THE EDITOR, Sir:

This year's Schools' Challenge Quiz, up to February 15,featured about 64 schools. Why so many schools? As a result, for weeks theMonday-Friday6:30-7:00 evening slot has been monopolised by the competition. I know that TVJ means well. The management would like to encourage participation. Does the station accept every school that would like to compete?

I am asking questions because of some one-sided contests that I have watched. For two consecutive Mondays, I have had to watch two schools being walloped. In both cases, one got the impression that at times, the members of the losing team just gave an answer hoping it was correct. How else does one explain such answers as 'War of Paris'? When one team was asked to give the adjectival form of palace, the members answered, Palestine. Had they even proffered 'palatious', I would have understood.

Feature top-20 schools

I must confess that I am not a fan of Schools' Challenge Quiz, largely because of its emphasis on speed. However, I would not oppose any activity that gets adolescents involved in something positive.

What I would like to suggest to TVJ is that they have a seeding system which allows only the top 20 schools to be featured on national television. Schools that are featured should be there on merit. 'Meritocracy' isn't a dirty word. Premier League schools should not be competing against League 2 schools. Schools that score single digits should not be on national television just before Prime Time News.

Schools not featured on television could have their own competition and visit each other. This competition could also be a part of Schools' Challenge Quiz. Each year, the bottom two schools could be relegated and a contest be held between the top school in the non-televised competition and the 18th-place school in the televised competition to see which goes through to the following year's contest.

Oh, I can already hear the howls of protest against my suggestion. I can hear the cries of 'elitism'. Don't we like to appear before television cameras? Our country is in a malaise (a euphemism, of course). 'Merit', 'brilliance' and 'productivity' are thought to be dirty words. Many of us see nothing wrong in sending illiterate students to do GSAT and CSEC. Many of us see nothing wrong in the Government paying CSEC fees for students, even if 10 per cent of them don't even report for the examination and even if some don't have a ghost of a chance. Many of us don't see why students should have a minimum academic requirement for representing their school in sport.

What I would like readers to focus more on is the essence of my argument than on the workability of my solution. I have made only a proposal. For example, it doesn't have to be 20 schools. My point is that schools need to deserve their presence on national television. We could then have the competition two or three evenings per week and it would end long before final examinations.

I am, etc.,

NORMAN W.M. THOMPSON

norman.thompson@ncu.edu.jm [2]

Department of English and

Modern Languages, NCU