It's a matter of righting a grievous historical wrong. Visualise Jamaica in 1838: over 300,000 former slaves have just achieved full freedom. The administration of the colony is in the hands of the former slavemasters who see the majority of the population as very important to them - as labour in their canefields and coffee-pieces. Educating the black masses is contrary to their interests, as graduates would immediately remove themselves from agricultural labour, leaving the planters high and dry. The Jamaica House of Assembly takes the decision in their best interests - there will be no schools for the slaves.

The non-conformist churches offer the only educational opportunities for the former slaves in mission (primary) schools. The only opportunities for secondary education in Jamaica are in a few grammar schools operated by trusts - for the children of the planters and overseers. Wolmer's, which opened its doors in the 1700s, catered exclusively for white Anglo-Saxon children until 1797, when it began to admit Jews under certain conditions; (three) brown children were first admitted in 1815, and by 1837 80 per cent of the students were coloured (the white children had their own segregated schools).

As late as 1882 the school, which would later become Westwood High School, was established by the Rev William Menzie Webb, Baptist minister at Stewart Town, as a non-denominational school for girls following an incident in which white parents withdrew their children from another school which had admitted black girls.

First gov't-built secondary schools

No! The place for black people is in the cane field. The first government-built secondary schools in Jamaica would come only in 1961 (Morant Bay High and St Mary High) - the year before political independence.

The fact is that we have never had a functional primary or secondary school system in Jamaica for the majority. In this 21st century, less than half the graduates of primary schools are literate, and only a small proportion of secondary graduates possess external examination certification. An education system has been created which functions well to protect the supply of cheap unskilled agricultural labour.

On the other hand, we operate a high-quality prep and high school system for the chosen few, with their graduates eminently able to access the best universities and colleges in the world, and able to perform along with the most brilliant. So we can do it, if we want to.

Our Caribbean neighbours

It will help us in our analysis if we realise that we are different from our Caribbean neighbours with the same history of slavery and colonialism as ours; Barbados and Trinidad have low rates of illiteracy, and their secondary students far outperform ours. Both of these countries have structured their economies differently to ours; they require an educated labour force to drive their services, manufacturing and tourism sectors, and they have designed their education systems to produce what they need. Barbados is almost a first world country in its level of development.

Stop blaming slavery

Not even 46 years after political independence have we been able to teach the majority of our primary school children to read, or educate our citizens properly. And as the system of preferences around our sheltered plantation agriculture falls apart, we can now see the foolishness of the way we have structured our economy and labour force until now. I refuse to blame slavery and our colonial past for where we are today. It is our various JLP and PNP governments and their financial backers which have squandered the opportunities which independence offered and which got us into this mess. We could have done much more and much better, as others have shown.

The Government of the day has to get us out of the hole. At the very least we must have a functional education system, otherwise there will be few opportunities for reducing crime and violence and to stimulate sustained economic growth. If this government does only one thing well, let it be to transform our dysfunctional education system.

The 'Education Transformation Pro-gramme' within the Ministry of Education has to be much more transparent. We need a clear explanation of the road map to a literate and educated Jamaica, and the targets and strategies must become the matter of public discussion and national buy-in. If the people in charge of transforming our education system are not up to it, then they must step aside. It is too important to our national development and future for them to operate in secret, gobbling up billions of dollars for God knows what.

It's a matter of righting a grievous historical wrong.