JOHNSON SURVEY: A kick to stomach of rural primary kids

Newton  Duncan, GUEST COLUMNIST

The verdict has been read: Rural, government-operated primary schools offer inferior-quality preparation for the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT), when compared to urban, private preparatory schools. This judgement was arrived at after employing a dubious rating scale, which granted top status to schools with GSAT classes numbering fewer than 12.

An odious exercise in pseudo-science, if ever there was one embarked upon, more to rubbish public-school efforts than to define or reward excellence in GSAT. It was publicised that Jamaica's elite performers were from private schools where exorbitant fees are charged. This is an unjust and unfair representation. It describes a false state of affairs from which only the wealthy will derive comfort.

The critical message sent was that in Jamaica, worthwhile gain, especially education, must be bought. Small wonder when the vast majority of Jamaica's 10- and 11-year-olds are traumatised to the point of depression, with some committing suicide during the GSAT year.

The Bill Johnson Research Survey is a kick in the stomach to rural primary-school teachers and students.

This is, for many born before Independence, déjà vu time.

Soon after Independence, when only one in 86 primary-school children was successful in the scholarship exams to high schools, compared to one in four from preparatory schools, an indigenous version of Affirmative Action employing a 70:30 placement system was devised, the aim being to increase primary-school student representation in high schools. I left a well-heeled Kingston preparatory school to attend Brompton Primary, an unobtrusive district school five miles from Black River. Brompton Primary's most illustrious alumnus, Justice Uriah Parnell, CD, was a senior puisne judge in the Jamaican courts during the 1960s and '70s.

In many ways, classroom instruction in preparatory and primary schools was similar. Morning prayers were delivered as a song, but in the rural setting, one was closer to nature, in a wider space and closer to trees, birds and fruits. These few lines of prayer started the day:

For the beauty of the earth For the beauty of the skies

For the love which from our birth Over and around us lies... etc

The daily classroom gruel was delivered to children, three in a bench, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with two mini recesses and a one-hour long midday lunch break. Subjects taught were arithmetic, composition, letter writing, reading, woodwork, farming, and craftwork. Later, there was homework by kerosene-fuelled lamplight.

When student numbers expanded, any one of the many shady almond trees on the school ground could serve as a makeshift classroom. One school friend's head would perpetually block the blackboard. He would win a scholarship to St Elizabeth Technical and pursue engineering at St Augustine. Other friends became lawyers, doctors, firemen, policemen, butchers, and office clerks. Some prepared for entry to Mico, Bethlehem or Moneague Teachers' college. Those teachers, on graduating from these colleges, would be received by the community in the same manner as persons returning from Oxford or Cambridge universities.

Lessons imparted in the classroom were matched by lessons outside the classroom. The newly formed 4-H Club would receive a gift of a calf and two pigs. They had to be attended to, which was the job of club members. Whether moving the cow to the water trough at evenings or boiling feed for the pigs, one learned to care for farm animals. Also, one would appreciate, first-hand, the hazards of dehydration, a lesson understood 15 years before coming across the word in a medical text. Preparations for the Annual Independence Festival competitions were always intense. Choral speaking practice taught teamwork and an appreciation for Bible verses and poetry. First Corinthians Chapter 13 was one Festival entry in which the group deviated from the text but stuck confidently to the true intention of St Paul.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

Students were surrounded by, and recited the poem, 'Nature' by H.D. Carberry. From this, they understood the environment and also the awesome force of the word 'magnificently', when used in a one-word sentence.

We have neither Summer nor Winter

Neither Autumn nor Spring

We have instead the days

When the gold sun shines on the lush green cane fields -

Magnificently.

Memorising Claude McKay's 'Flame Heart' at a school with a yard full of fruit trees and shady wooded areas held special significance:

What weeks, what months, what time of the mild year We cheated school to have our fling at tops? What days our wine-thrilled bodies pulsed with Joy Feasting upon blackberries in the copse?

Unlike McKay, boys feasted on common and No. 11 mangoes and cashew fruit. The berries consumed were not blackberries but the equally satiating hogberry.

Hardball cricket on bumpy and uneven terrain was the daily activity at recess times. A blow from the bouncy 'cork and tar' caused many to return home from school with a limp, or swollen testicles. Apart from being a gentleman's game, that type of cricket provided a useful tutorial on how to survive the unanticipated.

As time to leave Brompton came, the significance of a rural primary-school experience would be lost on a 10-year-old. Brompton gave a fuller understanding of Jamaica's self-sacrificing teachers, its bountiful produce and benevolent peasantry.

Our primary schools are not what they should be. We have not built on many of the promises of Independence. The worst we can do now is undermine or destroy the morale of our public-school teachers and students.

Newton D. Duncan is professor of paediatric surgery, UWI, Mona, and head, Dept of Surgery, Radiology, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and newton.duncan@uwimona.edu.jm.