Mr Minister, publish the SEA results and let our children celebrate!

(Left) Education Minister ANTHONY GARCIA (Right) FLASHBACK: SEA top scorers JADA RAMNATH and SAIESH RAMPERSAD flanked by Education Minister ANTHONY GARCIA and Ministry officials after the announcement of the first and second placed SEA 2018 students

Discussion regarding the publication of the SEA results is an important national debate because it raises so many issues pertaining to the future of our children.

We have not thought out the future of our kids

This is not the first time that such a conversation is being held but one can only hope that it will be the last time that our leaders refuse to ignore it and work with stakeholders in arriving at a meaningful conclusion that would be of great benefit to our early adolescents.

Issues such as the stress factor, the relevance of the SEA, the shaming of low performers, the fairness of the exams; even the access to quality secondary education must be presented in bold relief to a topic, which cannot be discussed in isolation.

Therefore, to attempt to single out just one aspect of such an expansive topic means that as a nation we have not thought out the future of our kids well enough to recognize that all of which we speak must be included in any conversation regarding the simple publication of an examination result.

There has to be equity in our system. There has to be a common thread that runs through the teaching of our children, a thread that reposes confidence in parents that regardless where our children go to school, they will possess that feeling that where they go will not place them at a disadvantage. This is where the conversation starts because, within the national psyche, we witness prejudice and bias, which affect both parents and students; and stand as the reason why parents would line up from as early as 3:00 am to ensure that their children get a place in a prestige Primary School. That is stress for the child and shaming for the parent who did not succeed to get a place in that prestige Primary school.

The first level of prejudice

When they fail to secure a place, the first level of prejudice begins as children are now pressured to work harder under the pretext that the school they are attending is not good enough and this is more stressful than the publication of the SEA exam results itself. From very young, our children are forced into lessons; one hour before class, an hour and a half after class, sometimes being pressured into classroom work for as many as eight hours a day to prepare for an exam that is designed for eleven-year-olds. Every psychologist knows that children learn best through play but there is a sense of austerity in the way teachers deliver the curriculum that students find no fun but see it as a chore to get past the SEA stage. In Norway, progressive education thought focuses on the amount of homework children are assigned and sees this as an obstruction to their development, but locally we hear nothing about this from our education psychologists who with blinkers on, only see the publication of examination results as the lone stress factor which shames students whose marks are among the lower percentile. We do not even train our thoughts to consider what system could be employed so that a student’s self-esteem is not affected by the school for which he is assigned; but it seems as though the beginning and the end of our conversation is the celebration of the performance; children whose motivation to perform even higher is propelled by the national recognition each receives when their performance is nationally acknowledged.

The future development of our children

I would have thought the discussion on the future development of our children would have targeted the disparity created between the wealthy and the poor since the ones who need the help most generally cannot afford to purchase it and it is there we should be having a conversation on what we need to do to ensure that all our children benefit. I would have also thought that the conversation would have included the provision of proper nutrition for our students many of whom are now comatose after a heavily spiked carbohydrate lunch that affects their ability to focus. I thought we would have been seriously discussing the system of zoning that would ease the pain of transport for students to attend these so-called prestige schools of learning in order to balance the playing field. But the silence in all these areas is so deafening that one is forced to wonder whether there is a personal agenda stacked against the celebration of high-performance kids to make them feel that there is something wrong in excelling in academia. In sport, we celebrate the champions at every single level. At the Olympics and at FIFA, the champions are celebrated in a manner where some countries believe that in order for their nationals to wear a global medal they have to live within the geographic space of certain countries.

Jamaica is a classic example

Jamaica is a classic example of how the publication of results can motivate people to excel. The USA at one time was the champion sprinters of the world and the rest of the global village felt left behind, but over the past two decades, Jamaica showed that Caribbean people could also rise by establishing an athletic programme that would put them on par and beyond in the global village. Not winning a medal did not shame them but motivated them to rise and their approach was not to condemn the publication of the results but to change the way they compete. Similar to academia, we cannot focus on what happens when the results are published. If we are dissatisfied because our children are not performing in the way they ought to perform then we should do like the Jamaicans and create opportunities for our children to be among the stars when the results are published. We see no problems in celebrating schools when the publication of scholarship winners come after the CAPE results, but we have a problem celebrating the results of the top three SEA students. We are a nation that valorises mediocrity - mediocrity in Cabinet; mediocrity in health; mediocrity in the public service, just to name a few. We now want to do the same through the lack of publication of the SEA examination results.

Celebrating winners is a way of life

Today we understand the unfairness of our system; how students with high marks are not given the same opportunity to attend prestige schools as students who have connections and are placed in schools for which they have not qualified; even this conversation is filled with prejudice and bias. The Minister of Education should not start this conversation with the publication of results but rather with a review of the entire education process, even the content of the SEA examination. Celebrating winners is a way of life. I recall that for over 20 years I kept the copy of the newspaper where my name was published in the newspapers for having passed the College Exhibition (in those days) in 1956. In a word, those who perform want to be recognized and this is done in every facet of life, even at the workplace. To deny our children such a privilege is myopic and the Minister must not kowtow to any kind of conversation that fails to engage all the variables but rather chooses to argue within a vacuum. And let me state before I conclude that Sunshine Today has no vested interest in our appeal for the SEA results to be published since these results, like so many other governments and State ads are never given to this newspaper for publication. Notwithstanding that, however, Sunshine Today appeals to the Minister of Education to publish the SEA results of children and let the children celebrate all.