Writing, traffic tickets and GSAT

Egerton Chang, Contributor,

I never liked English. Particularly writing and composing essays. While my older brother was reading a book a week through first and second form, I was reading none. Nor was I required to by my teachers.

Maybe this was because he ended up in the 'bright' stream, while my class at St George's College (StGC) had more than its fair share of repeaters and, perhaps, less was expected of us. Father Maurice Feres, the vice-principal, would say over and over again that the reason why our class was near the road was because it was easier to kick us out.

Three of my brothers had gone to St George's and I had desired to attend that school too. I had passed for Wolmer's, but refused to go there. Now, Florizel Glasspole, who was the education minister at the time (and who had also attended Wolmer's), used to shop at my parents' supermarket. He told my mother: "Cho, Miss Alice, send him to Wolmer's and next year I will personally transfer him." Fortunately, we didn't take his advice. The next year (1962) he was out of power, his party having been voted out.

So I paid to attend StGC for the first year. Maybe that's why I ended up in this class. I resat the Common Entrance and this time passed for my first choice, STGC.

I don't think I composed anything in my life up to when I reached third form. So I was thrown in a tizzy when my new English teacher immediately started his ritual of setting a one exercise book-page essay per weeknight and a two-page one every weekend. What was I to do? One solution was to write as big as possible. I remember writing so big and with so much space between words that I used just 50 or so words to fill an entire page at first. Then, believe it or not, this teacher started to get me interested by his enthusiasm and extraordinary teaching method, particularly his way of marking these essays.

Father Francis Ryan would teach us how to break down a sentence and also taught us to 'RAFTMEN' - Read Aloud For Ten Minutes Every Night; and 'ROCA' - Read Over Composition Aloud; avoid 'BS' - Baby Sentence - and 'DM' - Dangling Modifier; and also refrain from writing 'ALABAL' - A Lot About A Little. Of course, there was the usual 'S' for Spelling and 'I' for I-itis - meaning using too many Is.

Now well into his 80s, Father Ryan lives at Patrick House next to Campion College, still gives entertaining speeches at the occasional function, and is as alert as ever. I recently met with Father Ryan to say thanks and to reminisce about those days. But I also had an ulterior motive: to remind myself of his remarkable marking comments which always amused yet motivated us to do better.

Father Ryan went on for an hour and a half talking about his concept and method of teaching English, how he thought that the Jamaican language (Patois) was a spoken one, creative, living, changing, rich and innovative and he never looked down on it, and how reading to oneself provides meaning and context, while reading aloud makes it alive and provides elocution and style. How he had set up a portable (safari) library containing 35 literature books which he would lend to students, etc., as he quoted from Marcus Garvey, "Read, read, read".

To be honest with you, I don't remember any of that. Perhaps he reserved that for the 'bright' class. Maybe that part of his teaching found its way to my subconscious. All I now remember is 'Start strong, End strong', RAFTMEN ... and 'Mean what you say, say what you mean, then STOP'.

TRAFFIC TICKETS

Recently on a Saturday morning, my brother was caught in a police traffic check. Coincidentally, a co-worker was also detained at the said traffic check. While they were not breaking the law at the time, it proved that they each had a ticket outstanding which had not been paid and they had neglected to attend court. They were taken to the Elletson Road Police Station and detained. They were told that they could be locked up for the weekend as a warrant for their arrest had been issued. They were, however, released on their cognisance, but only after being held for more than four hours.

They attended court, as instructed, on the following Monday morning, and after spending another four hours paid their respective fines.

I am sure there are many others in the same situation. At present, there is no amnesty for those who had been remiss in paying and would like to make restitution for their outstanding fine(s) without having to attend court.

Is there a website that one can check to see all outstanding tickets and can they now be paid (even if with a small penalty for late payment)? This moratorium should not be restricted to a specific period but should be ongoing. This would relieve the stress of wondering if you could be detained for past ticket(s). If after that amnesty provision is made available, someone is caught in these checks, he/she would have only themselves to blame. I predict that this amnesty would produce many millions for the government coffers.

GSAT and Test Erasures

In a USA Today article titled 'Few states examine test erasures' of September 14, Marisol Bello and Greg Toppo write:

"Fewer than half the states routinely analyse suspicious numbers of erasures on standardised school tests, a key method of detecting cheating by teachers or their bosses.

"A survey by USA Today of state education agencies found that 20 states and Washington, DC, did erasure analysis on all pencil-and-paper tests required during the 2010-11 school year.

"That means nearly 45 per cent of the annual reading and math exams this year were scored without analysing erasures. The analysis looks for unusual rates of answers erased and changed from wrong to right. Statisticians consider it a key indicator of whether educators are correcting students' answers in order to boost their schools' scores."

Erasure analysis called 'common sense'

"It's a very powerful tool to assist states in identifying patterns and determining if something is amiss," says Ron Tomalis, Pennsylvania's secretary of education. "It's common sense," says Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, an education professor at Arizona State University who has researched cheating by teachers on standardised tests. "The more consequences you attach to the test, the more likely people are to do something artificial to inflate them."

Is this sort of analysis done on GSAT and other similar tests in Jamaica?

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