Letter of the Day | The straw that broke the camel’s back

THE EDITOR Madam:

If Hurricane Melissa were a strategist, it would deserve commendation. The storm managed to displace students across the island while leaving teachers completely unscathed. At least, that is what one must assume from the recent comments made by Stewart Jacobs, President of the National Parent-Teacher Association of Jamaica. According to him, with the right persuasion, teachers should be more than willing to give up their Saturdays, extend school days, and sacrifice Christmas, Easter, and even summer because, apparently, teachers exist in a separate ecosystem, untouched by disaster, fatigue, or the basic human need for rest.

How fortunate Jamaica must be to have a profession of people who, unlike every other citizen, experience no trauma, no grief, no loss, and certainly no psychological impact from a category 5 hurricane battering the island. Teachers, it seems, have no families to attend to, no homes to repair, no children of their own who were also affected. They float above disaster like mythical creatures, summoned at will whenever national consciousness remembers they exist.

The Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information and other stakeholders continue to produce the most imaginative solutions in these times of crisis. Tent schools, extended hours, forced reopening. Interestingly, what is strangely missing is the one thing that would have prevented this spectacle in the first place: crisis management. Actual, evidence-based planning. Strategic frameworks that anticipate the continuation of schooling after hurricanes, earthquakes, pandemics, and whatever else nature or mankind may send our way.

Had crisis management been embedded in the Ministry’s strategic planning, there would be no need for this national guessing game about how to “make up” weeks going on to months of education disruption. No need to publicly debate how to stretch teachers like elastic bands until they pop. No need to pretend that the psychological toll on teachers is imaginary, as if they are not humans who also have flooded houses, damaged communities, and the collective grief of a nation. The impact would have already been projected and predicted. Planning done and after the passage of the Hurricane, immediate execution for recovery, restoration, rebuilding and a journey back to normalcy would commence.

But here we are, again, prioritising student wellbeing (important, yes) while entirely ignoring the teachers whose labour makes any form of wellbeing in education possible. Jamaica continues to ask teachers to pour from empty cups and then appears baffled when the profession keeps leaking talent to Canada, the United States, and England. The underdogs remain underfed, overworked, and perpetually blamed for national problems they did not create.

The exploitation of teachers seems to be socially acceptable, they are to smile, be patient, be selfless, be disrespected by parents and students and never ever push back. So, when the straw breaks the camel’s back, don’t be surprised when teachers head to the airports in droves.

DELTA WRIGHT

PhD researcher

Edge Hill University

delta.wright@edgehill.ac.uk