Gordon Robinson | A generation irredeemably lost

This is the third column in my education trilogy.

We began with a close look at the new Teacher Council Bill and then an even closer look at the Patterson Commission Report. We found a metastasised cancer of mis-education; disrespect and scorn for the formal system by many parents and students; and deeply rooted resistance to change entrenched by decades of a business-as-usual approach to curricula and teaching.

There’s no quick cure for this cancer and no prospect of remission in time for the next election or the one after that. So, naturally, local politics, a perennial plodder of the path of least resistance, doesn’t seem inclined to waste political capital on radical change.

The Teacher Council Bill, a first step on the journey to a new system of education for life instead of to pass exams, is coming under fire from vested interests and Government is already sounding like a bicycle chain on back-pedal.

Politics must acknowledge we’ve been heading towards educational Armageddon for decades.

Long ago, I told the story of a male and female student in the mid-1990s “caught” by a conductress, in full school uniforms, having sex at the back of a school bus. When the conductress admonished them, the female student replied “gwey, gal, yu jus’ jealous because you nah get none!”

Even before then, teachers had become increasingly vulnerable to physical attack from students. By the turn of the millennium, lethal weapons were regularly taken to school by students and, inexorably, as students were encouraged to be undisciplined about school rules they didn’t like (or considered unfair), these weapons were used on teachers and students alike.

The essential lesson to be learned at school is that the best path to success is through discipline, innovation and hard work. But this has been gradually undermined by too many parents defying any adverse disciplinary action against their children and a laissez-faire attitude among liberal society that expects school uniforms needn’t be uniform or dress/grooming codes they don’t like can be ignored. So our children have learned, at home and at school, that rules considered unfair or just inconvenient can be disobeyed with impunity, instead of being taught, by reasoned argument or peaceful protest, how to agitate for unfair rules to be changed.

MUCH OF THE BLAME

Teachers and school administrators must accept much of the blame for undisciplined graduates. When silly hair rules are breached, schools react stupidly by locking students out. The punishment for breaching school rules (however foolish) should be more school not less. I’ve yet to meet the student who wouldn’t prefer to be out of school than in. So locking students out only encourages them to breach more rules as they are assured another holiday to play video games or worse.

Detentions with enforced study; extra work (like cleaning classrooms or bathrooms); or demerits that eventually go on your final transcript have far more deterrent value than sending students “home”.

So decades of catch-as-catch-can education offered by mostly underqualified and some underperforming teachers to a student population whose information access, and thus proclivity for perversion, has escalated rapidly over 30+ years while systems of teaching stagnated has landed us in the educational morass so precisely described in the Patterson Report.

There’s no better example of the desperate educational times than a video currently making the rounds on what I call Rerun (work it out; it’s comic) showing a teacher and student in uniform (no school crest) engaged in a physical brawl inside a classroom.

It’s bad.

The back story (which I have from two independent sources) is sensational enough but I won’t go into it for reasons that include its irrelevance to the substantive issue. But the entire fiasco emphasises we do NOT have anything resembling education across the board in Jamaica, and those minority of students who succeed do so in spite of the system. The Gleaner reported that, upon receiving an incident report, the principal fainted and had to be rushed to hospital.

What. Have. We. Become?

As poorly as that student behaved and as pressurised as teaching must be at that school, I maintain a properly trained or experienced (especially in conflict resolution) teacher wouldn’t have allowed the incident to escalate. But how can I blame a teacher for reacting instinctively when across society stressed-out public servants, including police, live in daily fear of their lives, so react violently to the mildest provocation?

So, Kingston, we have a problem! It can’t be politicked away nor solved on any political timetable. The key ingredient in the solution to this deeply entrenched predicament is a new approach to education. Jamaica can’t afford this Einsteinian lunacy.

How can we complain about a shortage of skilled workers when we’ve been churning out doctors, lawyers and economists by the thousands while condemning those whose talents lie in mechanics, plumbing, carpentry or masonry to be called dunces and treated as second-class citizens?

SCHOOLS ARE TEACHERS NOT BUILDINGS

We must start training teachers (import skilled teacher trainers if necessary) to recognise different talents; provide education for life for every student; start differentiating learning disabilities from learning incapacities; stop keeping back students because they can’t fathom mathematics or science; and stop making differently-abled students feel like failures. Schools are teachers NOT buildings.

On May 26, 2013, I wrote about Finland’s education revolution:

“Finnish teachers [are] selected from among the top 10 per cent of tertiary graduates … . Many who apply are rejected. Finnish teachers’ starting salaries are lower than in US, but Finnish high-school teachers with 15 years’ experience make 102 per cent of what other college graduates make. In Finland, experienced teachers are the highest-paid professionals in the land.

Forty years ago, with Finland in a fiscal mess, its government took a conscious decision that the transformation of its education system would be THE key propellant of the country’s economic recovery. Finland decided education first and budgeted accordingly. Finnish students take only one mandatory standardised test, at age 16. No grade four test. No grade six torture chamber. No competition for places in ‘elite’ schools. No calling children ‘failures’ because governments failed them. Just teaching every child.

The Finnish mission is to prepare children for life. The motto is, ‘Whatever it takes’. Finland’s success wasn’t recognised until 2000 when the first Programme for International Student Assessment results revealed Finnish youth to be the best readers in the world. By 2003, Finland was first in math. By 2006, Finland was first of 57 countries in science. In 2009, Finland came second in science; third in reading; sixth in math. The US finished 25th in math; 17th in science; 12th in reading. To achieve these results, Finland spends 30 per cent less per student than US. Finnish funds are spent on teaching not testing.

The following story of the Finnish way overcoming the challenge of one backward child is revealing. In a September 2011 article published in The Smithsonian magazine titled ‘Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful?’, Lyn Nell Hancock wrote:

‘... At Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, ... west of Helsinki, ... Kari Louhivuori, a veteran teacher and the school’s principal, decided to try something extreme by Finnish standards. One of his sixth-grade students, a Kosovo-Albanian boy, had drifted far off the learning grid, resisting his teacher’s best efforts. The school’s team of special educators (including a social worker, nurse and psychologist) convinced Louhivuori that laziness wasn’t to blame. So he decided to hold the boy back a year, a measure so rare in Finland it’s practically obsolete ... .

‘I took Besart on that year as my private student,’ Louhivuori told me ... . When Besart wasn’t studying science, geography and math, he was parked next to Louhivuori’s desk at the front of his class ..., cracking open books from a tall stack, slowly reading one, then another, then devouring them by the dozens. By [year end], the son of Kosovo war refugees had conquered his adopted country’s vowel-rich language and arrived at the realisation he could, in fact, LEARN.

Years later, a 20-year-old Besart showed up at Kirkkojarvi’s Christmas party with a bottle of Cognac and a big grin. ‘You helped me,’ he told his former teacher. Besart had opened his own car-repair firm and a cleaning company. ‘No big fuss,’ Louhivuori told me. ‘This is what we do every day: prepare kids for life’.”

It’s time to admit this generation of students is irredeemably lost. We must concentrate on early childhood education. The plan must be to produce a new, better educated and socialised cohort for primary school (by which time education there would be upgraded to suit students’ instead of teachers’ needs).

By the time this new generation reaches secondary and tertiary institutions, they, too, should’ve been retrofitted to deliver education for life.

Peace and Love!

- Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com