Lascelve Graham | Vindication?

The headline screamed at me from The Gleaner of July 29, 2022, ‘Golding: Education biggest failure of Independence era’. I couldn’t believe my eyes. A former prime minister admitting a grievous shortcoming of (a) government of which he was a part, admitting what I have been saying for over a decade.

In my last article dated July 7, 2022, I said in part, “However, the gist, the gravamen, the substance of the Prof Orlando Patterson report is not new and has been known for decades. Our various governments have just failed to take meaningful action. Leadership has disappointed us repeatedly. Jamaica is surely in dire need of great leadership in education at both the governmental and other levels”.

In another article dated July 29, 2021, I mused, “ Is Jamaica’s leadership serious about quality education for all our children? The answer to that question is a resounding no. What they are all very serious about, without a doubt, are sports, entertainment and religion. Since a country excels at what it celebrates, we do brilliantly at sports and entertainment, and religion is as strong as ever, as education languishes in the doldrums and the masses of our people continue to suffer, uneducated, ignorant, readily manipulated, and denied quality education”.

It has also come to light that sports is our biggest achievement since Independence. Is there any relationship between education being our biggest failure and sports being our biggest success since Independence?

Jamaica has always done well in track and field. At our first Olympics in 1948, Arthur Wint beat the world in the 400m and got a silver in the 800m. In 1952, we again beat the world in the 400m with George Rhoden, who also ran the anchor leg in a world-beating 4x400m relay. And so it has continued, with Jamaica producing world-class performers in track and field ever since. Why is this so? Who knows exactly. There are a number of reasons. Two major ones come to mind, G.C. Foster College and Champs. G.C. Foster College has produced competent coaches who may be found throughout the length and breadth of Jamaica, while Champs is the stage on which the young athletes perform. Another big factor is that Jamaica celebrates sports, and countries excel at what they celebrate. We don’t celebrate education. It is not priority number one.

Symptomatic of the above is the approach of our public schools to sports. With few exceptions, our educational institutions, up to the high-school level, are used as sports academies and clubs.

Sports is professionalised, as signalled by a win-at-all-costs mentality and the resultant heavy recruiting of sports talent from far and wide. I could go on, and on, and on, because I have been writing about this for a long time. It has all fallen on deaf ears. It makes no difference that this recruiting for sports purposes maintains and increases the inequality in the education system, often referred to as ‘apartheid’. Or that the newer, poorer, weaker schools are at a serious disadvantage not only with respect to their sports programmes, but also in making themselves better educational institutions, which is necessary if Jamaica is serious about the delivery of quality education to all our children.

BAN RECRUITING FOR SPORTS PURPOSESIt is now impossible to win Champs or schoolboy football without our educational institutions heavily recruiting sports talent.

On March 26, 2015, Ainsley Walters, a sports journalist, in a Gleaner article titled ‘Put a stop to athlete factories’ wrote, “That’s exactly what major inter-secondary schools competitions have become: a horse-trade of so-called student athletes. This has, at times, resulted in pupils attending up to three institutions, made to repeat grade levels, some reaching age 18 in fourth form and unable to compete as fifth-formers, eventually quitting school altogether after their athletic worth is no more. How did Jamaica’s inter-secondary school sports system become transformed into a professional sports league, with paid coaches replacing physical education teachers amid the hiring of spotters to poach student athletes from lesser and rival schools?

“In a carefully crafted system of manipulating all-too-willing principals, from which ISSA’s hierarchy is drawn, these old boys effectively fund sports programmes, pay coaches, poach student athletes from other schools, offering full ‘scholarships’ of room and board, lunch money, pocket money, tuition fees, not to mention jobs for parents, household appliances, and even motor vehicles.”

He further stated, “ It should also be noted that this raid on schools became far more prevalent after a period during which the likes of Charlie Smith, Norman Manley, Dunoon, Tivoli and Bridgeport High dominated the Manning Cup from 1995 to 2002. How will these ‘lesser’ secondary schools ever be able to improve and hold their heads high if, in the first place, they were denied academically sound children by way of GSAT, followed by a raid on students who could eventually put these schools on the map, making them attractive for future generations of teachers and students alike because of their sporting achievements? Dubious claims are made of private tutoring by poaching schools to bring transfer students up to scratch, probably to meet ISSA’s requirement of a 45 per cent average in four subject areas.”

Things have gotten even worse since then, with our educational institutions, among other things, going outside of the island to recruit sports talent. Our educational institutions are doing all this while claiming, “We do not recruit!” The audacity of our leaders! And then expecting the common man to trust them, speak truth, and do the right thing.

The Ministry of Education/ISSA must ban recruiting for sports purposes by our schools up to the secondary level. It has many negatives and is inimical to the best interest of our education system, our children and Jamaica. The overwhelming majority of the recruits don’t make it in sports, and a good many end up in the scrap heap of life.

It’s a scam, a three-card trick, in which the victim is made out to be the villain, poor people are sold a ‘six for a nine’, being used while being duped into believing that our educational institutions’ heavy focus on sports is in the best interest of poor children, poor people. It’s a lie! It must stop!

Dark-skinned people are fooling themselves by buying into the myth that sports and entertainment is the way to go. No! Education and socialisation is the way to go! This must be the mission, the unambiguous, unequivocal focus of our public schools, not the development of world-class athletes.

Our church groups must denounce this dastardly practice of our schools recruiting sports talent, which, among other things, corrupts, undermines, and weakens the education system, while using poor people’s children for the entertainment of others. The churches pronounce lofty values, principles, attitudes, ideals, while the schools in which they have influence or control make a mockery of same. The churches need to step up and ensure that the officials of the schools which they influence and/or control, live the values, attitudes and principles they so loudly espouse.

Our children are confused, mired as they are in the waffling, doublespeak and expediency of their leaders. The children, the people, are tired of the cover-up, the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ hypocrisy of our leaders. Is it not clear that, if one has to twist the truth, resort to ‘alternative facts’, deny recruiting sports talent when in fact one is so doing, go through all sorts of contortions to camouflage reality, something is wrong and they should relent and do the right thing? The in thing now is slush funds for ‘buying’ athletes, set up and manipulated outside the school, so that school officials can more easily feign ignorance, lack of knowledge of what is going on.

Is divine intervention really the only route to the consciousness/consciences of our leaders? I hope that the utterances of someone of the stature of a former prime minister will help our leaders in education to focus fully on their mission, and not be distracted by sports or anything else. Maybe now we will make some headway in the delivery of quality education to all our children.

Dr Lascelve ‘Muggy’ Graham is former captain of the Jamaica senior football team. Send feedback to c olumns@gleanerjm.com.