By Ian Boyne, Contributor 
Ian Boyne
THE FOCUSED discussion on the education system and our crisis of under-performance is beneficial and comes at an opportune time when the country is preparing for increased foreign direct investment (FDI).
It is a truism that the countries which are attracting sufficient levels of high-quality FDI are those that boast high-skilled populations and whose workers are highly trained, flexible and productive. Sustainable economic development is not compatible with low-level educational achievement. So, if Jamaica is to maximise its opportunities in the tourism, bauxite/alumina and information technology industries, it cannot ignore the disconcerting and deeply troubling facts that have emerged from the Dennis Minott report on our secondary schools.
Before the report became public, both the Leader of the Opposition, Edward Seaga and Minister of Finance Omar Davies, bemoaned the fact that our education system was not adequately preparing a significant cohort to meaningfully participate in the economy.
Myriad solutions are being offered to the crisis that we face in our education system. Many are tempted to take the usual approach of suggesting that we throw more money or resources at the problem. In our materialistic society, we reflexively believe money is the answer to every problem often ignoring the best evidence to the contrary.
SERIOUS STUDIES
Serious studies done by institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have consistently shown than it is possible for a country to have high levels of investment in education and yet produce poor results in that sector.
What the researchers have pointed out is that it is not so much how much a state invests in education as the productivity of those investments. It is not the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product devoted to the education budget that provides the silver bullet.
In the April 22 edition of the Economist magazine there is an article on "The Learning Deficit", with the subtitle : "Lack of education holds much of the world back. Would more money help?" The article draws upon some research work done by Harvard's Lant Pritchett. The Economist says, "One striking indication of how easy it is to spend money fruitlessly in education comes from the rich countries."
According to one study, cited by the Harvard scholar, Britain increased its real spending per pupil by 77 per cent between 1970 and 1994, while over the period the score for learning in math and science fell by 8 per cent. Australia increased its real spending per pupil by 270 per cent, yet, its pupils' scores fell by 2 per cent. "Extra spending by itself is likely to be no more successful in the poor countries than it has been in the rich", concludes the respected London weekly. "In improving education in the developing countries, additional resources are not usually the crux of the matter".
In the March 27, 1997, issue of the Economist, looking at some global survey on educational achievement and under-achievement, the following point was made: "Of particular interest to cash-strapped Governments is (the fact that) there appears to be little evidence to support the argument, often heard from teachers' unions, that the main cause of educational under-achievement is under-funding. Low-spending countries such as South Korea and the Czech Republic are at the top of the Third International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) league table. High spenders such as America and Denmark do much worse."
The 1997 article noted that East Asian countries had overtaken both high-spending America and Britain, which had universal schooling much longer. America placed 17 in science and 28 in mathematics. England came 25 in maths and Scotland came 29.
"Some former communist countries, notably the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Bulgaria also did significantly better than their richer Western neighbours, even though they spend much less on education. Six of the top 15 places in both maths and science (in the international survey) went to East Europeans. It seems that how much a country can afford to spend has less than you might think to do with how well educated its children are. American children have three times as much money spent on their schooling as young South
Koreans, who nevertheless beat them hands down in tests".
The Economist article also points out that "another article of faith among the teaching profession-that children are bound to do better in smaller classes-is also being undermined by educational research. As with other studies, TIMSS found that France, America and Britain where children are usually taught in classes of twenty-odd do significantly worse than East Asian countries where almost twice as many pupils are crammed into each class."
VALUES AND EDUCATION
What do the former communist nations of Eastern Europe and the East Asians have in common? Not similar ideology, but the devotion to ideals, to a set of beliefs which provide an overarching vision and motivation, and a rigid discipline borne of a sense of mission and purpose. You don't have the rugged individualism and the hedonistic culture which pervades Western society. So we are again back to the issue of values and attitudes. Make no mistake about it: Poverty and the lack of material resources play a major-indeed, critical-role in explaining under-performance. Resources do matter. But they are not the single most important factor influencing performance. Much anecdotal evidence will confirm that.
You, no doubt, know of many examples of high academic achievers who came from extremely poor and socially deprived circumstances. The rags-to-educational-achievement stories abound. I am never out of the stories of the climb from material deprivation, hunger and economic lack to brilliant academic achievement. And there are many examples of academic under-achievement by the children of the upper classes who are only saved from an adulthood of poverty because of family wealth and support.
But the inner-city or poor peasant youth who make it academically do so through a specific set of circumstances - almost everyone had a strong grounding in Christian values. Many were in single parent or no-parent homes but there was the tremendous support of the church community and of a Christian ideology which gave them hope, confidence and faith that through Christ they could do all things. When their economic circumstances could have deprived them of hope and relegated them to the rubbish heap of history, through the inspiring stories of the Judeo-Christian tradition, they nurtured the hope that they, too, as children of God could make it. They found the strength to resist the gun, the drugs, the prostitution, the idling, and the nihilistic way of life which pervade life in the inner city.
As the church declines and fewer people go to Sunday and Sabbath schools, on top of a traditionally weak family structure, many of our youth are left rudderless, rootless, adrift and swimming in a sea of purposelessness. Their principal teachers are the Elephant Men, Vybz Kartels, Ninja Men (you read me right), and the Bounty Killas. As you pass them in the evenings and nights on the corners with the big sound systems showing off the latest dance moves and playing Mimic Boys and Girls, dressed as shottas and prostitutes, you are witnessing them in "school". And when the Kiwanis Club of New Kingston, in association with UNICEF, of all agencies, can have an official launch tomorrow of a Protect our Children programme using an artiste (among others) going under the name "Assassin", you know that the decadence and myopia of the society is not limited to the inner-city.
We refuse to take seriously in this country the matter of morality, values and norms. I was happy to see Delroy Chuck take leave of his political partisanship in his Gleaner column on Wednesday when discussing the education crisis. Rather than carrying his usually narrow economistic line ("it's the economy, stupid!"), Chuck wrote, "If I am right, and I know I am, we need to solve the education crisis in our homes. That is where the leadership and vision of principals could easily focus as they start to repair the rot and decline in academic standards".
Chuck stressed the role of parental support in educational excellence: "Even as a father attending the occasional parent-teacher meeting, I noticed that the parents who usually attend are the ones whose children are doing well and the parents of poor students (academically) are rarely in attendance. Again, check out the students who get good examination results or scholarships, even the Jamaica Rhodes Scholarships and one will find that they had the full support of even one parent or guardian."
ACADEMIC SUCCESS vs. INSTANT GRATIFICATION
A fascinating essay in the journal, Educational Psychology Review (March 2004) makes the link between academic success and the postponement of gratification-or self-discipline, which is a declining virtue in Jamaica and many Western societies.
That the East Asians are doing so well educationally and that they routinely outperform other immigrants to the United States is not surprising.
"An ideal student who routinely goes home after school, has a snack, studies until dinner, then continues studying until bedtime is likely more academically successful than one who is not as focused on schoolwork. This goal-directed sequence of activities must withstand an array of attractive distractions such as watching television or interacting with friends. Being a successful student, therefore, depends in large measure on resisting temptations that are immediately gratifying in order to increase the likelihood of accomplishing some temporally remote more important goals. From this perspective, delay of gratification is construed as a self-regulated learning strategy which, along with facilitative beliefs about the future, increases the likelihood of completing academic tasks".
There is the famous Marshmallow Study which tracked the academic and career success of adolescents who were given the choice of accepting one marshmallow for an immediately available small reward or two marshmallows for a greater but more distant reward. The longitudinal study showed that the adolescents who delayed gratification were more successfully academically and professionally than those who grabbed the one marshmallow for the immediate gratification.
Jamaica is an immediate gratification society. We as a people have no sense of a guiding overarching vision or ideology. It was vision, a sense of the future and of one's future possibility which have always guided the successful in the working and peasant classes in Jamaica. As our social capital has declined so have our education standards. Throwing more resources at education won't get at the heart of our educational crisis.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
