Schools- Part 1

We thought we might take the time to share a little bit about how schools in Jamaica operate and function. First, we thought we might address the overall teaching style. It is quite different than what we are used to in the States. Anthony Winkler, a Jamaican author discusses this in his book Going Home to Teach. We'll paraphrase much of what he says here (while also adding some of our own thoughts in between):

In the Jamaican classroom, the Englishman taught, and as far we can see, Jamaicans still teach, mainly by rote. This pedagogy emphasizes practice and drills lessons into the student's heads until they can rattle them off in their sleep.
As a result, many Jamaican students can recite an uncanny amount of
memorized information. Their ability to commit facts and figures to memory is impressive. However, the idea of actually being able to understand and process the information that has been memorized is usually lacking.

“When I was a child attending school in Jamaica, my head spun from daily drilling in every conceivable subject by tutors trained in England. In English, we parsed hundreds, thousands of sentences without understanding how their parts were related. In arithmetic, we memorized the multiplication tables without being taught that we were learning the short-cut form of addition. In Latin, we swatted and sang out verb conjugations in unison without the faintest glimmer of what they meant. In history, we committed to memory the dates on which Lord This did that without ever being told why he had done it....
The result was that my classmates and I were collectively a bunch of idiot savants. We knew facts and figures but did not understand what they meant. Ask us to recite the principal dates of the Norman invasion of England, and we would sit back and blow you out of your chair with a blast of erudition. Ask us why the Normans invaded England and we would stare at you as if you were demented.”

This along with the common parenting style of “children are to be seen and not heard”, has been a little bit of an adjustment for us. Matt and I both tend to teach our classes in a very interactive fashion, such as calling on students individually or having class discussions, especially when it comes to topics we discuss in our guidance and counseling/life skills classes. We want to know what the students are thinking about such things. Where are they at? What are their thoughts on the subject? However, we've had to really work at developing the students' comfort level to voice their opinion and to process the information, as most classrooms do not encourage students to do this.

Even walking down the street when we stop to chat with the kids, many of them are taken aback by us even speaking to them directly. Most adults walk by without even acknowledging their presence, much less asking them how they are doing.

All the same, the parents in our community have been extremely supportive of us as teachers, or at least in the way that is culturally appropriate here. They let their children know that they are to treat us with the utmost respect. If I were to even mention to a parent that their child spoke out of turn in one of my classes, that child's butt would be sore for weeks. We've even had parents come up to us to make sure we knew that we needn't hesitate to 'beat my child' if they misbehave -even going as far as giving us pointers on which strategy works best (such as yanking on their ear, etc.).

This goes in accordance to the overall culture of the school. Students stand when I walk into a class, and uniformly great me with a “Good morning Miss Emslie.” They stand to speak when they are called on, and they constantly end each sentence with 'Miss'. “No, Miss.” “Yes, Miss.” “21, Miss.” “Tuesday, Miss.” Funny enough, the students are so used to having female teachers, Matt also gets called 'Miss' regularly out of the students' habit. I can sometimes overhear him saying, 'Miss? Do I look like I'm wearing a dress to you?'

But talk to a child directly and ask them about their life, and they become a stuttering ball of mush. Play a game with a child, and people will look at you funny. Just the other day I was interacting with 5 Primary school kids while they played with my hair (a very common practice for us whities. Kids love our hair. 'Soo soft...'). And one of the children's aunties saw me and asked, “Julie, yuh ave any pickney?' And I said, 'No, mam. Nah yet.' (Another mind-boggling thing in our community.) 'Dat's why yuh take a pickney so. Yah nah haffi deal wid dem a yuh yard.'
To Be Continued...