By Jenni Campbell
Contributor
No one in heaven, on the face of the earth, or beneath it values numbers more than God Himself. He knows each of the eight plus billion of us on the earth by name and nature. He has a number for every single strand of hair on the head of each of the eight plus billion of us. Further, He numbers the days of our lives. And it does not stop there. He runs a very intricate and precise numerical operation that dictates times and seasons and assigns meaning to days, months, years, and even moments.
It is only God who can use two fish and five loaves to feed five thousand, and with leftovers to boot.
When God gave Noah instructions to build the Ark or commanded David to build the temple, He was very meticulous in the numerical value of the material and the placement of every inch of wood, ounce of gold, and carat of other precious stones to be used. It was not guesswork.
So accurate is our God that not even the most minute of atoms in the broadest mass, called a mountain, escapes Him.
So when mortal men manipulate numbers, thinking that they are wiser than the Spirit of the True and Living God, they are only fooling themselves. Worse, in an era when every binary digit of data is recorded and held captive in cyberspace, where it can be retrieved at the click of a button, it is foolhardy for men to present falsehoods and expect not to be found out. Even if ordinary men can be tricked, God cannot be hoodwinked. He reveals truths to those who are rightly aligned through the leading of His Holy Spirit.
So when Minister of Education Fayval Williams makes irrational claims about the number of teachers exiting the sector for greener pastures, she needs to ensure that her utterances are in tandem with established and verifiable data. Anything else can be devastatingly embarrassing.
Minister Williams is claiming that last year, some 1500 teachers migrated from the school system between January and the end of August.
In a published article in July this year, the Minister reported that there had been a 43 percent reduction in the number of teachers who resigned between January to June 2023, compared to the same period in 2022.
The minister said the public should expect what she referred to as “teacher turnover” on an annual basis, as it happens in other industries where persons either leave their current jobs to migrate, find new employment in other sectors, pursue entrepreneurship, or retire.
Speaking in July, the Minister said, up to June 2022, only 506 teachers had migrated. But speaking last week at a press conference, she made the dried-eyed admission that a total of 1500 teachers left the system for overseas jobs by the end of August 2022. She was careful not to point out that nearly 1000 teachers departed the island in a single month—between July 2022 and August that same year. Perhaps she hoped that the Jamaican people, who are often said to be mathematically challenged, would have missed the magnitude of her disclosure. The Minister must be well aware that the majority of Jamaicans have long pencilled out the math that matter. It takes real maths to stretch rice and flour to keep hunger at bay, innovate, and throw ‘pardnas’ to raise families on little and nothing.
So brushing aside the massive body blow to the frail education system in the misguided hope that the people would not notice, is stupidity at best. Paying scant regard to the real consequences of extracting years of pedagogical experience from ailing classrooms is ludicrous.
Claiming that ‘teacher turnover’ is a systemic buck-toe, and not a significant stumble towards total collapse is farcical.
This month alone, the sector took another gut-wrenching sucker punch, with more than 400 teachers handing in their resignations over a two-week period. Based on what is being reported from worried principals and anxious teachers awaiting recruiters’ confirmations, as well as the reliable evidence in newspaper advertisements, this number is likely to be massively increased.
So when the Minister rubbishes the departure of thousands of teachers, she really appears to be delusional. Not even the strongest safety pins, that home economics teachers often carry in their purses can hold together the falsehood that the sector will not be affected by years of teacher migration and decreasing numbers of applicants to teacher training institutions.
Teachers disappearing from the Jamaican classrooms and reappearing in the United States school rooms is not magic; it is a systematic operation aided and abetted by government’s nonchalance towards them.
Teachers have endured much hardships over many years. They have existed on the fringes, watching their own children falling through the cracks while keeping others from plunging over the edge.
Teachers have been holding together the very threadbare fabric of the society with their bare hands.
In many cases, they have become guidance counsellors to broken children from shattered homes where parents have abandoned their responsibilities.
Governments have taken this sector for granted for far too long, feeding them crumbs, while expecting that the mere love of their noble profession will keep them pegged to creaking chalkboards. The chickens are coming home to roost.
Teachers have been resilient, giving up basic aspirations like owning a roadworthy vehicle and a reasonable home, in order to keep some semblance of order in the system. But that time was always on the horizon, when enough would have been enough; when the promises that better must come would no longer hold.
We are at the time when these professionals, who have always been the backbone of order and the shapers and sharpeners of our true potential as a people, loyal to country to a fault, would pick up roots, shake the dust off their feet and take-off. We have arrived at the point of no return. Our days are numbered.
May God help us!
