Class, gender and development
By A. Swaby-Burton, Contributor

EDUCATION IS a continuing process starting from the earliest infancy and continuing through adulthood. The Caribbean has a fairly literate population when compared with other countries in the world. Figures from the International Task Force on Literacy in 1991 revealed that for the Caribbean territories of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Jamaica, Martinique, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Trinidad and Tobago show literacy rates ranging from as low as 5.9 per cent in Dominica to that of 24 per cent in St. Kitts. These figures compared favourably at the time with three per cent) for Britain and seven per cent Canada. It also observed that Ghana and Kenya in West and East Africa respectively, have rates of about 52 per cent and the Congo in Central Africa has a high rate of 84 per cent (1991 figures). The Caribbean generally is even better placed than Mexico in Latin America with a rate of 17 per cent.

Primary school enrolment is virtually 100 per cent of the primary age group in all of the Commonwealth Caribbean. In Haiti, however, only about 50 per cent of the 6-11-year-olds are in school. (Hinchcliffe. K ­ Access Quality and Efficiency in Caribbean Education, A Regional Study 1992).

It is not easy to do a comparative study of secondary school enrolment throughout the region as the system of education at this level varies in structure. In some islands after three years, on successful completion of an examination, some post-primary students transfer to full secondary school. Barbados is near universalisation of secondary schooling, that is, almost all of the children are in secondary schools. In Jamaica with the introduction of the GSAT (Grade Six Achievement Test) all students writing this examination are assured a place in a secondary school.

It is important to emphasise here that the reason for the great emphasis on the importance of education is because it is one of the main avenues of upward social mobility in the Caribbean, and indeed for most developing countries. Education is also important to National and regional economic development for many reasons. These include:

The lack of education leads to economic backwardness which manifests itself in low labour efficiency, factor immobility, limited specialisation in occupations and trade and deficiency in the supply of entrepreneurship, customary values and traditional social institutions that minimise the incentives for economic change.

Secondly the economic quality of the population remains low where there is little knowledge of structural resources available.

Thirdly, there is underinvestment in human capital. This means that the rate at which physical capital can be effectively utilised will be limited since technical, professional and administrative people are needed to make effective use of material capital.

Education is of vital importance to the process of social mobility. Derek Gordon discovered in his research on intergenerational social mobility in the labour force in Jamaica, that it is very difficult for the children of working class parents to more upwards into the professional and managerial strata. He stated that:­

"the upper social strata of top professionals and managers were most likely to be recruited from within the middle strata and least likely to be recruited from the
working class or pleasantry. But even in the upper strata, only 37 per cent of the men and 30 per cent of the women were recruited from the middle strata,
while one in five men (27 per cent women) were recruited from the working class. One in five of both sexes from the small farmer."

GENDER

Over the last two decades, in the Caribbean, a Number of important studies have emerged which discuss the relationship between education and gender. All the writers note that in the past, there was unequal access of girls and boys to education. There used to be a definite bias in favour of males in terms of access to secondary education. Today, however, in the Caribbean, one can safely say that neither sex is discriminated against at the primary level. However, in some territories, the balance was shifted the other way in terms of access to secondary education. There is a significant higher percentage enrolment of females than males.

There is a general gender bias in the curricula in secondary schools. Many more females are taught Home Economies than males and many more males do the "traditionally male" subjects such as woodwork, agricultural science, technical drawing and so on.

School reading also help to perpetuate gender differences. Although this is changing, story books in primary schools often portray boys as showing initiative and independence, while girls, if they appear at all, are more passive, stories written especially for girls often have an element of adventure in them, but this usually takes the form of intrigues or mysteries in domestic or school settings. Boy's adventure stories are more wide-ranging, having heroes who travel off to distant places or in other ways are widely independent.

Sue Sharpe, in one of her studies of working class girls in schools in Ealing in 1972, found that girls priorities at school-leaving age were love, marriage husbands, children, jobs and careers more or less in this order. Most of the careers chosen by girls were centred on traditionally female jobs. In a follow up study in 1994, Sharpe acknowledged significant changes. She found that most girls in the 90s were more assertive about their rights and were more concerned about staying on at school or college after sixteen to acquire more qualifications. Although this is an example from the British system, the same is true today for most Caribbean islands.

Despite this Sharpe also points to the contradiction in the messages girls receive today. On the one hand there is greater emphasis on achieving qualifications, but on the other girls are still socialised to be future wives and mothers and are generally expected to help out far more with house work than boys. This may help to explain why, even when girls achieve on equal terms with boys at school, they find it harder than males to translate academic success into success in careers and even when they do they receive less rewards than males.

Join me next week as we continue to explore areas of interest on your syllabus.