In the years after the end of slavery some of the most important people in Jamaica were the schoolteachers. There was great interest in education among the former slaves, and over the years hundreds of them and their children were able to get some training as teachers. Although there has been criticism, then and since, of the competence of these teachers, it was they who laid the foundations for the advancement of thousands upon thousands of Jamaicans, including themselves and their families.
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As one of them wrote in a later generation:
'Oh, those God-sent teachers of rural Jamaica!' (J. J. Mills)
'Oh, those God-sent teachers of rural Jamaica!' (J. J. Mills)
. . . it would probably be impossible to calculate how many Jamaicans have gone abroad to other countries, to study, and, often, then to teach.
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