 more days of food, fun and learning to the paltry but stubbornly and lazily defended 190 days prescribed by the colonial-inspired Education Code. It makes all the difference. No sensible parent, no sensible nation is going to allow children to idle and atrophy, gazing into unsupervised screens for eight weeks of summer vacation.

“ Miss, summer school keep on Friday too”? Yes, every day counts!

DIFFERENT WORLDS

The ladies conversation continued. “ Miss, your pickney come a dis school or you sen her a one good school”? “No, my children are all grown up and married now”. Another pause. “So Miss, you married”? “Yes, both of us ladies have been married for more than fifty years but this lady’s husband has died.

Surprise on the girls’ faces. “Wha Miss, yu married to one man fi so much years”? Then hear the bolder one in disbelief. “ Den a ongle one man yu mek breed yu”?

“Zass Crise”! Exclaimed the other, rolling her eyes. Then the first one again. “Miss, dat no boring? You neva have no feelings fi check a nex guy? Mi could neva do dat…even if him did give mi t’ings”.

CULTURE

Context fashions culture which in turn influence values and behaviour. Those girls are innocent and honest. In a character building session, most of the students, in the midst of puberty, expressed the norms of their community: few if any nuclear families, extended families broken by urbanization, migration, selfishness and grinding poverty. I once met a 22 year old grandmother.

For the girls, hope of meeting a nice guy, better, but not necessarily if he isn’t married and has a visa but essential that he be a “driver”: resigned at the prospect of raising children on their own.

For the boys, doubt about school qualifications, hoping to become “police, solja or security guard”. The brighter ones want to run a taxi and/or work with cement company or on the port. “Hey Sar, good mawnin, yu can help me get one Open PPV”?

AVOIDING THE BASICS

So talk all you want about Artificial Intelligence and STEM. These kids don’t have the fundamentals of learning and orderly Jamaican life. They are bright, loved by God and have the capacity to make or break this 63 year old nation. Concentrating resources on the minority who excel will only exacerbate the frightening and suicidal inequality of this land.

You can break ground until the hardware stores run out of shovels, cut endless ribbons and prance at non-stop parties, there will never be fewer guns, less corruption, more progress or prosperity (or whatever name you baptise your pipe-dream) unless we settle on a philosophy, attendant values and a political economy which focuses entirely on the common good.

EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING

Those girls and boys whose conversation and aspirations I have related, deserve to be educated and incentivized to be moral, productive citizens capable of playing their indispensable part in realizing the almost forgotten 2030 Vision.

Instead we are going into an election where guns talk, official killing is thought virtuous, money is not earned so much as scammed, critical leadership smells of Olint, CashPlus and Stocks & Securities and the discordant relationship between words and achievements produce cynicism instead of encouragement.

HOPE!

A group of Campion College 6th Formers gave their time to volunteer at the summer school I mentioned. They came every day, ate the same food, used the same squalid toilets which the ministry promised to fix last October and patiently bonded with young strangers speaking a significantly different language, reflecting distinct lifestyles and prospects.

Despite all this, friendships were formed, expressions of thanks and encouragement were exchanged and real help noted to advance academic performance. Both sets of young people were enriched.

This is what the twinning of schools is supposed to mean. Not a matter of condescending charity from the privileged to the poor but an exercise of justice, capacity meeting need, experience and humane living and learning expanded.

There is Balm in Gilead. There is so much we can achieve if we stopped competing over who will be first in the kingdom and instead cooperated to outdo each other so that everyone can achieve the fundamentals of the abundant life to which our Saviour’s Way, Truth and Life beckons.

LAST LICK

Is the Bank of Jamaica’s weekly sterilizing of money, capital which should be available for investment and development, ostensibly to contain inflation, not similar to the “remedy” of leeching in pre-modern medicine? Drawing a sick person’s life-blood in a vain attempt to cure them, always resulted in weakness and death. Isn’t that what is happening to us now?

The daily airplanes importing everything from toilet paper, groceries and corpses, leave Jamaica empty because we tie our own feet triumphantly with regulation and other disincentives to export. Where is the resolve to change that?

We need a spiritual and common sense “bath”.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com