Back to school

Keith Noel, Contributor

Every year at this time, a number of concerns come to the fore. Whenever they do, education experts, Ministry of Education officials, and journalists in the know assure us that many of these concerns are ill-founded. Despite this, they resurface whenever back-to-school time approaches.

The first of these concerns has to do with parents' desire to have their children enrolled in the 'better' high schools. There is a belief that, if your child is enrolled in certain traditional high schools, his or her chances of being a success in life are, more or less, assured. On the other hand, it would be seen as a dereliction of duty if one's child is assigned to a school that was upgraded from a junior high, or has come on stream in recent years, and one did not do one's utmost to have that child reassigned.

The irony is that the attitude of some ministry officials and of some media persons helps to keep this view alive by giving it a false legitimacy.

First, there is no 'good' statistic by which one can measure the ability of a school to do right by your child. We know that if a child who is academically gifted is enrolled in one of these 'name' schools, it is almost a certainty that the child will perform well academically throughout his or her high school career and be well-prepared for tertiary education. But these gifted children nearly always get the schools of their choice and so the clamour does not come from these parents.

Worrisome

It is the parents of the 'above average but not brilliant' child who lament and the pity is that they do not investigate the school assigned to find out what the performance has been of children whose entry level grades were comparable to theirs, and who have now graduated from that school. If they did, the lament would probably abate.

But, more worrisome is the hue and cry about the placement of students who have academic deficiencies. I remember, as a principal, trying to reassure many a parent that the school to which their child had been assigned was better equipped to do what was in the best interest of their child than mine. I even gave them information to bear out my arguments - all to little avail. I was deemed 'hard' and 'unhelpful' and, on one occasion, the parent returned to inform me, gleefully, that an 'official' had helped her to get the child into an 'even better' school 'in town'. She was honest enough, however, to confess to me about three years later that the child was 'floundering' and that she was paying an arm and a leg for extra lessons.

Very few people seem to be making it clear that some of these upgraded schools have worked near miracles with low achievers.

Twisted values

Then there is the hue and cry about the cost of books. Here is where our twisted values are often revealed. In my experience, a number of parents have sent notes to school explaining why their charges were without some of the necessary items. Within a month, some of these parents have had to come to the school to redeem confiscated items, which included expensive MP3 players and cellphones. I remember explaining to one parent that the cost of the cellphone her child possessed could have covered all but one of the books and pieces of equipment that the child did not have. Her lame explanation was that the child's father had given it to him as a birthday gift. Incidentally, she had bought him the 'Clarks' that were on his feet!

And then there is the old cry about the role of language in education. Far too many of our leaders in the political, business, and even education arenas seem to have not yet accepted the well-documented fact that our nation-language is not English. English is the official language and everyone must be taught to use it - and we must all try to use it properly. But why the desperate battle against the acceptance of the fact that 'patwa' - as some of our linguists have named it, following Cassidy - is the language in which the vast majority of Jamaicans communicate, and that it is a viable and legitimate language?

Keith Noel is an educator. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com