Begin with mind of the students to improve education

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Future success for Jamaica’s schools does not depend upon some set of ministry-solicited and friends-funded programmes. That sort of thinking represents the past, which I’ve seen first-hand, a past obviously without people clever enough to deal with the basics of education. Consider that when facing the problem squarely that it is only the mind of the individual student, regardless of their school, public or private, that truly matters. Therein lays both the problem and the solution to any problem any form of education will ever have.

What is the difference between a successful student, as I was, for example, and the one today who fails to succeed in his or her school setting? I can tell you from having taught and administered discipline to hundreds of them, both the successful and the unfortunate failures, that it is in the mind of the individual that their future and the future of education lives.

I remember it was there in my mind for all 16 years of my formal education – the notion that I was there, during the major part of my day, at school for one purpose and one purpose only: to get an education. As an extension of my parent’s role, there was the understanding that teachers and counsellors were there to be used as guides, not authorities, not personal friends, not romantic interests, but as true teachers – good communicators and mature individuals, working to better their communities.

Our educators, lest we forget, are best when they are honest and humble in their approach to education, with a genuine concern and unconditional love for their students, not only having the highest goals of not only training the child in various academic subjects, but teaching them to learn how to learn and then use that learning to solve their own problems and, in so doing, succeed.

In the mind of the failing student, both in my time and today, there is no real-world understanding of why the student is going to school.

At the same time we have let many of our schools become playgrounds of social-media experience – not places dedicated to education and learning. This one, critical shortcoming, often unintentionally overlooked in the earliest years, is the failure of the parents, guardians, or community from which the child arrives at school. It is a failure that will mark and live with the student long after he or she becomes a school leaver.

Therefore, to solve the problems of education, first start with the mind of the individual. Make certain each student knows what they’re going to school for and then afterwards you can worry about how they behave there and having a better place for them to go – all that will then take care of itself.

ED MCCOY

Bokeelia, Florida