Lascelve Graham | What does winning schoolboy football trophies prove?

To win schoolboy football at the Manning and DaCosta Cup levels, a school not only has to recruit football talent, but to do so very heavily. Bringing in students based on their sports ability starts from first form and continues up to sixth form. It’s a Pyrrhic victory, which comes at great cost to our education/socialisation system. Often, sports recruits are used and discarded, without any significant benefits educationally or in terms of socialisation.

Winning schoolboy football trophies these days proves one thing clearly, unequivocally, categorically. It proves that the winning school had the most efficient and effective system for actively recruiting, importing and assembling the most talented youngsters for that season. It has very little, if anything, to do with the quality of coaching or the development/socialisation of the students who legitimately qualify, by way of the declared academic protocol, to be at a particular school. In fact, such students are crowded out of the activity.

The winning specialised educational institutions best exemplify, are the embodiment of what winning at all costs entails. They have done whatever is necessary to ensure winning by attracting and keeping the best talent available, and they have expended the funds required to do this. This often involves securing room and board for talent, who may come from anywhere in Jamaica or overseas.

It also means corrupting, warping, completely disregarding and undermining the potential all-inclusive, socialising, teaching/learning role of sports in schools, so powerful in helping to inculcate the pro-social values, attitudes and life skills needed by rounded citizens.

BRAGGING RIGHTS

Sports, instead, has been converted to the raw, intensely competitive, counterproductive entertainment activity for bragging rights. It means bringing in people from outside Jamaica, foreigners, while poor Jamaicans yearn for the opportunity to benefit from scarce educational resources funded by Jamaican taxpayers’ money. It means operating a double standard, a sports standard, thereby disenfranchising poor children who have entered the school legitimately, by way of the normal, declared academic standard. They are robbed of their dream, their chance which they have earned, to represent their school because of the sports recruits, local and/or foreign, who replaced them. Others who have the academic credentials which would qualify them for the school, don’t even get the chance to enter the school, because the school has limited spaces, and their spaces are taken by the football recruits.

Along with the above, there is usually a heavy coating of deceit in the attempt to cover up the extensive bringing in of sports talent. Hence, the school authorities repeatedly deny recruiting sports talent, in keeping with Shaggy’s hit song, It Wasn’t Me, while there is usually overwhelming evidence to the contrary, which is public knowledge. The football recruits, teachers, students, parents, fans, sportscasters, etc, all know it. This sends warped messages to our children, including that it is acceptable to do the wrong thing, as long as you don’t get caught; don’t trust authority — they lie (trust deficit); improvement from your own effort is not to be encouraged, rely on outsiders in dealing with your challenges; the end justifies the means; strengthening tribalism is a good thing; ready-made talent is to be favoured over the development of our own, along with a number of other negative consequences, obvious as well as unintended.

In an attempt to rationalise, justify their actions, especially since most of the recruits are academically substandard for the schools, school authorities and their supporters often declare that so many of the sports recruits get scholarships, etc. However, some years ago when the Ministry of Education engaged a reputable firm to research and confirm the numbers, the schools refused to open their books and cooperate with the researcher, who eventually gave up in disgust and frustration.

Of course, extracurricular activities (sports, music, etc) are not necessary for the delivery of quality education. They played minimal to no role in many countries that made positive paradigm shifts in their educational standings, while they were making these changes, for example, Finland, Singapore, South Korea. In fact, the concept of student/athlete was completely alien to South Korea, you were either a student or an athlete. However, extracurricular activities (e.g., sports) are incorporated in some education systems because of their potential to deliver rounded citizens, their socialising aspects, their building of character, and the development of pro-social values and skills. Hence, winning is NOT the primary objective. This idea is what Jamaican schools have corrupted.

PRIORITIES

We need to get our priorities right. Too much focus is being placed on winning sports by our specialised educational institutions.

It is indeed unfortunate that our political and educational leadership has allowed this heavy sports-recruiting activity to continue for so long, thus weakening the efficacy of the socialising aspect of our schools. The Jamaican society is experiencing such high levels of crime and violence, including in our schools, that one would have thought that our leadership would be rushing to shore up a key socialising tool, sports, as one of the major socialising agents of our society, the school. Instead, it appears, they prefer going the route of metal detectors and police, while the powerful socialising potential of sports at this level is being frittered away in the trivial pursuit of winning at all costs at sports.

The inequitable, unfair, unlevel playing field that results, means that those schools, like Campion and Immaculate, which approximate using extracurricular activities (eg, football) in the way they should be used, are at a tremendous disadvantage, and always struggle to be competitive, much less to win. The lessons our youth learn are that nice guys come last, and those who play by the rules get shafted. It’s better to buy than to build, to take the path of least resistance. Is this the way to develop character? Is it any wonder, then, that so many of our youth behave in the anti-social way that they do? As Peter Tosh sang, “You can’t blame the youth”.

- Dr Lascelve ‘Muggy’ Graham is a former captain of Jamaica’s senior football team. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com