Jamaica may be experiencing a cultural shift that is transforming how learners engage with curriculum and pedagogy. Young people are quietly being taught that influence is more valuable than discipline, visibility more profitable than skill, and fast money more respectable than slow development.

There was a time when society operated with a clear qualification plan. Parents and children believed education was the ladder, the key to success. Children often recited “Labour for learning before you grow old because learning is better than silver and gold”. The “bright child” and the “educated person” occupied aspirational space within the imagination of a success story. But somewhere beneath the surface of modern Jamaica, another syllabus quietly emerged.

There has been repeated demand for increased productivity, skilled labour, discipline, and independence, arguing that the move should be beyond low unemployment towards higher-value jobs and increased productivity. But do we fully understand the cultural curriculum now competing with the formal school curriculum? A child today is not only learning from school. Our children are also learning from dancehall culture, TikTok, scammer glamour, influencer economics, the dollies and the baddies, and the public rebranding of the “dunce” identity.