Lascelve ‘Muggy’ Graham | Sports recruiting by schools is making Jamaica weaker

No high school can win schoolboy football or Champs without not only recruiting, but recruiting heavily based on sports ability. Many, over the years, have recruited entire teams in football!

I was recently on a radio programme hosted by former Prime Minister Bruce Golding, where he asked Mr Corey Bennett, coach at Calabar High School, “How does it help Tacius Golding High School when a more powerful school takes away its one shining light in track and field?”

His answer was, essentially, “life isn’t fair”.

On the same programme, Dr D.K. Bennett, a sports medicine specialist, although admitting that a change needs to be made in how our specialised educational institutions deal with sports, was very concerned with what would happen to the talented cricketer if schools retreated from the win-at-all-costs approach to sports and hence the heavy recruiting of sports talent.

Mr Wayne Robinson, acting principal at Jamaica College (often referred to as ‘JCFC’, which has also won Champs in recent times, and where it is alleged that there is a dorm almost three quarters full of sports recruits, local and foreign as well as off-campus houses for same), contributed that sports is now a subject at our universities, as if that has anything to do with our schools recruiting sports talent.

STRENGTHEN POORER, WEAKER, YOUNGER SCHOOLS

In a documentary on TVJ not too long ago, our universities complained bitterly about the exceedingly poor academic quality of so many of the athletes coming from high school and the fact that they were unsuitable for any tertiary-level institution!

Is it that Mr Bennett cannot understand that it is in the quest to make life fairer for the weaker schools that recruiting for sports purposes by our specialised educational institutions should be banned? Does he not grasp that the only chance for a better life that the overwhelming majority of poor black people have is education? Does he not comprehend that the only path to delivery of quality education to all our children that Jamaica has is through the strengthening of our poorer, weaker, younger schools?

Preying on, depriving them of the few assets they have to help them be associated with excellence, glory, fame, some status, is making Jamaica weaker.

If we don’t understand the above, then this is helping to ensure that black people, who comprise the overwhelming majority of our population, will always be slaves, hewers of wood and drawers of water.

I don’t think Mr Bennett is blind to the above, but a number in his profession benefit from sports recruiting and so, in keeping with the ‘might is right’ approach, damn and stomp on the weak. Given the status of black people in the scheme of things, I don’t think it is in their best interest to support such an approach.

The men mentioned are giving schools a responsibility that is not in the remit of, not the mission of specialised educational institutions.

I ask Dr Bennett what is to become of the potential rocket scientist, chemist, brain surgeon, biologist who fell through the cracks and are at schools without labs, proper teachers and other resources required for their development. What is to become of the potential mathematician, engineer, linguist, historian, sociologist, anthropologist, etc., whose only hope is public school?

These are the children our public schools should be out there scouting for, not children to kick ball, run, jump and play cricket!

It is not the responsibility of our schools to be the developmental arm of the various sports associations! It is wrong in principle for our specialised educational institutions to recruit for sports purposes. In the teaching/learning environment of school, it is not whether you win or lose, it is how you play the game that matters.

All the main players in the recruiting process, some with dorms almost full of sports recruits, understand this, which is why the activity is associated with so much deceit, double-talk, cover-up and grist for Tony Rebel’s tune ‘I can’t recall’.

WILL MR GOLDING DO ANYTHING?

I am sure Mr Golding gets the point. His question to Mr Bennett clearly indicates that. He also recently gave the keynote address at the Bank of Jamaica (28/7/22), where he trotted out the dismal numbers presented in the Orlando Patterson Commission report for education. He understands that education/socialisation is in crisis. The real question is: will he do anything about it, from his lofty position, as a former prime minister, where he rubs shoulders with and can influence the powers that be.

Will Mr Golding pluck this low-hanging fruit on the education tree, and push for the banning of recruiting of sports talent by our specialised educational institutions up to the secondary level? This would send a clear signal to all and sundry that we are finally taking education/socialisation seriously.

Time will tell.

Our Ministry of Education, principals and boards are culpable and must, among other things, stop collaborating with and start standing up to old boys and say, “No!”, as Campion College does.

Stop the deceit, the cover-up, the contortions to hide reality, the “We do not recruit” fallacy, fantasy. Until a child is enrolled as a student of a given school, there is no recruiting!

A good many of the sports recruits are below the normal academic standards of the traditional schools which are at the front of the recruiting line. How do they get into the school which would normally not even look at such low grades, and reject them out of hand?

Close down the slush funds for “buying” sports talent. Stop the underhanded methods used to corrupt, undermine the education system.

Enough is enough! Let’s turn over a new leaf.

Dr Lascelve ‘Muggy’ Graham is a former captain of the Jamaica senior football team. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com