Implement social and emotional learning urgently

THE EDITOR, Madam:

IT WAS Aristotle who said, “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” Jamaica is not short on research as it relates to what needs to be done to transform our education system. What we lack is the willpower to do what needs to be done. In my opinion, personnel at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information (MOEYI) seem to operate as if they are afraid of their own shadows, and as such they seem to be afraid to make any decision outside of the status quo/ norm.

One critical recommendation by the 2021 Education Transformation Report is that social and emotional learning needs to be implemented in the school system. Children must be taught how to manage their own emotions and how to build positive, caring relationships. It is not automatic; they must be taught. The world is leaps and bounds ahead of us as it relates to the implementation of social and emotional learning in the education system! What are we waiting for? How many more children need to die? How many more children need to be stabbed?

The systematisation of social and emotional learning is needed at every level of the Jamaican system. Certainly, parents and teachers must be trained. Children live what they learn. The implementation needs to begin at the early-childhood level. This will ensure that we are building children who are caring and who have solid characters. Social and emotional learning must become part of our culture.

It is high time that corporal punishment be banished from our books. Corporal punishment is illegal in prisons but still allowed to happen in our homes. Positive discipline and positive youth development need to be the way forward for this nation. Time to arise and find our true identity, it’s just too much now.

School Wide Positive Intervention and Support Programme (SWPIS) is a great start but much more is needed. This approach comes from the school of behaviourism and has many weaknesses. I recommend pairing of SWPIS with positive discipline which comes from the Adlerian Approach and has way more benefits. The time is now. Act Now, MOEYI!

According to Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” The business of education is no simple matter – an education system has the power to break or make a nation. Let us be ever vigilant in fixing the education system.

ANISA WILSON-SMITH Author, Guidance Counsellor, Child and Youth Advocate