Jamaica
News - Real Estate - General
Source: The Jamaica Observer, Horace Hines, May 12, 2005
Building character to educate young minds
Opposition leader Bruce Golding has recommended a
fusion of government's values and attitude programme JAMVAT with the 'character
education' plan proposed by Edward Seaga, saying together they would instill in
school-aged children the proper attitude toward learning.
JAMVAT, a project initiated by Prime Minister
PJ Patterson, is well-intended, said Golding, but was a failure because of the
manner in which it was introduced and subsequently managed.
Golding, who is also leader of the Jamaica Labour
Party, said that faced with rampant indiscipline among students, teachers were
spending more time correcting behavioural problems, detracting from the time
they should be spending on academics.
"So much of the time that you ought to be
spending training the mind, you have to be spending retrofitting the child
before the child is going to be receptive to mind training," said Golding.
"You are doing the work that the parent
failed to do," he told an awards ceremony in Montego Bay to honour some 300
teachers in East Central St James, a constituency represented by the JLP's Ed
Bartlett.
He referred to Seaga's advice, given at the
twilight of his political career, for the incorporation of character education
into the school's curriculum that would target attitude and behaviour of the
young - the implication being that such a dedicated course would free other
teachers from having to assume the role of disciplinarian to concentrate more on
knowledge transfer.
The opposition leader, who likened students to
raw material, said a craftsman, in this case a teacher, was only as good as the
material he/she uses.
"The children, who turn up at your school
seeking to be enrolled, represent the raw material that you have to work with.
And the quality of that raw material is going to determine what kind of product
you are going to graduate at the end of the process," said the JLP top man.
"But, in many respects, the raw material
that you are getting is just too raw."
The West Kingston Member of Parliament was
also of the view that the teacher's role was not fully appreciated in Jamaica.
He bemoaned the fact that tutors were spoken of in the same light as other
public sector workers.
"I don't want to denigrate or to anyway
diminish or undervalue the work of any public sector worker (but) I believe that
of all the public sector workers there is a pride of place that ought to be
reserved for the teachers of our nation," Golding said.
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