Calabar centenary celebrations

ON MONDAY, Calabar High School held a press conference in the historic chapel to launch the centenary celebrations of Calabar, which was established on September 12, 1912.

The vision of the founding fathers, Rev Ernest Pryce and Rev David Davis, was to create a school for the underclass, especially the offsprings from the Baptist Manse. The education system then was not meeting the needs of the people whose children were of African descent and who were largely poor.

Calabar has come a long way. Perhaps its most famous student is the great Olympian Herb McKenley, who was never to win an individual gold medal at the Olympics. He still has the record of the most outstanding achievement of participating in the 100m, 200m and 400m finals in the same staging of the Olympic Games. Calabar's most famous politician is P.J. Patterson, who, as the longest serving Prime Minister, is recognised regionally and internationally as a master trade negotiator. There is a building named in his honour in Brussels.

Rekindling the glory days

Horace Russell, church historian, argues that Calabar has produced more ministers of religion than any other high school. And one of the outstanding Calabar graduates, the eclectic intellectual Stephen Jennings, immediate past president of the Jamaica Baptist Union, will deliver the sermon this Sunday at 9 a.m. in the worship service at the Boulevard Baptist Church to mark the official launch of the centenary celebrations of Calabar. It is hoped that the worship service will be a launching pad to rekindle the glory days of the 1970s when Calabar was known for academic excellence, athletic prowess, administrative excellence and disciplined behaviour.

Calabar's celebration comes at a time when Andrew Holness, minister of education, has characterised four schools as 'failing.' Whereas when Calabar was founded the issue was one of general accessibility to secondary education for students of African origin, the issue today is more of affordability and quality education.

The use of the term 'failing' to describe schools is pejorative and oftentimes subjective. For example, at the University of the West Indies, there are many courses in which a student gets 40 per cent and that student would have passed the subject, but at another university doing a similar course it would be considered a failure. Some persons might have the gall to classify Calabar as failing because most of the students who sat the Caribbean Secondary Education Certification exams in English and math did not attain at least a grade three.

School record

However, there are some who would point to Calabar's record over the last decade, doing better than Campion in the TVJ's Schools' Challenge Quiz as a sign that Calabar is better than Campion. Furthermore, there was a study done some years ago in which Dr Dennis Minott claimed that Meadowbrook High School was the most outstanding school, based on the value added to the students. In other words, there are various ways to measure success and it might be better to identify weaknesses and strengths of schools rather than labelling them as failures.

Furthermore, it could be argued that successive governments have weakened the educational system by not providing enough financial resources. The Education Tax of the 1980s was to supplement existing budgetary allocations to education but that was not realised. It could be argued that the minister of education weakened the schools when parents were told that no child should be refused for non-payment of fees but there was no additional allocation for such eventualities. It could be argued that civil society has allowed the weakening of students output by not lobbying for better resources for more schools.

Calabar centenary celebration is a time to recommit to having a quality, well-rounded educational system that will make Jamaica a place of choice to study.

Devon Dick is pastor of the Boulevard Baptist Church in St Andrew. Comments to columns@gleanerjm.com