Judging by the feedback, some people misunderstood me last week. Towards the end, I wrote: "I refuse to blame slavery and our colonial past for where we are today. It is our various JLP and PNP governments and their financial backers which have squandered the opportunities which independence offered and which got us into this mess. We could have done much more and much better, as others have shown."

One of my sixth-form chemistry teachers (at St George's College) called to remonstrate with me: "Of course it is slavery," he said. "Why are you trying to let the British off the hook?" A couple of my brother clergy called with the same criticism.

'Omugabe's' comments

I received an email from someone (unknown to me) with the nom de guerre 'Omugabe' who said: "Of course, you wouldn't want to 'blame' for the horrendous state of affairs in Jamaica, the truly blamable and evil European enslavers and their equally devilish descendants, who continue the devilish works in Jamaica to this day" (emphasis his).

"Considering that you are most likely one of the beneficiaries and part of the lineage and legacy of evil oppressors of the majority Jamaican population to this day, you could wind up blaming yourself; and that wouldn't be so comforting. It is better to just live in denial and parrot the oft-used cliché, 'it's the Jamaican politicians fault'. Just blame the politicians because they foolishly allow themselves to be used for crumbs. The fact is, Peter, alert Jamaicans know that the average Jamaican politician is merely a servant/slave in the sick slavery system, which is made to persist to this day in Jamaica with only superficial modifications.

"And why should the descendants of the wicked slave masters alter the way business is done in Jamaica when they can deceptively fund politicians with pittance to serve their evil ways? Those who 'monopolised' Jamaica's misery and poverty in the past generations have been made to bequeath same to their offspring to this day because the powers that have been in Jamaica continue to refuse to rid Jamaica of the evil slavery system. And why should they rid Jamaica of this sinful system? After all, the descendants of the slave masters continue to live in relative safety and splendour. And most of the social dysfunction is not affecting them ... for now. In time, the chickens will come home to roost most completely."

Fix the education system

By blaming modern politicians, I am not exonerating those who have been down-the-line beneficiaries of the system of slavery, including myself. I made it clear at the beginning and the end of my column that getting the education system right is "a matter of righting a grievous historical wrong."

I made it clear last week that at Emancipation, the administration of the colony was in the hands of the former slavemasters who viewed their 309,331 former slaves as "labour in their cane fields and coffee pieces," and that education must not get in the way of their labour supply. I said clearly that "the fact is that we have never had a functional primary or secondary school system in Jamaica for the majority. An education system has been created which functions well to protect the supply of cheap unskilled agricultural labour. On the other hand, we operate a high-quality prep and high school system for the chosen few, with their graduates eminently able to access the best universities and colleges in the world, and able to perform along with the most brilliant. So, we can do it - if we want to".

Where the confusion seems to have crept in is my comparison between Jamaica and "our Caribbean neighbours with the same history of slavery and colonialism as ours". The point I was making - which seems to have been misunderstood - is that whereas our politicians took decisions which kept our labour cheap and uneducated and suitable for agriculture, politicians elsewhere took a different approach. "Barbados and Trinidad have low rates of illiteracy, and their secondary students far outperform ours. Both of these countries have structured their economies differently to ours; they require an educated labour force to drive their services, manufacturing and tourism sectors, and they have designed their education systems to produce what they need. Barbados is almost a First-World country in its level of development."

The role of slavery

There is no denying the role of slavery and colonialism in our history; and there is no denying the role of our post-Independence politicians: "Not even 46 years after political independence have we been able to teach the majority of our primary school graduates to read ... and as the system of preferences around our sheltered plantation agriculture falls apart, we can now see the foolishness of the way we have structured our economy and labour force until now."

Whatever else you may say about Fidel Castro, at the time of the Cuban revolution (a few years before our Independence), he found the majority of the Cuban people illiterate, and within a few years he reduced illiteracy to three per cent (the mentally ill and a few old and unwilling people). It can be done!

It's a matter of righting a grievous historical wrong.