Schools- Part 3

Okay, a last post about schools in Jamaica, at least for now. There were just a few random things we thought were worth mentioning:

Rain. In Jamaica, there's really only two seasons: the rainy season and the dry season. In Accompong, during the rainy season it pretty much rains every day for a good hour. That being said, imagine yourself in a school classroom with 40-odd 4th and 5th graders, surrounded by concrete walls, and a single layer sheet of corrugated zinc that serves as both roof and ceiling, not exactly the best acoustics to begin with. Now imagine it starts to downpour -because when it rains in Accompong, it rains. That's right, chaos. Matt and I have tried to talk to each other in these circumstances, literally screaming in each other's ear and we still can't hear each other.

Transportation. Getting to and from school is the responsibility of the student and their respective family. Since most rural Jamaicans don't have cars, and if they did, couldn't afford to drive back and forth every day, many Jamaican children get to school via taxi. This can be extremely expensive considering that, at best, a rural community will have a primary and junior high school. Most high schoolers throughout Jamaica have to travel long distances to get to school. Aside from the time and energy involved, the amount of money needed seems unreal. For example, the closest high school to us is about 25 minutes away, and costs J$140, roughly US$1.75, and that's one way. Now, students do get a discount of half price, but still that's almost US$9/week, and again, that's the closest high school. The Jamaican school system is not set up so that students attend the closest high school. As a result, students from our community attend schools all over the parish. Some students travel up to 2 hours one way. You start doing the math and realize why so many high school students are sitting around the community on days they should be going to school. And let's not forget that if US$9 seems like a lot to you and me, imagine how much it seems to the poor living in the developing world. A very rough estimate of average income in our community would be around $3000-$5000/year. After transportation costs there are also lunch, school fees, supplies needed, etc. Thus, we know many people in Accompong that never graduated high school, simply because they couldn't afford it.

One of the many problems that this transportation issue creates is inappropriate relationships between taxi-men and high-school girls. These relationships are as widely acknowledged as they are generally ignored and accepted, they allow some girls the ability to get back and forth to school on days that they don't have any money. Who can blame these girls? What are options do they have? Stay home, uneducated, and continue in the cycle of poverty, or do what you have to do to get out? As a result, many parents turn a blind eye because they feel just as helpless. What are their options, when they know the best chance their daughter has of a different life is education? What do they do when they can't afford to pay the fees? For most parents, this is humiliating enough. So often times they ignore what they know is going on, because there's nothing to be done about it. So leave it be, and eventually it will go away.

Accompong schools. Within Accompong we have a two-roomed basic school. Basic schools are most similar to day care/kindergarten as the age range of students is 3-6 years old. We also have a primary and junior high school that consists of 8 classrooms. Although we do have actual walls that separate each classroom, they don't extend all the way to the ceiling for some reason. That being said, for such a rural community as Accompong is, we feel that have a pretty nice building compared to many other schools.

Corporal punishment... it happens, and is widely accepted in many Jamaican school systems.