Book Review - How the churches built education in Jamaica

• Title: You Did it Unto Me
• Author: Sr Mary Bernadette Little RSM
• Reviewer: Rev Dr Ronald Thwaites

In an educational landscape now dominated by state institutions, it is easy to forget that the origin of more than half of our schools came through the vision and effort of many Christian denominations in Jamaica's history.

This is the background of the detailed and engaging narrative chronicled by Sr Bernadette Little RSM of the several schools founded by that Roman Catholic congregation of women, the Sisters of Mercy, over more than 100 years. Her title bespeaks the motivation of these brave women. "You did it unto me ...", echoing the Gospel's admonition to service.

The book tells one of the many stories of how the churches largely founded and sustained Jamaican education.

Most of the other traditional religious communions have their own chapters to write of this saga, which has made, and continues to make us who we are. In fact, students should be encouraged to respect and engender loyalty to their school by being exposed to its history.

You Did it unto Me describes the intense activity of Roman Catholic missionaries in 19th and 20th century Jamaica. Sr Bernadette's narrative is the intriguing story of Irish, Maltese and American women, with the charism of Mercy, who came to Jamaica, some never returning home to share life, faith and education with our people.

Fascinating, too, that they joined a band of Jamaican women from Antillean émigre families who originally had the dream of service to Jamaican children.

This is a story of courage and faithfulness enduring well over a century and maturing into stable, now thoroughly Jamaican educational institutions like the Alpha Group of Schools.

DARING

Daring is how to describe the various mission stations and school efforts all over Jamaica - many now defunct, some morphed into public schools - all filling a need to offer quality, rounded education to those who, most likely, would otherwise have been deprived.

No wonder parents still choose faith-based schools for their children.

Sr Bernadette represents the succeeding generation of the early missionaries who have thoroughly creolised the enterprise. Her research and writing sensitively and faithfully record the struggles, successes and traditions of the Mercy mission, most of it never known before.

Countless teachers and other school workers, whether because of religious faith or humanistic commitment continue to give their lives to education as Bernadette Little and her sisters have done.

But, like Sr Bernadette and the Mercy Sisters, the story they tell is never about self-appreciation, but about the growth and upliftment of generations of their students.

This book is not about nostalgia but about institution-building in education which Jamaica continues to need so badly. It should encourage a present generation, some of whom seem to forget what our recently-freed foreparents knew, that a sound, value-based education is the only legitimate base for upward mobility and national development.

The publication of You Did It Unto Me is thus a significant contribution to national memory and should be a stimulus for Jamaican churches, members of the diaspora, parents and the State, to let down our buckets once again into the wells of school development and sustenance.

In this time of weak positive family values, influence and a culture hostile to good manners and worthwhile behaviour, it is vital that all people of faith and goodwill as well as religious and civic organisations link with the school of their choice - to mentor, to strengthen, to image purpose and order.