Buried Alive: How Tech and Texting are Collapsing Global Education

Looking out my window this Sunday morning, October 4, 2026, the sky is a heavy, blanketed gray. Dark clouds and thick fog have completely swallowed the mountains in the distance, hiding them from view. It got me thinking about how often the most important things in life can be obscured by fog—including the future of our children.

Lately, I’ve been stepping away from the biased, politically divided noise on social media to focus on a much deeper crisis. The spark for these thoughts came from a recent discussion in a WhatsApp group, where my friend, Dee, shared a heartbreaking reality: children are sitting for their CSEC exams completely unable to read or comprehend the test papers. 

It seems that reading and foundational learning have become obscured by a modern fog of tech dependency. Here are my raw thoughts on the current state of early childhood education, from Jamaica to across the globe...

The Lost Art of the Foundation: From the Island of Jamaica to UC Berkeley, USA

Lack of proper early childhood education in Jamaica has failed our children. They are arriving at and graduating from high schools without fundamental reading skills. To compound and worsen the situation, along comes texting with its acronyms and shortcuts—not to mention modern technology and calculators.

Students are sitting for major, final exams completely unable to comprehend the language of the tests assigned to them. That is absolutely, positively true. I have been closely following all the reports. It is as if learning to read has become a taboo. They are far more invested in GYSM, LOL, YOLO, BOBDL, and BC (which certainly doesn't mean Before Christ anymore!). MNL! 😂🤭

This isn't just happening at home, either. Outside of Jamaica, institutions like UC Berkeley recently reported a similar predicament regarding their incoming students. They are struggling so heavily with basic math concepts that there is a loud call for the revival of standardized testing to figure out a system to bring them up to scratch.

The core issue is that students have become solely dependent on modern technology. I recall in my early years at infant school, learning by rote was a big deal. Today, there is no such thing.

Growing up in rural Jamaica, the elders always warned us how vital it was to learn to read and write. They used to tell us, "People will write your name on a bulla cake and give it to you to eat without you even noticing!" In actuality, they were warning us that if you are illiterate, people can feed you absolute crap—cow's pancake—and you won't even know the difference because all you see is that it's round like a bulla.

Today, AI, "samfi scifi," and rapid tech improvements have completely taken over. We are letting our youth be fed tech shortcuts, leaving them, as the great Buju Banton sings, Buried Alive... 🎶🤖

Tah-Tah! Reading is the key to success. 

Grace Dunkley-Asphall, Copyright © 2026

When Night Turns to Day: The False Security of Digital Secrets and the Power of Living in the Light

Jamaican saying: When you think it’s peace and safety it’s sudden destruction.

We are living in an information society, a digital age where every tap of a key is etched into permanence. Yet, instead of making us more transparent, this hyper-connected world has given rise to a strange, widespread psychological illness: the epidemic of pretentiousness. People have built elaborate, sanitized digital walls to hide behind, painting flawless pictures to impress strangers while burying their true thoughts in the shadows.

The Heavy Toll of Forced Silence

But there is a dangerous irony in trying too hard to stay invisible. In a free society, the freedom to raise our voices, to speak out and up about the horrible realities of our world—from the loss of jobs to the crippling costs of medical bills, medications, food, gas, and rent—carries a cost. Because some onlookers are quick to label any outspoken view as "too militant," many choose absolute silence. They suppress their thoughts, muffle their expressions, and bottle up their genuine anxieties. But human nature cannot tolerate that kind of containment for long. Eventually, when you force yourself to swallow your reality to keep up appearances, you implode. You become an emotional wreck, hazardous to your own well-being.

The Illusion of the Digital Confessional Booth

To escape this mental anguish, people look for a backdoor. This is where the false confidentiality of apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger catches them in a psychological trap. Because these platforms happen away from public viewing, people treat them like a secure confessional booth. They let their guard down, typing out their deepest, darkest secrets, or venting their rawest feelings as if they can confide in a piece of software.

But "encrypted" only means your message is safe while traveling through the air. The moment it lands on someone else’s device, your privacy is completely out of your hands. I have always said that the Bible warns us Jesus shall come like a thief in the night. When that day arrives, a lot of people are going to be caught with their fingers frozen to their keys, desperately trying to hide what they shared in the dark. If night should ever suddenly turn to day on Messenger and WhatsApp, exposing everything hidden behind the screen, many will not be able to look the Father in the face. They will walk straight ahead with their heads bowed in total shame. True integrity means you don’t write in the dark what you are afraid to stand by in the daylight.

Confronting the "Flies on the Wall"

Then, there are the spectators on the outer edge—the "monitoring spirits" and the flies on the wall. These are the friends and acquaintances who quietly stalk your public Facebook page, reading your words and viewing your life, yet refusing to type a single syllable or leave a comment. They act entirely unconcerned online. Yet, the very moment they see you in person, they want to corner you and discuss everything you posted.

That is pure hypocrisy. Why sit there pretending you don't care, only to demand an intimate conversation in private? When people act like that, I refuse to hold a conversation with them. If you cannot stand with me or engage with me in the open digital square, do not expect me to grant you my energy behind closed doors. Even worse are those who try to police others, telling people not to comment on their friends' pages because they are "too opinionated." These silent watchers are never the ones who come up with real-world solutions to situations. Yet, when bolder souls risk the unknown and speak up to make things better, these hypocrites are the first in line to benefit from the progress.

The Cost of a Curated Persona

Ultimately, those who try the hardest to be careful are the ones most likely to trip over their own pretense. Their absolute, unnatural silence causes people to quietly investigate them. When you paint a picture that is too perfect, you don't protect yourself—you transform yourself into a suspect. People begin to wonder if you are truly who you display yourself to be in the public eye, or if you are hiding a wreck behind the facade.

We just need to act normal. We need to stop trying to curate a performance to impress an audience that doesn’t truly care about us. Keep your personal family moments close to your chest for safety, use the broad reach of the public square to stand firmly behind your principles, and speak out against injustice without fear. When you live an upfront, transparent life, you never have to stress about the walls coming down, because you have nothing to hide.

Tah-Tah!  View things from different angles to see how they look and feel.

Grace Dunkley-Asphall, Copyright © 2026

From Spiritual Abuse to Unshakeable Freedom: A Journey of Reclaiming My Worth

Aging comes with fresh eyes and wisdom.

For a long time, I lived inside a fortress built by other people’s fears. As a child, religion was not a sanctuary; it was a cage of eggshells and invisible tripwires. I was taught a fragile spirituality, one where the most innocent, human pieces of myself were weighed on a scale of cosmic damnation. Manipulation was dressed up as divinity. Threats like "the blood of Jesus is on you" were weaponized to inject a crippling, holy fear into my bones, designed to keep me small, guilty, and entirely at the beck and call of those who demanded the center stage.

Through that painful experience, I learned a profound truth:

"Manipulation isn’t synonymous with change. It is a way to bully people into believing they are not worthy."

But chains, no matter how holy they claim to be, are still chains.

My awakening did not happen in a single thunderclap, but through the slow, steady awakening of my own mind. Critical thinking became my quiet rebellion. I began to look at the grand contradictions of the world with clear, wide-open eyes. I realized that a system requiring me to break my own spirit just to keep someone else's ego fed was not truth—it was spiritual abuse. The terrifying phrases that used to grip my heart lost their supernatural gravity; today, the weaponized wine is just grape juice, and the shouting voices are just noise in the wind.

Now, I understand the profound power of silence. When manipulative people bring their antics, looking for the fuel of my reaction, I hand them my quietness. Let them believe they have the upper hand. Let them bask in their unearned praise and grand appearances. My silence isn’t passivity; it is a fortress. It is the ultimate boundary of a person who finally knows exactly who they are.

Today, the chains are down. They are completely gone. I have reclaimed my spirituality on my own terms, deep and unshakeable. Nobody else gets to define my worth, my future, or my connection to the universe. I am thinking deeper, questioning everything, and standing firmly in the brilliant light of my own independence. I am finally, truly, wide awake.

Tah-Tah! We see things with fresh eyes as we grow older.

Grace Dunkley-Asphall, Copyright ©️ 2026

The Highfalutin Tongue: Why We Need to Forgive Our Fluency and Our Filters

Words are constantly evolving in a world of possibilities. 

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We are raised on strict, invisible chalk lines. In close-knit communities, language is the ultimate measure of respect, and specific words are treated as social landmines. We grow up keeping our filters high and our expressions polished. Yet, as we step out into a broader, more diverse world, we discover a fascinating truth: human behavior does not fit neatly into a textbook, and the rules of language are entirely made up.

First, we must look at the science of our slip-ups. When life hits us with sudden shock or an overwhelming burst of joyful news, our brains flood with adrenaline and dopamine. In those high-energy moments, our emotional centers completely hijack the driver's seat, bypassing our logical upbringing. Letting out a taboo word isn't a sign of ignorance; it is a physical and neurological release valve. It lowers stress hormones and matches the massive scale of our raw, human excitement. It is a moment of total authenticity.

Furthermore, the very concept of a "bad word" is a historical accident. English has a notoriously highfalutin history of looking down its nose at others. Following the French invasion of 1066, the ruling class labeled native peasant words as vulgar simply because of who spoke them. We carry that snobbery into the modern world, often snickering at international names like Schitt (an ancient German woodworking title) or Fuk (a beautiful Vietnamese name meaning "blessings and good fortune"). We mock global heritages just because English slang transformed innocent sounds into playground jokes. Meanwhile, we completely ignore that the English name Gary sounds exactly like the word for diarrhea in Japan.

Ultimately, we live and we learn. True maturity means realizing that what we look down on is often just a cultural blind spot. It is time to drop the judgment and stop policing how people vent their stress or shout their joy. Life is too short to let a rigid, highfalutin language dictate our filters. We should celebrate the moments that shock us into laughter, give grace to the words that slip out when we are excited, and remember that every culture is just trying to translate the same messy, beautiful human experience.

Tah-Tah!  Words are constantly evolving in a world of possibilities.

Grace Dunkley-Asphall, Copyright © 2026

I Finally had that Conversation with AI…

Part 1: The Linguistic Roots of Rest (Sabbath vs. Sabbatical)

The modern workplace sabbatical is directly related to the religious Sabbath. Both words originate from the Hebrew word Shabbat, which means "to rest" or "to cease from labor."

The concept of a sabbatical comes from the biblical law of Shmita (the Sabbatical Year) found in Leviticus 25. Just as people were commanded to rest on the seventh day (Sabbath), ancient Jewish farmers were commanded to let their agricultural land rest and lie fallow every seventh year. Harvard University adapted this "seventh-year rest" concept in 1880 to give professors a year off for research, creating the modern workplace sabbatical.

Part 2: Why Different Worship Days Aren’t All Called "Sabbath"

The divergence in why different religions do not use the same word for their day of worship stems from deep historical, linguistic, and theological shifts:

• Judaism (Saturday): The seventh day remains Shabbat because it fulfills the original commandment of creation, where God rested on the seventh day.

• Mainstream Christianity (Sunday): Early Christians intentionally shifted their primary day of worship from Saturday to Sunday to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. To distinguish it from the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath, early Christian writers heavily emphasized calling Sunday The Lord's Day(Dominica in Latin). Theological tradition kept the terms separate to mark a distinct break from Mosaic law.

• Islam (Friday): Muslims gather for communal prayers (Jummah) on Friday. However, Islam does not view Friday as a "Sabbath" because Islamic theology explicitly rejects the idea that God needed to "rest" after creation. Friday is a day for community congregation, not a mandatory cessation of all labor.

Part 3: Religion as a Social Divider (The Sociological Blueprint)

While faiths often preach unity, sociology looks at religion as a powerful human system of organization that frequently instigates deep division. There is an invisible blueprint to how this happens: 

In-Groups vs. Out-Groups: Humans naturally divide the world into "people like us" (the In-Group) and "everyone else" (the Out-Group). Religion is the ultimate In-Group builder, giving people shared cosmic truths, shared rituals, and a shared calendar. To strengthen the internal bond, societies historically emphasize how different, wrong, or "unholy" the Out-Group is. 

Cosmic Stakes: Unlike political disagreements, religious divisions come with divine stakes. If you disagree over sacred traditions, it becomes a battle between divine truth and spiritual error. This removes the incentive to compromise, as compromise is viewed as a sin.

Boundary Maintenance: To survive across generations, a religious group must prevent its members from blending into the surrounding culture. Strict rules around marriage outside the faith, dietary laws, and specific days of worship build intentional walls between neighbors, discouraging deep social mixing.

Cultural Trauma: When religious groups clash, the trauma of history is passed down through generations as collective memory. Current generations inherit old grievances they didn't personally cause, making the division a core part of their identity.

Weaponization by Political Elites: Rulers and politicians quickly realize that nothing mobilizes a population faster than telling them their faith or sacred values are under attack. Leaders deliberately stoke theological differences to win elections, conquer land, or maintain control while the average person believes they are fighting for God.

Part 4: Case Study — The Modern Irish Troubles

The Troubles in Northern Ireland (late 1960s to 1998) is a textbook modern example of this sociological blueprint in action:

• The Mirage of Theology: The two sides were labeled Protestant and Catholic, but nobody was fighting over the Bible or the Pope. These labels were ethnic and political shortcuts. "Protestant" meant you identified as British and wanted to stay in the UK. "Catholic" meant you identified as Irish and wanted a united Republic of Ireland. Religion was simply used as a badge to instantly know who was an ally and who was the enemy.

• Resource Hoarding: The Protestant majority held total political control and used it to systematically discriminate against the Catholic minority in housing, jobs, and voting rights. When Catholics peacefully marched for civil rights, the state cracked down violently, mutating a political protest into a decades-long armed conflict.

• Total Segregation: The society practiced extreme boundary maintenance. Children went to segregated schools, families lived in segregated neighborhoods, and massive concrete "Peace Walls" were built to physically separate streets. This complete lack of interaction allowed fear and dehumanizing stereotypes to flourish.

Part 5: Institution Building and Social Prestige (The Jamaican Experience)

This identical blueprint shows up globally, including the history of "church schools" in Jamaica, such as the Moravian and Catholic institutions:

• The Positive Impact (Social Elevation): In rural areas, religious groups like the Moravians—who were historical sticklers for literacy—stepped in to build vital educational infrastructure where the government could not. They brought high-quality education, discipline, and community hubs to places like Nazareth, (Nazareth Moravian Church and Nazareth Primary and Infant Schools) Maidstone, Manchester, lifting generations of families.

• The Strategic Impact (Cultural Transmission): From a sociological lens, schools are the ultimate tool for socialization. By educating children from a young age, an institution ensures its values and worldview are passed down intact, cultivating a lifetime of fierce institutional goodwill and loyalty.

• Social Prestige: Certain institutions command a unique aura. In Jamaica, the Catholic Church historically built some of the most elite, highly disciplined, and well-funded schools on the island. As a result, society attached an immense amount of social prestige to them, causing Catholics to be viewed with a specific reverence—almost "like angels."

Part 6: The Connection to Modern Party Politics

What we see in these historical and religious structures is exactly how modern party politics and politicians operate today.

Political parties do not just want a vote; they want to shape an entire identity. They operate just like the old "party schools," teaching people what to think, who to trust, and who to view as the threat. When modern politicians use "us versus them" language, they are trying to recreate that fierce, institutional, unquestioning loyalty. They want the population segregated into echo chambers so that fear takes over and people stop asking critical questions.

Tah-Tah!  Open your minds and speak to get to the truth.

Grace Dunkley-Asphall, Copyright © 2026