According to the 2015 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Country Profile of Jamaica, more than 161,000 males and nearly 74,000 females over the age of 15 lack basic literacy skills, making Jamaica’s adult literacy rate to be 88.1 percent.
The published figure for 1999 was 79.9 percent, so in 16 years our official literacy rate improved significantly.
Many people believe that these numbers are too high!
The Jamaica Education Transformation Commission (JETC) report chaired by Professor Orlando Patterson stated that most students at the primary level could barely read and write. According to JETC, the 2019 Primary Exit Profile (PEP) exam revealed that 33 percent of students cannot read or barely do; 56 percent of students cannot, or barely know how to write; and 58 percent of students cannot, or can barely, find information on a topic.
These low levels of literacy – lower in the past – would have accumulated and accumulated over decades to produce scandalously low literacy rates.
After 60 years of political Independence, should we be content with so many Jamaican adults being functionally illiterate?
Some say our poor educational outcomes are a legacy of slavery, which our leaders have been unable to overcome and overcome after nearly 200 years. But what about other Caribbean nations with a similar history of slavery and colonialism? Are we regional leaders in education and educational achievement? Or the retards?
Trinidad and Tobago’s literacy rate for 2010 was 98.7 percent, down from 96.9 percent in 1990 and 95.0 percent in 1980.
The literacy rate in Barbados for 2014 was 99.6 percent. The literacy rate in Antigua and Barbuda for 2015 was 99.0 percent. For 2014, the literacy rate in Grenada was 98.6 percent, and for 1970 the literacy rate for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines was 95.6 percent.
No country can have a 100 percent literacy rate because there will always be a number of mentally challenged people who are unable to master that skill set. We must also bear in mind that, even if the education system is currently very effective, there will always be a number of elders overlooked by the colonial education system in their youth, reflected in the current figures.
DEEP INFICIENCY
But a literacy rate of 88 percent – even if this figure is correct (which is unlikely) – indicates profound inefficiency and inadequacy in Jamaica’s education system, which both of our major political parties, which have played musical chairs in the government during the last 80 years. or more years, are responsible.
And here I am not talking about performance in CXC/CSEC/CAPE exams or university enrollment which is what has the potential to grow our economy to bring prosperity to our nation; I am talking about the basic literacy skills that enable Jamaicans to read newspapers and reports on government corruption and malfeasance. Low literacy skills and educational attainment in the population keep incomes low and make large segments of the population dependent on government handouts and political favors. Our fight to preserve Jamaica’s natural environment and fight political corruption is made more difficult when large numbers of citizens must depend on audio and video sources for their information on important national issues. It is likely that a more educated electorate would not be so easily fooled by what passes for political demonstrations and campaigns.
The UNESCO data cited above is deeply disturbing because it confirms a deep gender bias against males in Jamaican education, long advanced by educators such as Professor Errol Miller. So-called “gender activists” – truly feminist activists – have long tried to convince us that women in Jamaica are oppressed in every way. The fact is that there are many more school places in traditional secondary schools for girls than for boys, which creates a gender imbalance in the university favoring females. Fixing our broken education system must have a reparations component to restore the gender imbalance against men built up over many decades.
SOLUTION
What’s the solution, you may ask? Far be it from me to advance better strategies to fix the problem than those contained in the 2004 Report on Education Reform by a team of experts led by Prof Rae Davis and the Jamaica Education Transformation Commission led by Orlando Patterson 2021 .
The question to be answered is why after 20 years are the vast majority of the recommendations of the Rae Davis Task Force still to be implemented? And why, after more than a year, has there been no visible political response to the Patterson-led commission? Both political parties are complicit in this failure to reform our dysfunctional education system. In whose interest is an education system that produces half-educated, uneducated and poorly skilled citizens?
Is it a disability? Or is it intentional?
When after Independence the Jamaican government borrowed millions from the World Bank to build secondary schools, it was a wonderful opportunity to increase the value of our human capital. At that time, to enter one of the few high schools, children had to “pass” the Common Entrance Exam; if they “failed”, they remained in schools of all ages. What the government did with the World Bank money was to build about 80 secondary schools; the children sent to those schools were those who failed to get into traditional high schools. No secondary schools were built to increase the number of quality secondary school places!
Clearly, there was no intention to increase the value of our human capital. Then who would cut canes, peel bananas or fetch coffee? Successive Jamaican governments have protected the labor supply of the same plantations on which our forefathers were enslaved. Not much has changed since then.
More education for our youth can make them wake up and reject our two backward political parties.
But wait? Isn’t that what is already happening, with the majority of Jamaicans refusing to vote for either party in the last election?
Maybe most of us are already awake!
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Send comments to [email protected]
