Proposals for Education Ministry and System in Jamaica

Document | Article: Proposals for Education Ministry and System in Jamaica

For a long time the media and most thinks have purported the idea that we live in the information age. We live an age where cell phones and gadgetry pervade all walks of life. Computers and the internet are constantly creeping into our lives. Sociologists will contend that the family is the primary agent of socialization. But most of know and will very well contend that it is the TV. Especially in an age where the family is in crisis and in the third world where the core notion of family lives in a state of flux, the television and cable have taken prominence.

Folklore, Anansy and the oral tradition have been usurped by Sponge Bob, Dora and Hannah Montana. With absentee or limited supervision parenting rampant and the television controlling brain space and time at all times and any given hour, whilst the education system will only have them for 6 to 7 out of 24 hours much of which will be ruled by televisions and corner time no wonder we are unable to transmit and pass on the education, knowledge and morals we need to.

Mister Minister on the heels of your party’s message of change and changing the course, the courses and course of the education system has changed little. At this crucial moment in history the education system with all its short comings are in need of radical overhaul and requires new approaches and revolutionary thought. We need to design a curriculum to stimulate the development of analytical skills. The thing I care most about is that we focus not on the specific set of tools, but on the ability to “learn and apply a current tool set”.

The truth is that we constantly acquire and discard sets of tools. So we should not be fixated on one specific set of tools for all of life. Society, technology and the times change so fast that any fact, process or algorithm we learn at school is by definition not going to be useful for any length of time. The real skills that serve us are the ability to adapt, learn, apply the products of that learning, and participate in the discussions and challenges of the day. That doesn’t mean that facts are useless, or that specific tools don’t matter. Unless you can demonstrate an ability to absorb and apply both, fast, you haven’t actually gained the knack of becoming effective in a given environment.

How can we better communicate with them?

The traditional talk and chalk won’t work with this generation. Our communication style is structured, yet they want freedom. The old order stresses learning, they like experiencing. We react, they relate. We focus on the individual, while they are socially driven. Here are four essentials to consider when engaging with youth today:

Real:

Not only must our communication style be credible, but we must be also. They don’t expect us to know all about their lifestyle, nor do they want us to embrace their culture. They are simply seeking understanding, and respect. If our communication has a hidden agenda, or we are less than transparent, it will be seen. This generation can sniff a phoney from a long distance.

Raw:

Today’s youth have access to the most advanced technology, movie special effects, and video games with which we can never compete. But the good news is that they are not impacted by slick presentations. They don’t want a rehearsed talk, or a manufactured spiel. The more spontaneous and interactive we are in the classroom, the less intimidated, and more open they will be.

Relevant:

Obviously what we are communicating has to fall within their area of interest. But the style, as well as the content of our message must be relevant to a generation who are visually educated and entertained. There is no point in giving music to a friend on a cassette tape if they only have a CD player, or on CD if they only use MP3. Similarly we must research in the most appropriate format for those we are reaching. So in understanding the communication styles of our target cohort we will be better equipped to reach them.

Relational:

There is an old and true saying in education circles: “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care!” Communicating to this generation requires openness, vulnerability, and genuine interest in those we are trying to teach, and above all else, understanding. The more relaxed the environment, and the more socially conducive to discussions; the better will be the quality of the learning.

The Issue of Text Books and Learning Materials

Today, many children and individuals have MP3 Players, I-Pods, Smart-phones, computers, DVDs and DVD players, Radios and Televisions. Lots of in Jamaica are in some way linked and have some access to the various media. Today, I believe it is a tragedy that books, audio-books, tutorials and classes and the entire Jamaican and Caribbean syllabus are not posted online in PDF on accessible sites, material and content for our youths’ education should already be on their cell phones, in their DVD players, on YouTube.

It is an even more horrendous thought that every entrepreneur with a two-bit dream of becoming a media mogul can implement far reaching cable stations, whilst JIS is relegated to a time slot on TVJ, instead of being a Caribbean BBC, the U.S. has PBS and as a matter of fact the BBC has managed to pervade the island. We have an A.M. Band going to waste and yet I have seen people in small communities with their small means and incomes set up small radio stations and internet radio stations, why is JIS being broadcast, why aren’t we making full use of all the channels and vectors we have that can be used to bombard people with sensible, useful, practical, culturally relevant information.

I have lived to see middle-aged women become interior decorators watching HGTV and seen nearly illiterate dog lovers in the garrison swear they are dog trainers after a few episodes of dog whisperer on Discovery channel. In this vein I do believe if we have relevant content people will be willing to watch it. If you build it they will come. I do believe we have a wealth of content that can be drawn from, old documentaries from JBC and such. More can be commissioned, after all this is the era of YouTube movie directors, Open Source content and citizen journalism.

I am convinced the government has been lacklustre in pursuing technologies such as Linux, Open Source and notions such as FOSS. Brazil, Mexico and India are already using these to bring technology more cheaply to their nation. There are also revolutionary methods of implementing technology in the class room all throughout the Americas.

Also Mr. Holness I am sure you will probably have played dominoes with illiterate people as I have and been beaten by people who have never learnt primary school mathematics, which is proof that the education is disconnected from the everyday realities we face. Someone must have the potential to learn math if he can grasp the process of deduction and numerical elimination it takes to play domino well. We live in the Caribbean and still don’t learn enough about where we live. Why isn’t there our national geographic?

The other day I had to watch on foreign news that lizards that do morning exercises had been discovered in Jamaica. Lots of municipalities and small nation states have set up their own, local intranet that can provide the general populace with basic informational resources, like wikis and encyclopaedias and educational material. Today it is the nation’s own fault we are falling behind in education.

The government must become the primary agent of socialization, as parents and the family are lagging. If we are to grow a nation we need to grow people. We need our human resource to grow and develop. Technology, TV, internet, cell phones and the Radio are the way to reach them.

A Final Word:

The quality outcome of our education system is dependent on our understanding of the youth. Once we have a foundational grasp of their characteristics, communication styles, and social attitudes, we will be well equipped to effectively impact this enormous and emerging generation.

We want to create a curriculum that can:

Be self taught, peer mentored, and effectively evaluated without expert supervision.

Provide tools for analysis that will be general useful across the range of disciplines being taught at any given age.

Be an exercise machine for analysis, process and synthesis.

The idea is not that children learn tools they use for the rest of their lives. That’s not realistic. I don’t use any specific theorems or other mathematics constructs from school today. They should learn tools which they use at school to develop a general ability to learn tools. That general ability – to break a complex problem into pieces, identify familiar patterns in the pieces, solve them using existing tools, and synthesise the results into a view or answer… that’s the skill of analysis, and that’s what we need to ensure the youth graduate with.

Yannick Nesta Pessoa

#education #youth #jamaica #revolution #change #governement #governance 

Montego Bay - City of Tomorrow: Building a Sustainable City

Sun. Soil. Soul. Society.

The Schematics for a Sustainable City: The Montego Bay Ecopolis

We are losing connection with the soil. We need to understand the connection between soil, soul and society and drop ego in favour of eco!~Satish Kumar

"A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars, it's where the rich ride public transportation."~ Gustavo Petro (Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia)

The social big bang that was the start of the 21 century saw the acceleration of the pace of human life beyond anything people of previous centuries could have imagined. Today there is a crisis of haste and of a lack of hospitality in the world and its cities.

The tourist capital Montego Bay, is a typical 2nd city: vast, pulsating, noisy and full of smoke and exhaust fumes. But it is atypical in many many ways. A beautiful city couched and cocooned in a bay... city by the sea, tourist hub, cultural hub, growing, strategically located in the Caribbean, resting on an energy lay line, cultural axis, business crux of the west... in many ways too, Montego Bay is the apotheosis of urban and rural life: rustic yet metropolitan and cosmopolitan, "country-fy and farrin-ish!" "If yuh naah mean'

This is the setting in which new building concepts, IT solutions, the Freezone's continued expansion, the Indigenous Rastafari Village, Academia in the form of Utech West and UWI western Campus, lifestyle solutions, energy concepts, a new Caribbean ecological, local, indigenous way of life can emerge: a new and re-newed peoples, with new objectives, new domiciles and modus operandi. A mode of operation that can save energy as well as avert looming oil and energy crises (research Peak Oil), cut pollution, solve food security issues and make living in the city, this city, our city a more pleasant experience, culturally, aesthetically, intellectually, socially and otherwise.

After seeing several conferences and conventions on alternative energy being held in Montego Bay, we can realize sustainability and sustainable development are becoming a little more than just buzzwords, maybe they are actually manifesting... actualizing as it were, possibly as a response to poverty, inflation, awakening consciousnesses to the social crises ahead. But what is sustainability and sustainable development?

Wikipedia defines: Sustainable development as "an organizing principle for human life on a finite planet. It posits a desirable future state for human societies in which living conditions and resource-use meet human needs without undermining the sustainability of natural systems and the environment, so that future generations may also meet their needs."

Achieving sustainability is not that far-fetched as our neighbours, Cuba according to data presented to the United Nations, was the only nation in the world in 2006 that met the World Wide Fund for Nature's definition of sustainable development, with an ecological footprint of less than 1.8 hectares per capita, 1.5 hectares, and a Human Development Index of over 0.8, 0.855.

Investigating MoBay's space development cross the span of quarter century, one realizes the explanation behind this transformation. Walking down Church Street to see the St. James church history. Owing to the lack of to cheap and accessible housing solutions, residents, denizens and citizens "unofficially" settle and squat in and near the center of MoBay. They could live in better places out of town, but instead suffer a significant loss in revenue since the trip to downtown by taxi is very expensive compounded by the lack of a robust and diversified public transport system. In MoBay, both middle-class families residing in settlement or "scheme" houses in the suburbs, as well as those upper-class families whose homes are within gated communities travel to downtown by taxi or private vehicle. We can see that development of the city has been ad-hoc and in sporadic growth spurts, with no great over arching vision that spans decades or centuries, just the whim and will of whichever political directorate. So how do we dream a dream of betterment and better development.


GREEN DREAMS

The dream of a green Eden like future has been long in the minds of Rastafari elders and a part of the Rastafari ethos and cosmology since its inception. The green Eden seems also a part of the basic religious or spiritual memory of mankind. The promise of a green future brings forward the hope of halting and altering the weathered gray concrete of the streets and lanes and the crumbling down brown blocks of downtown into a lush and beautiful garden mixing steel towers and tree-filled parks teeming with life.

The Dream is of a Montegonian Ecopolis calling out to us from the future, where the Montego River will be a blue river filled with sail boats meets and greeting the rainbow of colors of humanity walking in the middle of farm stalls and kiosks,  whilst craft shops of citizens whose work reflect the rich variety of its population. A Montegonian Ecopolis with a vibrant populace, where the citizenry once again takes back the design of their city and model their neighborhoods, schools, businesses,  civic organizations, and communities of potential and creative imagination, of multi-cultural customs and traditions, and of love and tolerance.

Finding the resources to build a city beyond fear and intolerance, beyond mistrust and prejudice  The hope of a Montegonian Ecopolis shines like a beacon of hope to its neighboring cities in the island and cities across the Caribbean, casting a light to the state, the nation, the region and the world symbolizing the dawn of a new day in our relations with ourselves, with others and with our environment. In a space where men and women and children of all colors and ethnic traditions build that new city brick by brick and block by block, the promise of yesteryear's Montego Bay and the realities of the present meet the possibilities of the future.

In this new and grand ecological vision of Montego Bay, a baby can smile and a flower can grow uncompromised, where human potential and the human spirit thrives and blossoms. A habitable place free of molestation and frustration. There are solar generators quietly hum, producing power to run machines and to light homes. Where eco-farmers grow food and sustainable fishermen catch fish to feed its populations and to sell their surplus to a wider market. There will be the new professionals and specialists and workers of the new information and sharing economy who are educated in the requirements of the increasingly decentralized workplace of the new millennium. Where, the plenitude of cultural traditions of racial and ethnic sub-communities mutually enrich one another in a new ecology of diverse popular culture spanning street theater and alternative film and Internet entertainment and ever multiplying digital television stations produced locally and around the world. Where, local citizens meet and petition their representatives in person, on the Web, or in public squares, pressing their demands and dissatisfactions in every forum and thus restoring some the closeness and intimacy of old-style town democracy.

The Montego Bay Ecopolis is both far away and very near. It is a place we can call home, if we make it so, if we vision it so, if we dream it so.

CITIES AROUND THE WORLD

Local governments worldwide are working to protect the environment. The concept that is green cities aims to reduce energy usage and the various forms of pollution in new and creative ways. Such efforts by city governments not only help reverse the effects of climate change. They also help governments save large amounts of money on energy costs. And, cities that are leaders in this green movement set a good example to their citizens about the importance of environmental issues.

  A new approach to the planning of cities and calls for the various professions which play a part in the process of urban renewal – city planners, architects and regeneration consultants – to be bound by new institutions and a collective commitment to the better design of cities. to harness principles of liveability and diversity in the way urban space is designed and managed.

A few points on what needs to be engendered in the Eco-Mobay:

Quality architecture and urban design

• Emphasis on beauty, aesthetics, human comfort, and creating a sense of place; 
• Special placement of civic uses and sites within community. 
• Human scale architecture: beautiful surroundings nourish the human spirit

Smart transportation

• A network of high-quality roads connecting cities, towns, and neighborhoods together
• Pedestrian-friendly design that encourages a greater use of bicycles, rollerblades, scooters, and walking as daily transportation

Sustainability

• Minimal environmental impact of development and its operations
• Eco-friendly technologies, respect for ecology and value of natural systems
• Energy efficiency
• Less use of finite fuels
• More local production
• More walking, less driving

It time we emphasize Montego Bay as one community, an eco-community in the heart of future planning rather than short-term commercialism dictated by the quick take-up of leases. It is time to value the input of the community in participatory planning structures; this MUST be another core ideal of the modern-day city. Also we need to examine and to stress the "psychogeographic" significance of our surroundings. This analysis dictates that there is a direct correlation between the quality of the public realm and the actions of the individual, with its attendant ramifications for other aspects of social policy. 

This vision of an eco city, and eco-Mobay is aimed at those who wish to listen to the rhythm of their own lives,and possibly adjust it.”

Check Out this Amazing Video!

The Dream of The Montego Bay Ecopolis has already begun to spring to life: Check out this link! 

Highland House Farms and Founder of the One Love Learning Foundation

QUEEN IFRICA - FREEDOM OF SPEECH - PENTHOUSE RECORDS

Click the link below to check out Ifrica's lyrical response to all the flack she is getting for speaking her mind!

QUEEN IFRICA - FREEDOM OF SPEECH -

Top 20 Schools List: Mt. Alvernia vs Mobay High!

The List of top 20 schools in Jamaica is officially out it seems and the figures are quite intriguing to say the least...

Hmmm Mt. Alvernia surpasses Mobay High... Historic if not monumental...

Well as back-to-school time rolls around... one thing I am certain of is this... Mt. Alvernia girls gonna be walking this September with an academic swagg like no other...

Mrs. Cherian will undoubtedly be beaming!!!

Only Westwood from made it into the top 10 from the west, which has shook up teachers and academics out west, for as much as Westwood has a long track record of success, it is still overlooked.

This list has spark the expected Facebook comment and thread wars of MBH vs MHS, Barbra Grayhounds vs Sister White Fowls as youth in my times referred to it.

Hats off to Mt. Alvernia... 'cause I remember back in the day when youths at Cornwall had it that Alvernia a fi dunce or screbbeh screbbeh girls and Mobay High is where you go hunting for high calibre... but as a young gallis... I never prescribed to such a philosophy or doctrine... I and I seek and finds the brightest and the hottest any where dem deh! Also... mi 'member when mi walk over the hill and pass Alvernia in the mornings and all those voices a mystery to me Yannick! Yannick! Yannick... man a Alvernia fuss tun mi inna mega star so... big up Alvernia a thousand times!

But one has to ask... what of Cornwall College... Bastion by the Sea! Disce Aut Discede!

Errol Watts of the "Cornwall College Alumni" FaceBook page posited the following arguments in Cornwall's defense for not being on the list...

"Notwithstanding the fact that CC has to continue to strive for excellence at all times, there are extraneous circumstances that might have been overlooked when analyzing the results. For example, CC does not hold-back any students from sitting the exams; while, other schools are known to submit only their best students that they think will have a chance to pass. We have an 85% (CSEC), and 93% (CAPE) average. We have one of, if not, the largest 6th Form Student Body in the country (130). And, to get into our 6th Form, you need to have 6 passes in grades 1, and 2. You might have noticed that the results offered, included English and Maths; however, we have one of (if not ) the best Physics, and Chemistry programs in the country. We have 30 distinctions at unit 1 and 2, including 50% in Physics and Chemistry. Presently, 15 out of the 138 students enrolled in Medicine at UWI, are from CC, the highest from one school in Jamaica. This year, we have 190 students applying to attend our 6th Form, which has a capacity for approx. 130. Finally, the number one student overall in the country,for the recent grade 6 achievement test, Mark Brown, and the top student from the county of Cornwall, Devin McIntosh, will be attending CC. Yes, we need to improve our English and Maths scores, but all is not lost. SATIS VERBORUM! CC...CC...CC!"

Well he has a point about Cornwall's academic past and current successes... but one has to ask... If Cornwall's admin is running away nobody and not regulating the exam sitting process and everybody sit exam etc... then Disce Aut Discede is a farce... "Learn or Leave" becomes a myth!

Aaaaaaaaaaanywaaaaayzzzzzzz...

As the back-to-school debacle begins, parents and children will no doubt begin the battle of the brands... kids want Clarks and Jansports... straight, close fitted khaki pants vs tailor made or home made and no name bought at Bashco or Market shoes etc etc etc...

I wonder what the literature syllabus is like now for 7th graders/1st formers... aah the good old days of Sprat Morrison!