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“[…] This feeling of always being uneducated influenced me when I became prime minister. There were always about 6,000 children thrown on the social dump heap because they failed their Common Entrance exam.
“I realised the Common Entrance was not to determine who went to school but who wouldn’t… If there are not enough places, build more schools.
Photo: Ministry of Education
“When we built them, we did so in areas where children didn’t have opportunities. That school in Laventille, we built that…”
The Untold Story of Basdeo Panday as reported by Sheila Rampersad. (Express, 8 January 2024)
As a nation, we owe a debt to Sheila Rampersad, who has been editing the biographies of prominent political figures. Sadly, the work on Mr Panday’s was not completed.
Last September, I had the opportunity to read the story of Dr Keith Rowley, which was also done with the help of Ms Rampersad. His story (From Mason Hall to Whitehall, 2016) illustrates the same issue Mr Panday sought to remedy: access to secondary school education.
(Copyright Office of the Parliament)
However, the book highlighted the powerful political appeal of schooling children and the need for a network to help young people succeed. Dr Rowley identifies the electoral sweep by Dr Eric Williams in Tobago and the general elections in 1962 with his grandfather’s cryptic saying: “He talked about the boy.”
We do not need to build new schools as our population has drastically declined. We need to refurbish our schools and provide additional resources for the children who are marginalised on the fringes of our society.
Access is not the issue; educational equity is. Will our political leaders understand and act on today’s needs?
(via Guaico-Presbyterian Steel Orchestra)
Twice, Dr Rowley was rescued by caring folk around him. Mr Beard, his headmaster (p 55) at the Common Entrance examination level, intervened breathlessly to ensure Dr Rowley could sit the examination.
Do we have teachers who see their work as a vocation? Or have we beggared the profession that some can no longer afford to follow their vocation?
On the second occasion, Mr Russell Martineau, the former Bishop’s teacher (p 90), in a fortuitous event, interjected himself and ensured that Dr Rowley had the opportunity to take up his scholarship at the university entrance level.
Do our children have caring, proactive adults in their community who would ensure they obtain and maximise their opportunities?
These two events demonstrate the levelling up that constitutes educational equity. We have been good at providing school access but terrible at delivering educational equity.
From Sparrow, we learnt to encourage our children on schooling:
(Copyright Daniel Prentice/ Arima Araucans Academy)
“Go to school and learn well/ Otherwise later on in life you will catch real hell/ Without an education in your head/ Your whole life will be pure misery, you’re better off dead…”
But we fail to see the impact of greed in our society, which has rendered that advice useless—perpetuating a cycle of increasing social instability. Without educational equity, we have no hope for a sound foundation for a fair and just society.
Equity recognises that some children face disadvantages that inhibit them from performing at their best. Historical factors influence how successful one may be in an educational system. Inequity is built in by socioeconomic positions, race, gender and disability.
It is a truism that a family of high socioeconomic status can access more and better opportunities than those less fortunate. They also can pay for special tutoring, and the parents feel more comfortable intervening on their children’s behalf.
Possessing more disposable income, these parents can donate large sums that improve their child’s chances of acceptance into ‘prestigious’ schools. This ability will possibly be enhanced by a 2023/24 Budget provision of a tax break for contributions to schools announced by Minister Colm Imbert.
The result? A tangible barrier to children being able to compete on equal terms.
Today, we celebrate those who have done well and cast not a glance at those who are considered to be underperforming. In our rush to praise what we consider excellence, we miss the harsh reality that such performance comes at a cost to the nation.
We do not realise or accept that with the school system’s failure, we effectively are building a crime factory. We still mindlessly throw children on the social dump heap before and after they sit the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examinations.
Lauren Berlant, in the book Cruel Optimism (2011), explains: People have remained attached to unachievable fantasies of the good life—with its promises of upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and durable intimacy—despite evidence that liberal-capitalist societies can no longer be counted on to provide opportunities for individuals to make their lives “add up to something”.
This devastatingly accurate assessment describes the false dreams our society holds about educational achievement.
How do we make all our children’s lives add up to something? How do we dismantle the crime factory? More anon.
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