Wrong message about teaching

I am rather concerned about the message that my fellow Jamaicans are sending to our youths about the teaching profession. The profession has been at the centre of many discussions in recent months, with the impression being conveyed that many teachers are being paid handsomely for little or no work.

With the teaching profession being portrayed in such a negative manner, I now wonder how many students have been dissuaded from following this career path. In our discussions of performance pay, teachers' unreasonable demands and poor examination results in 'core' subjects, we have been forgetting the children. In Jamaica, we are taught knowingly and unknowingly to aspire to positions which will enable us to enjoy comfortable lives.

We would do well to remember that extrinsic motivation is a factor in our choice of professions. If we are not careful we will have no one choosing teaching as the profession of choice but something to fall back on - which may be the case now.

Please remember, children live what they learn.

- Kimberley Vaughns, tryinggirlforever@yahoo.com

Class sizes make it difficult to teach

Recently, the high schools in Jamaica were ranked based on the number of passes they received in the recent CSEC examinations for both English and mathematics. Yes that's good, but remember that English and mathematics are not the only subjects they do.

I have one problem though. They looked at the cohort of grade 11 students and made their judgement based on that. But is that really fair? The truth is I teach at a technical high school and there are roughly 240 students in grade 11. What will shock you is that not even 40 of those students can do CSEC English, not to mention mathematics.

Now I know that many people are going to say: so what have the teachers done to help these students? Well, the bottom line is that because the class sizes are so big (45), it is near impossible for you to give these students individual attention and even so, there is a curriculum that has to be followed even when teachers know that the students cannot manage that level of work.

What I am saying is real. It is time some of the educated people who are talking come into the schools not for a day but to teach and see the reality of what is taking place. I am a teacher and it scares me to think that we are sending out a large percentage of students who cannot do simple calculation or who have even average comprehension skills.

- R. Williams, St Ann, rosewilliams2006@.yahoo.com

Health care needs shot in the arm

I applaud Dr Winston Dawes for his courage and commitment to the health sector in Jamaica. As an expatriate who was part of the nursing sector in the island, my advice to the Government of the day is to wake up! Health care is no longer a social service but big business.

Where is the Government getting money from to fund the health sector? Nurses and doctors, along with other support staff, must be paid a liveable wage or, no matter how hard you try, you are going to lose your prized resources to foreign markets. Health-care workers cannot take good intentions to the supermarkets or to the landlords.

If the island cannot afford to maintain a satisfactory health-care system, then industries like tourism will also suffer. Freeness often breeds abuses.

- A health-care worker, Queens, New York, adassagreen6@aol.com