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When the PLP took over the reins of government in 1998 there were moments of great promise, particularly for education. One of the first things then Premier and Education Minister Jennifer Smith did was to reduce the ratio of students per classroom teacher. This was a quick and relatively easy step that research indicated could make a big difference. It also sent a signal that the PLP was going to charge ahead with educational reform.

The Education Minister also spoke out against the practice of "social promotion" where children were promoted to the next grade level without having met the standards of the grade they were in. She addressed the issue of functional illiteracy and began a dialogue on measures to alleviate it. Dame Jennifer, as she is now, recognised that closing the income divide and the racial gap was inextricably tied to raising the expectations and outcome of the public education system.

But more was required. The education system in a wealthy and well-equipped island like ours should be able to produce truly educated people - people who value learning, who yearn for knowledge, who think critically, who comprehend and cherish their own and the island's uniqueness, who seek enlightenment.

As an example, educated people have no problem admitting what they don't know. To fill gaps in their knowledge they ask questions: about things they see, hear and read; about the world around them, about anything they don't understand. In contrast, uneducated people think they know much, or all, and say things like "You can't tell me, I already know."

Citizenship

Full education would influence our approaches to nutrition and health, citizenship and life's purpose, and social and economic sustainability. Full education would see us all engaged in a search for a system of governance that welded rather than fractured our community. Full education would have teachers, students and parents unified in awareness and emphasis on the value of an education.

Leaders in an educated community would see to it at the very least that all schools had adequate libraries and that the National Library was a monument to the acquisition of knowledge by being modern, well equipped and staffed, and a catalyst for self-initiated learning.

This is key because places where most our education is supposed to take place, the public schools, have poor library facilities and a high proportion of black students, many of whom have parents who share cultural values that work against a well-rounded education.

Examples of those values are:

n Children should be seen and not heard;

n Talented children are just 'showing off;'

n Creativity is abnormal;

n 'Because I said so' is a valid response to a question;

n Good grammar and proper enunciation are 'dicty' and not to be encouraged;

n Television viewing trumps book reading, and soap operas are role models for real life.

These are compounded by an anti-education culture present among many public school students themselves.

I point all this out to illustrate how complex the problem is and how inadequate is a restructuring scheme that doesn't tackle the bigger picture.

If we are going to approach the ideal of an educated community, we will have to tackle the less than constructive habits that exist and are perpetuated in many families that feed our public schools. We will need leaders who are bold to build and stock school and national libraries, who are persuasive for parenting intervention in skills of relationship building and conflict resolution, who are committed to elevating literacy and scholarship, who won't give up until all the mechanisms are in place to produce a fully educated community.

We're not there yet. Engaging Professor Hopkins was a start but I think we've lost our way and desperately need to regroup. n

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