Many of Jamaica's high school graduates enter the University of the West Indies 'to get an education'. The phrase 'to get an education', along with incurring scholastic and conceptual limitations, betrays the legacies of visionaries like Marcus Garvey and Walter Rodney. The latter was barred from entering the UWI in 1968 because of his de-education and re-education rhetoric. Education, when viewed from this 'means to an end' perspective ('to get an education') becomes restrictive and infertile. The results are low productivity rates, erosion of culture caused by cultural invasions, high levels of ignorance, low levels of independent thinking and widespread poverty.

Garvey once warned that true education is "not to be crammed with the subject matter of the book or the philosophy of the classroom." Formal education must be an experiential process for both pupil and tutor. Students must be encouraged to think for themselves, and must be taught how to use historical facts to make sense of the present and prepare for the future. Education at the UWI, Mona, is largely a process of high levels of information input, low levels of constructive output and rare moments where independent thinking is robustly encouraged.

Create opportunities

About 3,000 students will graduate from the UWI Mona this weekend. They have gotten their 'education'! They have worked hard in an institution that demands much from its students. As the present crop of students balance their studies between five to seven parties a week, I encourage those who are leaving to do all that they can to create opportunities for their fellow countrymen, while discarding the shackles of 'old education'. With the quickly growing levels of materialism and individualism on campus (seen both in students and lecturers), one wonders if our country's future will be safer in the hands of preceding generations and whether the 'worst' is right around the corner.

I am, etc.,

Craig Dixon

craig.dixon11@gmail.com

Rex Nettleford Hall

UWI, Mona