Educational Coaching

Over the past week the quality of education has taken center stage in the Jamaican media, with the Minister, Andrew Holness chiding elementary/ primary school teachers for the general ill-preparedness of students for secondary schools.This news comes at the dawn of Jamaica’s presentation of a status report on its achievements towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

MDGs

The Minister’s chiding must come as a surprise to many educators and Jamaicans generally, who have been convinced since the 1980s, when I was a child and growing up, that our education system was superior to even the US. I grew up thinking that there was nowhere around the world where I could get better–a long standing misconception stimulated by the so-called universal elementary access. That was such a Big joke that almost 30 years later we are caught running with our tails between our legs and the dear Minister scrambling to modernize the system that has doomed so many youth.

Before proceeding with my article, I feel it important to articulate my background in education, as it will help you to better understand where my views on this matter are coming from. I am a third generation educator, sprung from a grand mother, mother and aunts who are trained and practiced Jamaican educators. Aside from Jamaica’s so-called universal access, I have always been (un)fortunate to have a household of educators whose interest was tied up with me believing the fabled best quality education. It did not take me long to unravel the myth–as soon as I commenced secondary level education I began to see more clearly–educational success was for the socially privileged, and many of us who dared to make ourselves an anomaly by being too bright, faced the humiliation of teachers  or the lack of will from our parents.

I always wondered why my mother never attempted to help me with maths–”I never went to high school,” “I didn’t do CXC,” she would say. Let me tell you, it was disappointing to hear my mother give these excuses–after all, I was a child who was half her age, with no experience other than primary school and I was able to clear the ominous mathematical clouds, yet she, with her experience preparing youth up to grade six could not help me to figure it out. I was not fearful of calling her mediocre, a label which I gave to many other teachers I later encountered.

So you can imagine that the latest move by the new Minister, in chiding educators, came like music to my ears. “Finally,” I said, “someone at policy level has begun to see more clearly.” But, on closer scrutiny, I realized that the Minister wants to see significant improvements in the education system, while ignoring the need for wider social changes. From the Minister’s statements, captured across the print and electronic media, he espouses that schools, although miniatures of the society, should not reflect its ills. They should therefore be exemplary– a lighthouse in a foggy dawn. Schools are therefore miniatures of what our society ought to be.

Social Stratification

At a press conference at Jessie Rippol Primary, the Minister proposed that those students who are not found to be academically inclined should be placed in schools to promote skills development. This functionalist sees social stratification as normal and natural, modernizing it as a means for ensuring that ‘the most talented and able members of society are allocated to those positions that are functionally most important for our society.’ Education is then the ‘providing ground for ability and hence the selective agency for placing people in different statuses according to their capacities.’ (Haralambos & Holborn, 2000).

Despite the need to keep stratification in tact, the Minister has a desire to reflect the liberal ideals of a progressive education system, which serves the needs of the people and fulfill the expectations of a modern democracy, especially under the watchful eye of the UN. For me it’s like playing with a three card man–there’s no way to win, as a progressive education system is the antithesis of social stratification, which the Minister will retain with his proposed screening system. A word of mouth liberal and die hard functionalist, his arguments are indicative of an ideal in which schools function like the future society–the place of choice to live, work, raise families and do business, and where all the social classes accept and are satisfied with where they are placed.

While the Minister acknowledges, through his delivery of Grades F to various schools, that the hidden curriculum contributes to failings, he does not seek to examine the hidden curriculum as something that is functional to society–a covert contract handed down from the society to maintain stratification and the status quo. He proposes that we execute individual assessment of schools and teachers, which inevitably labels them the culprits of failure, rather than the society that infiltrated and intimidated them with its own hidden code on the treatment of people of specific social classes.

I therefore extend a word of caution to the Minister–the whole is the sum of its parts. The education system is merely one part of the whole, which reflects and maintains all the ills that exist within our society–class and colour prejudice and priviliging, abuse, crime and violence, self-hate and skin bleaching, and expectations of failure. To change the education system we must change our society, because it is the whole that influences its parts. We therefore need a multisectoral approach involving private, public, and community entities that are committed to and supportive of wider social changes.

Q. What is AIDS?

A. Acquired (conditions are not inherited, but are acquired from environmental factors, such as virus infections) Immunodeficiency (the viruses gradually cause deficient immunity, which reflects poor nutrition and low resistance to infections and cancers) Syndrome (viruses cause several kinds of diseases, each with characteristic signs and symptoms).

AIDS is caused by a retrovirus that infects lymph glands and destroys lymphocytes through gene alteration, spreading the disease between individuals mostly through semen, blood, uterine secretions, breast milk, and placenta.

Q. What is HIV?

A. Human Immunodeficiency Virus is a retrovirus, which lacks DNA, therefore, depend on the DNA of other bodily cells like lymphocytes to reproduce. HIV is a highly variable virus which mutates very readily. This means there are many different strains of HIV, even within the body of a single infected person.

There are at least two types of viruses that can cause AIDS, AIDS related conditions, and cancers in human beings. Visit this link for details of HIV Groups and subtypes and see the summary of the two types below:

1. HIV-1 is the most common cause of AIDS worldwide, except in West Africa, where HIV-2 is relatively common. Scientists can identify up to nine major genetic subtypes of HIV-1
2. HIV-2- appears to be less virulent than HIV-1

Q. What is a virus?

A. A virus is a tiny poisonous particle that can cause disease and is too small to see with an ordinary microscope. Viruses depend on the living host cells like the lymph cells to grow and survive.

Viruses can be divided into DNA and RNA viruses. DNA viruses contain genes that direct virus growth. RNA viruses lack DNA and depend on the genes inside of other cells for growth and reproduction of the virus. HIV 1 is a n RNA virus, also called a retrovirus, because it randomly  reverses, transcribes, and inserts RNA into the DNA of the host cells, which in turn function abnormally or are killed.

Q. What are the stages of progression from HIV to AIDS?

A. There are four distinct stages in the development of HIV to AIDS. Visit this link for details of the Stages of Progression from HIV to AIDS or read the summary below:

1. Prodrome- the time during which aches, fever, and headache are the most common symptoms.
2. Latency- the time when overt symptoms are absent, the infection persists in the lymph glands and spreads by way of lymphocytes migrating from these lands
3. Generalized lymph gland enlargement and or autoimmune diseases, such as kidney or bone marrow failure occur
4. AIDS- the body will experience wasting, poor resistance to all kinds of infections; various forms of cancer and lymph gland destruction occur

Q. What is the function of lymphocytes?

A. Lymphocytes are white blood cells. They feed other cells, control cell growth, and guard against infection. They are the most common type of cell in our biological defense system- the immune system. They help prevent cancers by controlling cell growth and they help to protect against infections by producing antibodies (proteins that fight infections).

Q. How does HIV affect the immune system?

A. Each day you come in contact  with many infectious diseases, but your immune system protects you from getting sick. When you do get an infection the immune system manufactures antibodies that help fight the infection. When you get well, your body usually becomes immune to that particular infection. This is called acquired immunity, which means you will not get the disease again.

As the HIV infected lymphocyte produces antibodies, HIV is also reproducing. People do not develop effective acquired immunity to HIV because it grows in the very cells that produce antibodies. The destroyed or damaged lymphocytes in a HIV positive individual impairs the immune system from responding properly, making you much more susceptible to some of the many infections and diseases that exist within the environment, for example Tuberculosis.

Without a healthy immune system you would be sick all of the time. You would also be likely to develop malignant  (cancerous) growth of cells within your body. Thus a damaged immune system  fails to battle cancers that frequently  invade people with AIDS. As HIV progresses to AIDS in a human body, people ususally contract infections that are normally prevented by healthy antibody-producing and migrating white blood cells. Such infections are called opportunistic infections because they take advantage of the damaged immune system.

You can review the draft of the educational tool that I created specifically for the pilot… Introduction to Inmate Economic and Social Rights.

From the outset, it is evident that inmate education on advocacy for the improvement of ESR is necessary, because there are obvious gaps when we compare national legislation and international principles. There is therefore a clear case for advocacy for the improvement of ESR and services to Jamaica’s prisoners.

My general intention in executing this program is to assess and evaluate the need for ESR programming in adult penal institutions, which will lead to recommendations and justifications for project funding, institutional building, and capacity development.

The first draft of my ESR sensitization tool captures Jamaican legislation and international guidelines and principles for inmates. One thing that you will notice is that national laws sometimes conflict with international principles, for example the use of solitary confinement as punishment.

Agenda: National CSO Consultation, Jamaica

Pictures: National CSO Consultation, Jamaica

Press Release: National CSO Consultation, Jamaica

Report: National CSO Consultation, Jamaica