Tags: education column

 On Thursday, October 15th The Gleaner headline declared “Teaching methods stale”. The conclusion was derived from the views of a group of educators who had appeared before the Select Committee of Human Resources and Social Development of Parliament in Gordon House. This Committee had invited the educators to share their views on measures that could be taken to provide quality education and universal literacy. The Gleaner story reported that the Committee had been told that the country’s methods of teacher training have not changed in more than 30 years and that teachers were only being trained by the lecture method. The Committee was also advised that use of the Internet could facilitate changes in the teaching methods in the colleges.

Literacy has been the subject of a lot of attention recently. The new president of the JTA, Mr. Byron Farquarson, has made it a centrepiece of his administration and has called on teachers to ensure that children are functionally literate by the end of primary schooling. The Minister of Education and Culture, Burchell Whiteman, has announced a new policy that students will not be promoted above Grade Four in primary and all age schools unless they are functionally literate. The Sunday Gleaner carried a front-page story that adults are enrolling in literacy classes in increasing numbers. This indicates that literacy is not only the concern of the teaching profession and the policymakers in the Ministry of education but it also has resonance at the level of the individual. These are all positive developments.

 The University of the West Indies celebrates its 50th Anniversary this year. The main events of that celebration are being held during this week. It is appropriate therefore for this column to hail and salute the UWI at this time. To fully appreciate the significance of this 50th anniversary celebration it is necessary to put the founding of UWI in a historical and comparative context.

Errol Miller   A lot has been written about the importance of the early years in setting the foundations for children’s education. Since Independence, prompted by initiatives promoted by the Jamaica Teachers Association and the Chamber of Commerce in the early 1960s, early childhood education became a centre of attention. These initiatives were followed up […]

There is no shortage of talk in Jamaica today. Indeed, there are merchants of talk who have turned chat into a profitable business and in the process shattered the popular saying that talk is cheap. This is not to say that talk should be discounted or despised. Remember, in the beginning, was the Word.  The word is a critical element in the creative process. The problem is when we can only talk and can do little else.