Lascelve Graham | Unleash the power in school sports

A large number of Jamaicans are not only barking up the wrong tree, but, as a politician said years ago in referring to another matter, they are also in the wrong jungle! Their priorities are in the wrong place, mixed up, skewed re-education/socialisation and sports in our public schools. They have the cart before the horse and hence aberrant behaviour has become the norm. This is due primarily to politicians and the leaders in education and the church abrogating their responsibilities.

We hear and see so much about the antisocial behaviour of our adults and children, especially after the COVID-19 restrictions. Schools complain bitterly about a lack of resources, including guidance counsellors. Some of the solutions suggested involve more metal detectors in school and reintroducing civics in the school curriculum. However, we keep overlooking what could be a tremendous game changer in our schools – extracurricular, co-curricular activities, including sports.

Sometime ago, TVJ publicised the story of a Jamaican teacher in England, who turned around the fortunes of her school in all areas, using the arts, drama and music. She had no choice but to use the students who qualified to come to her school, since she was in England, not Jamaica. She could not import, recruit, bring in students based on their proficiency in extracurricular activities, and so had to use those activities as they were meant to be used, to help in the development, expansion of horizons of the children at the school. She took a failing school and through extracurricular activities instilled self-belief, confidence and other non-cognitive skills (not measured by IQ tests) to bring out the champion in her charges. There are examples of similar things happening throughout the years.

WAKE UP

Jamaica’s leadership in education needs to wake up, realise the powerful change agent it has in extracurricular activities and stop misusing and abusing same. Our leaders have to get the priorities right. Sports and other extracurricular activities in our specialised educational institutions up to the high school level, are not about developing world-class performers, who may be discovered at school, they are about helping to socialise our children. They are about helping whoever is at the school, whether nerd or star, to find themselves, to understand themselves better, to widen their horizons and to learn the pro-social values, attitudes, behaviours and skills which will help them and the society to progress.

Socialisation is indispensable to the proper functioning of the individual in society and society itself. With education and socialisation being as critical to the nation as they are, how can we have our public specialised educational/socialisation institutions diverted, distracted, using scarce educational resources to prioritise winning sports at all costs? This is folly! Madness!

This is the age of digitisation, AI chatbots, with quantum computers on the horizon. Yet, Jamaica imports workers at much lower skill levels in the academic, technical and vocational areas. It is not in our best interest as a people to have our public specialised educational/socialisation institutions so focused on winning at sports.

Horses for courses. If sports is used as was intended in school, in its important but secondary role as a teaching/learning/socialising tool available to all students at the school, it becomes a most powerful change agent.

There is a void in the social, emotional and behavioural training of many of our youngsters, due in large part to the breakdown in family life in Jamaica. This fuels violence and other antisocial behaviours and signals a need for social coaching, mentoring, counselling and the strengthening of life skills. School, a traditional vehicle of socialisation, can help fill this void by using sports in a more preemptive and proactive way. Sports can be and is a transformational vehicle, a rejuvenator, a place of refuge, a soother, a comforter for many of the battered egos and low self-esteems. Sports ministers to the spirit thus generating confidence and self-belief, which are pivotal to hope, new attitudes, new energies, new evaluations, new approaches, new conclusions, new outcomes, new beginnings – behaviour modification.

SKILLED

Many of our most challenged youngsters are very interested in, skilled at, enthusiastic about, and voluntarily participate in some sporting activity. The probability, therefore, of capturing their imagination through sports is greater than through many other avenues. They want to remain a part of the relevant sporting activity and so will make more of an effort to change their thinking and behaviour than in many other scenarios. Therefore, the teaching of life skills and the counselling of youngsters, so that they are better able to cope with the challenges of their lives, have a greater chance of success if twinned as seamlessly as possible with the teaching and practising of sports skills. Sports as a microcosm of life is a workshop, a practicum, a safe and powerful way to introduce youngsters to many of the challenges of life, and ways to overcome these hurdles.

The interest of our youngsters in sports and the fact that life skills and technical skills are learnt in the same way makes sports an ideal medium for teaching many life skills. However, it doesn’t happen automatically. There needs to be a change in emphasis with respect to the role of sports in our schools.

Adolescence is the stage at which youngsters question and realign values, attitudes and behaviours. It represents a phase of vulnerability and an opportunity to influence the outcomes of this higher level, abstract thinking. Therefore, intervention aimed at influencing values, attitudes and behaviour, at the high school level, at this time in a child’s life, would have an increased probability of success, although this approach should begin from the early childhood stage.

Let us allow sports to be the inclusive teaching/learning/socialising tool that it should be in schools. Winning at all costs in sports, and hence recruiting for sports purposes by schools, is inimical to this process.

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