$100K mobile phones but no textbooks

WESTERN BUREAU:

A senior school administrator is challenging parents to rethink their priorities as the new school year gets under way, noting that some are spending heavily on their children’s fashion and gadgets while failing to provide basic learning materials.

In a post on social media site Facebook, Linvern Wright, principal of the Trelawny-based William Knibb Memorial High School, highlighted what he sees as a troubling contradiction.

“Many of our parents who struggle to pay a school support contribution of $20,000 send children to school with a $15,000 bag, $30,000 shoes, a $50,000-$100,000 phone,” Wright wrote.

But, according to Wright, the expensive items are sometimes accompanied by a glaring absence of the basic tools needed for learning.

“Many of these same children have no pen, no calculator, no textbooks, and in general, no materials for school,” he said.

Wright further claimed that, in some cases, students do not even have notebooks, while others may have notebooks containing little or no class notes.

His intervention, which comes as schools settle into the second week of the new academic year, has reignited questions about whether enough attention is being paid to equipping children for academic success.

For Wright, the issue is bigger than the contents of a school bag. He believes it reflects a deeper problem with the values being attached to education.

“Schools are for many parents a place to parade fashion and glamour,” the immediate past president of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools argued.

He also criticised the prominence of debates over hairstyles and uniforms, questioning whether cultural expression is being matched by meaningful knowledge of African history and culture.

“The talk regarding allowing hairstyles and uniforms that represent African tradition is such a hoax, as many of these students can’t say anything about African culture that suggests anything close to a rootedness in African culture,” wrote Wright.

But his central concern is what he sees as a misplaced investment in appearance over achievement.

“Our priorities in education are headed in the wrong direction,” he declared, while calling for a fundamental shift in how children are taught to measure value – away from expensive possessions and towards knowledge.

“Getting something in the heads rather than donning hairstyles, buying and reading textbooks rather than advertising name brand bags, and putting value in their brains rather than on their feet,” he wrote, warning that Jamaica will continue to struggle with educational achievement if those priorities are not reordered.

The comments also come against the backdrop of Wright’s previous concerns about technology and student learning, when he warned in January that gadgets could present more challenges than solutions in schools, while outlining that children were writing less as technology increasingly replaced traditional learning practices.

albert.ferguson@gleanerjm.com