Given all the furor over Minister Thwaites's presentation in Parliament of the Ministry Paper “A preventative Initiative in
Schools to Ameliorate Jamaica’s Crime Problem” January 20, 2014, I decided to
read the source document. There is a one-line reference to a JCF study, which
identifies certain schools as being the schools the individuals in the study
attended. Based on this, the press chose the unfortunate headline “Prison Schools” and a
statement of fact was interpreted as a cause and effect relationship, naturally
upsetting teachers and students at the named schools.
The Ministry Paper also said
“Criminals are not born;
they are formed – often by neglect or poor socialization. The major positive
environments in the formative process are school, church and/or family. Every child goes to school at some time.
There is no other institution with such potential for positive socialization.
As such, law-abiding habits ought to be expressly connected with the school
experience.”
And: “Studies show that many who end up committing serious crime were
frequently absent from school; exhibited cognitive or social abnormalities;
were not assessed or treated adequately; had little or no effective
family/ teacher support and dropped-out/ “graduated” with inadequate or no
certification.”
Can we disagree with these
statements?
In response, the Ministry of
Education plans a special intervention in 56 seriously affected schools (it
didn’t say whether any primary schools are included) to
2. Assess and address their situations
3. Prevent drop-outs
The Ministry of Education gives the following projections:
The MoE also proposes a
system-wide intervention beginning in 2014. It will:
Given the potential of
schools, I hope that intervention in the early grades of primary school,
together with parental engagement, will be given top priority. Many of the
at-risk students exhibit disruptive behavior disorders, for example ADHD
(Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) from grade 1 or earlier. The incidence of this condition has been found
to be 5% in developed countries. It is therefore likely that in every
average-sized primary school class in Jamaica, there would be 1 or 2 children
with this condition. These children are often shouted at, or sent out of the
class, and sometimes beaten. They are certainly not given the kind of attention
they need in order to learn. In her book “A Teacher’s Guide to Understandingthe Disruptive Behaviour Disorders”, Dr. Pearnel Bell recommends that these
children should be diagnosed, after which parents, social workers and teachers
should work together to help them reach their maximum potential, and give them
a sense of usefulness and belonging. Too often, they label themselves as
outcasts from an early age. Any desirable behavior they exhibit should be
affirmed 100 times a day (about every 5 minutes)! See my posts of August and September 2013.
In addition to children
with ADHD, there are children with undiagnosed sight and hearing problems,
malnourished children and children with learning disabilities, all of whom need
special consideration in a class where they can get individual attention. Currently,
in many schools, children across the whole ability spectrum are put together in
one class, so as not to stigmatize the children, but I question the wisdom of
this. At the end of Grade 2, assessment
of such a class showed that 5 boys and 3 girls were reading below grade 1 level;
3 boys and 2 girls were at grade 1 level; 3 boys and 6 girls were at grade 2
level; no boys and 10 girls were at grade 3 level; 3 boys and 7 girls were at
grade 4 level and above. The more competent readers, being better able to
follow instructions and work on their own, can follow the prescribed syllabus;
but the priority for non-readers and
less competent readers should surely be to start where they are and work at
their pace, with a strong emphasis on social skills, preferably with a
specialist teacher. In the same way as
small potholes are less expensive to fill than big ones, early intervention is
less costly than late intervention, and infinitely better for the children.
My hope is that the
Ministry of Education will follow through on the projections listed above; and
that they will keep the public informed of the progress, making sure the
progress is given the same prominence in the press as “Prison Schools”. It is also
up to us to keep them on their toes.
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