Dear Editor,
Once a year there is much euphoria and excitement on the part of those who have done well at the Grade Six Assessments. This is all well and good, never mind the one per cent who have excellent results coming from the private schools. This no doubt augurs well for private schools and will send many rushing to them, which by the way are tailor made for rich folks who have welcomed them with open arms. Some poor families might very well decide to do as in times of yore, where at the expense of the other siblings they single out the one who seems to have an academic propensity to be given the benefit of private tuition ‒ all the eggs in one basket. Definitely private schools are in vogue. Any way one turns it, the system favours the privileged and the wealthy; poor folks are always the vulnerable ones. This can be seen in past results (2012-13) where a staggeringly high number of students from poor homes did poorly as against those from wealthy homes, and only schools from four or five of our ten regions achieved good results. This time around the situation is no better; ordinary working-class children as always will be left behind.
Here is a very troubling observation made by well-known educator Clarence Perry: “It would appear that the percentage of illiterates produced by our school system increases each year, this phenomenon impoverishes the social environment, as many of these illiterates become deviants and maladjusted parents. In turn the upbringing of their numerous offspring is affected by poor parenting skills, and a bad situation is made worse as a vicious cycle of a downward trend is set in motion [and] the cycle continues; the class division spreads in proportion to various vices and crimes.”
Editor, invariably every speaker addressing students at whatever function ‒ giving the charge to university graduates or a new intake ‒ belabours the value and virtue of education, beseeching them to pursue it. The possession of it, they are told, is the key to one’s salvation; it is an escape from the clutches of poverty, and an entry to a life of untold opportunities, options and comfort. This advice serves as an inspiration to students and graduates ‒ fine. Every parent knows the advantage of a good education; how often have we not heard: “Tek in yuh education or yah gon thief or end up cleaning gutter and cutting grass”; or in the case of a girl: “Yah gon end up scrubbing people floor,” and such like. Well, as it is today, cutting grass is in demand and the cost is high, and isn’t it somewhat ironic that the better educated are the most notorious thieves?
However, the eradication of poverty through education for me is a fallacy, and one of the most naïve and misleading statements. It does give some fortunate individuals among the masses of dispossessed an advantage ‒ an escape from a life of hardship, and even a false sense of self importance and hubris. Further, we may love our vocation, performing our duty assiduously and efficiently, for which society would be better in some ways, but how does that in itself help to correct the imbalances, create favourable economic practices, social harmony and reduce the ever expanding gap between the haves and have nots? I’m not dreaming about any utopia here, just plain, basic human decency. How can we empower the poor to become part of a process of eliminating the abject poverty that plagues them beyond meaninglessly drumming into their skulls and empty bellies, “Stay in school”.
You know some things in life are just never ‘textbook’; you just have to have that sixth sense, that other element, the power of discernment. You know it’s a pity it’s not practical for everyone to have a university education and earn a degree so that we can put this fraudulent theory to rest, but as we know it wasn’t designed that way. I recall many years ago reading about an advertisement in India for about sixty or so janitors that received over two thousand applications, the majority of them being university graduates! Tell me how is it that the lack of education is the cause of an eight-year-old girl becoming completely blind because she couldn’t find money to pay for eye surgery? That another five-year-old with a life-threatening disease must die because the parents weren’t educated?
Go see John Quincy starring Denzel Washington then talk to me. Remember, I’m not knocking education, for it is one of the main requirements in life, indeed a vital organ in the scheme of survival, yet it’s being explained in a skewed fashion to hoodwink so many folks. Now a good education is supposed to put one on high ground, away from poverty, but because of one’s poverty such an education is denied, so one is left between a rock and a hard place still. Then how does one extricate oneself from this conundrum?
All parents do their best to give their children the good education that they were deprived of, in the hope that they would be spared drudgery and not be exploited for a pittance, as was their lot. While it is natural for every poor parent to want the best for his/her child, generally, inherent in this over-riding concern is also that of themselves; yes, it is the silent expectation that is hardly ever mentioned except by the brazen.
My take is that poverty is primarily the result of a grossly lopsided distribution of nature’s resources extracted by collective human labour and from which wealth is derived; it is all done by hard-working people who themselves amass no wealth. Just supposed all were well educated, would it cause the pervasive poverty to disappear? Hard-working is the opposite of lazy, to which some like to attribute the plight of the poor, although this is somewhat puerile. There are an untold number of working-class families who have been toiling endlessly and are still struggling to realise three meals a day and get off their knees. It has been so for centuries.
Nelson Mandela put the function of education in a more precise perspective when he said it is the most effective tool we can use to change the world. It follows then that its main purpose should be in service of humanity, to help change the abominable, notorious economic disorder. Mere education in itself will not eradicate poverty when the system of perpetuating the very poverty is intact, oiled and well-greased. How can you stop a thing from growing when its roots are well planted?
In any event, a basic human requirement is that a man receive in return for his labour, a minimum amount on which himself and family can subsist ‒ educated or not. That is what I understand by the term civilization. Once it was the mantra of every radical revolutionary scholar that the main cause of human suffering was a grossly disproportionate distribution of the world’s wealth, and thus to redress this there was need for a new world economic order. Is this human condition inevitable?
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe
