Address by Attorney General & Minister of Education Hon. Francis Fonseca at CARICOM & UNICEF Meeting: "The Unspoken Gender Dimension: Boys and Education"

Chateau Caribbean, Belize City, November 20, 2007 - I thank you for inviting me to be here with you this evening, not only for the opportunity  to welcome you to our beautiful country, but as well to share with you briefly a few of my own thoughts on the challenge of keeping boys in our education system, and generally on the future work and plans for education.

The global environment is unsympathetic to the fragility and vulnerability of small developing nation-states. Powerless to halt the inequitable expansion of global markets, our challenge as a community is to ensure that we have the rules and institutions at the local level that will promote and provide strong governance, and as well to ensure that our people are equipped with the knowledge, information, skills, values and attitudes necessary to function effectively and successfully in that global environment.

I submit that our prospects for future growth are directly linked to our capacity to develop and implement an economic development model that is increasingly knowledge based and grounded in a firm commitment to investing in human capital.

As former Jamaican Prime Minister, P.J. Patterson, put it, “The technological revolution and the emergence of economic activities which rest primarily on the pillars of knowledge, rather than on the abundance of natural resources, pose real demands for all of us. The old hierarchical ways of management, organization, education and training must give way to more wide-based, flexible and knowledge oriented interrelationships where all concerned are part of an information-led environment”.

Central to meeting these new demands and our regional and national goals of modern economies and just societies is good, effective education systems.

For us in CARICOM and SICA, the Education model we embrace must equip our peoples at any and every stage of their lives with the tools they need to create value out of that education. It must be an education that is relevant to the needs of our private and public sectors and train our people to be global citizens. It must provide us with populations that can not only find employment, but also create employment.

Our Education systems must also promote regional and national pride, positive values, wholesome self-esteem, a strong work ethic and civic responsibility in our peoples while cultivating and instilling in them a spirit of inquiry and openness. The vision and philosophy is grounded in the simple yet fundamental truth that the ultimate goal of education is “a better life”.

Some twelve years ago, Belize joined nations of the world in Jomtien, Thailand in making “Education For All” a national priority. Regrettably, today, many of the now familiar recommendations inspired by Jomtien remain central to our discussions. Issues such as Gender, Equity, Quality, Relevance, Efficiency and Access continue to shape and define the Education Debate.

This is not to say that important progress has not been made. A lot has been done to ensure much greater access to primary school, more girls are enrolled in school, there are more trained teachers, average class sizes are going down in many of our countries, repetition and drop-out rates are improving in some countries, and new and important investments are being made in technical and vocational education and in Early Childhood Education and Development.

Indeed, many have been hard at work, but we all know much more work is ahead.

An immediate challenge is the one which brings you together at this sub-regional conference – keeping boys in our education system.

While there remains a great deal of work to do in relation to Millennium Development Goal 3 – promoting gender equality and empowering women, it is timely and important that we have convened on this important subject.

The challenge of keeping boys in our education system is of course part of a larger, deeper challenge of installing hope, confidence and a sense of responsibility in our boys. Too many of our young boys are falling victim to a culture of indifference and crass materialism often manifested in violent behavior.

This is a reflection of our changing societies, our changing values. Too many broken families, too many of our men abdicating their responsibilities to their children, too many “boys” fathering “boys”, too many of our men in prison and on drugs, too many of our people dying from HIV/AIDS, and from crime and violence.

Too many reasons for our young men and boys to fail. Their failure is our failure!

In the absence of fathers, boys are being asked to shoulder responsibilities; emotional, financial and otherwise, at a time when they should be enjoying their youth and focusing on their education.

At the same time, the global message beamed into Caribbean and Central American living rooms 24 hours a day on cable and satellite TV and Radio, via the internet; on their I-pods, and now even on our cell phones; is that success is about fancy cars and houses. Success is about getting it quick and easy! Why, they ask, invest 15 years of my life in a classroom leading to a job that pays me 30,000 a year for the next 20 years.

My friends, this is a tough issue that brings with it tough questions. We are indeed in a battle for our young people, young men in particular.

My submission to you is that there is no unique, complex solution to this challenge. First, we must recognize and acknowledge the crisis facing our boys. Second, all of us, public and private sectors, civil society, the churches, the community and our boys, must understand and appreciate our role and responsibility in responding to this crisis. Third, we must act. This means investing even more in education, in early childhood development, in technical and vocational training, in after-school programs. Investing more in sports and other forms of positive engagement like boy clubs, the Scouts and Church youth organizations. Investing in prison reform and rehabilitation and employment training.

At the same time, we must be tough on the drug lords and street thugs who thrive on and benefit from this crisis facing our boys. And we must not allow parents and families to avoid personal responsibility. When a parent decides to buy a new TV or new clothes instead of the textbooks his or her child need, that is a wrong choice and we should not be afraid to say so.

Of course, poverty has a crippling effect on our families and children, and we must do everything we can to attack it at its roots.

All of this is of course much easier said than done given the many tough challenges and limitations we all face in our countries. But our people, our organizations have never shied away from tough challenges.

I am confident that your discussions over the next 2 days will lead to a wider, deeper reasoning on these issues and thereafter to specific recommendations for action to our national governments and stakeholders. I hope that my own thoughts have added to that discussion.

Once again, thank you to UNICEF and CARICOM for organizing this conference. May it meet with great success for the good of our regions and nations. Thank you.