THE SUNDAY GLEANER, MARCH 6, 2022 | IN FOCUS F4 THERE HAS been lots of media attention on Jamaican students studying in Ukraine and a microscope on their journey from the war zone. As usual, tribal trolls on social media have turned it into a huge political squabble, beginning with much-deserved criticism for how slow Government was to take their plight seriously. But then it escalated, as is customary in Jamaican politics, into which party cared more for the students; which party did more for the students; and who was the first to bid or the highest bidder in the cash-for-students auction. I could just hear Chuck Bradley chant “gonnagonnagonnaget 10,000; bongdiddlydongdong 11,000; can I get … ?” My takeaway from the students’ crisis was, as usual, systemic. It comes from experience. When asked what is my greatest achievement, I tell breathless questioners (waiting for me to name law cases I can barely remember) that my best achievement has come not as a result of but despite my struggles as a practising lawyer. In spite of that profession’s fiscal ingratitude, The Old Ball and Chain’s three sons were all educated to university level at home and abroad and all completed whatever studies they wanted or needed without owing a dollar in student loans. THAT is an achievement of which any parent can be proud and is, in my opinion, the moral of the Jamaican students in Ukraine story. None of this would be possible for me had the great Michael Manley not suffered a burst ganja seed in the brain (that’s how it seemed) during the 1974 Budget Debate and announced free education from primary school to university. Reactions, inside and outside Parliament, were at least entertaining. As gleeful Government MPs pounded their desks in political ecstasy, Finance Minister David Coore, sitting beside Joshua, gave an impression of a man having a heart attack that could easily have made the cut on Saturday Night Live, save for the fact that that show wasn’t conceived for another year. Opposition MP and former Education Minister Edwin ‘Teacher’ Allen walked across the floor and shook Manley’s hand. If not for that moment of socialist madness, nobody would know my name today. My parents, like the parents of those Jamaican students in Ukraine, were lower-middle-income earners. My father was a teacher-turned-civil servant (with a brief private-sector stint at a construction firm in between). University tuition was just not on the cards. But free education paid my law faculty and law school fees. My parents scraped together enough to fly me to Barbados for two years, where I boarded in Black Rock at the foot of the UWI campus “hill” with a kind-hearted landlady named Mary Jackman. My pocket money came around the domino table and at the Garrison Savannah. There are thousands of 1970s stories like mine of countless individuals whose careers are built on that moment of madness in Gordon House in 1974. Michael Manley understood there was no such thing as “balancing lives and livelihoods”. Lives make livelihoods. Livelihoods cannot make lives. So he put his faith in the development of Jamaica’s human capital with the expectation that when developed, it would develop Jamaica. I’ve never forgotten why I’ve been able to make a modest living doing the work for which I’m most suited and at which I’m halfway good. I’m sure I would’ve made a fairly decent but underqualified teacher trying my best to educate many other people’s pickney but unable to contribute to Jamaica’s further development by educating our three sons to tertiary level. All three are now doing very well, thank you very much, in three very different occupations (none lawyers, thank God). Don’t applaud. There’s nothing for which to congratulate me or Old BC. All we did was to pay forward to Old BC’s noisy brood the kindness resulting from national visionary Michael Manley’s inspired policy and of which their father took advantage. FREE EDUCATION FROM PRIMARY TO UNIVERSITY So I return to the Jamaican students in Ukraine. There were two 1970s “socialist” policies that were excellently fashioned, and had not our insane political tribalism turned “socialist” into a filthy word and those policies tossed on the garbage heap of governance, would’ve created a truly prosperous Jamaica. We’ll discuss the second policy another time, but first and foremost was ‘Free Education from Primary to University’. I know the nation has suffered self-inflicted fiscal constraints over the years (except where overpriced government contracts with built-in cost over-runs to party cronies are concerned), but free education from primary school to university ought to have been Jamaica’s number-one priority for the past 50 years. So if you wanna be my number one; If you wanna be my number one; Let me know your future plans No Jamaican student should have to travel to Ukraine (or any other country) to seek further education due to financial problems. If they want to go to a foreign university (maybe for a course not offered here) and their parents can afford it, fine. But to be essentially scorned by your own Government and told to fend for yourself in God-knows-where in order to get, for example, a medical degree is gross abdication of national responsibility. Why? And then we complain that these students harbour future plans, when qualified, to seek greener pastures abroad instead of working for a pittance in our public healthcare system? What the bejeezus do you expect? So the casual fend-foryourself-if-you-want-to-leaveUkraine attitude isn’t a sudden disregard for duty to young Jamaican citizens. These children (regardless of age) have been disposable from primary school. Throughout Jamaica’s sorry excuse for an education system they have been used as cannon fodder for standardised tests after being trained in nothing but how to pass these tests. Still too many fail to even achieve that useless goal. Those able to survive the morass that is education in Jamaica either because of strength of will or attitude are calmly told to find millions of dollars per annum for tuition alone or stay away from UWI, which is supposed to be the hub of Caribbean education, research, and development. So what must they do? They shop around on the Internet for cheap tertiary solutions and are prepared to go to a country where they can’t speak the language in the hopes of getting something adjacent to an education. Then, to their shock and amazement, something horrific goes wrong over which they have zero control and their government, true to form since primary school, tells them to borrow money from the same Government that cast them to education wolves or stay and be eaten by wolves of war. Go into debt to Government? Borrow money from Government to flee a war zone? STUDENTS? But it’s Government over the years that owes them an education and has failed miserably and worse, uncaringly, to repay that debt. But why am I outraged? Why did I expect better? If you take a deep dive into all the circumstances of Government’s education atrocities, it suddenly becomes clear why these students have never been taught so much as a single civics lesson. As a result, many can’t even understand their rights vis-a-vis their own government so are conditioned to take whatever abuse Government offers disguised as assistance. The “Cool Ruler” knew what it took to be a number-one priority Let me know your future plans Never ever hurt this man, And you’ll be my number one Mark my words. It’s no accident that Jamaican children have been woefully undereducated by successive governments for 60 years despite Michael Manley’s short-lived attempt to address the imbalance in 1974. What do you think would happen to today’s politicians if Jamaicans were properly educated, especially in civics and philosophy? Would they be able to herd us like cattle into polling stations every five years to give them unchecked authority over the public purse? Would blindly voting for a favourite (or, worse, “born-into”) tribe every five years be in their future plans? I seriously doubt it. Would they “hurt” governments by insisting on their rights? Arsenio would call these queries “Things that make you go hmmmmmm ... .” So, rest assured, free education is not a priority because it would spell doom for political largesse, which is the foundation of Jamaica’s economic stagnation. If we remain undereducated, they remain all-powerful and able to enjoy the current today-for-me-tomorrow-for-you systemic larceny disguised as governance. Peace and Love! n Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@ gleanerjm.com ASHLEY ANGUIN/PHOTOGRAPHER No Jamaican student should have to travel to Ukraine (or any other country) to seek further education due to financial problems. If they want to go to a foreign university (maybe for a course not offered here) and their parents can afford it, fine. But to be essentially scorned by your own Government and told to fend for yourself in God-knows-where in order to get, for example, a medical degree is gross abdication of national responsibility. Michael Manley had the right idea Gordon Robinson
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