Dear Editor,
When people have a mindset and are steeped in certain ways, then no matter how much preaching is done in their interest about the virtue or danger of a thing, it will still be to no avail, or as old folks would say, it’s like throwing water on duck’s back. Extra lessons for children, to the overwhelming majority of parents/guardians are a sine qua non which they believe in like a religion, and will not listen to anything from anyone against them. They see within them a golden future on the horizon for their children, thus their obsession. And so your erudite Sunday columnist, Dr Ian McDonald who has been forever preaching, admonishing and imploring us about the subtle, latent and possibly irreparable damage that can be done to our children by the shackles of extra lessons when overdone, still remains a voice in the wilderness (‘The legacy of Thomas Gradgrind’ SN, Sept 26). A few weeks back it was Mr Laurie Lewis who, in a terse letter in the SN on August 16 under the caption, ‘It would be better if our students sat no more than ten subjects at CSEC,’ appealed to both the Education Ministry and parents to lessen the burden on our children. He said “stop this rat race now!’ and “let us end this madness now!” of pushing students day and night to capture 15 subjects, denying them an important part of their lives. Mr Lewis went on to say, “I rather suspect that in terms of human development we are damaging these children.” Then came another writer, Mr George Munroe under the headline, ‘We overplay the role of some groups and underplay others’ (SN, September 16), a clever, frank and factual presentation lambasting our antiquated, regimented and inept system that keeps us hemmed in and ridiculously narrow-minded in our outlook and judgment. Moving beyond the realm of extra lessons and excessive subjects, Munroe pointed out other negatives which our society and educational system are fostering: the misplaced and false values that regard a craftsman job as inferior to one in the fields of law or medicine. In addition he mentioned other foolish reasoning in determining levels and standards of acceptability, such as the “impertinent and fallacious implication… that farmers were also high school dropouts, several degrees outside the boundary of acceptable society and therefore of no consequence”; and the guilt feelings inherent in the conditioning process our society imposes on us of “the intellectual shackles suffusing our individualism and potential.”
But Dr McDonald prodded our minds; he has over and over again expressed reverential-like interest in the mind of a child – the infinite creative potential waiting to explode – and has been steadfast in banging against this extra-lessons craze for a mighty long time, the discarding of which has now become his trumpet call. Extra lessons have indeed, as some have stated, accurately be seen as an abomination in some instances, where teachers hardly do their regular teaching assignment, preferring to do so with the lessons. Slow ones who cannot afford to pay are totally neglected. I have even seen some extra lesson classes so large that they have to be divided, and for 3-4 sometimes 5 days a week! But a good wager also is that what happens during normal school sessions is the same that goes on with extra lessons as regards slow and quick learners; no special care is given to those slow on the uptake. Thus most extra lessons classes fail to provide any meaningful help to plodders. Just why are people still so hooked on the assertion that PC and QC are the sole authentic bedrock and embodiment of a sound education, and hence it is the end of the world for a 11-12 year old who fails to grab a place? We can only hope that one day parents/guardians will come to realise the damage that can come about when their desire and their children’s dream are not in harmony. I recall a story I read some time back – I think it was The Other Side of Midnight. Kate Blackwell became the inheritor of a gold industry and wanted her son, in time, to head it, but he wanted instead to become an artist which was his passion and which she damned, since according to her the gold empire was all that mattered as there were endless people who could paint. “I have better uses for him,” she said. So she granted him his wish by ‘playing him’; sent him to art school in France; arranged for him to have an exhibition at a prominent art gallery and paid an eminent critic to tear him to shreds. So crafty was Kate Blackwell, that even when her son thought that it was through his courtship he had won his girlfriend who shared his apartment, he was hoodwinked, because his mother had arranged it. He was so devastated that he lost his mind and ended up in a mental asylum and she was heartbroken. And so I am all along with Dr McDonald when he writes so feelingly that “we need to avoid that which pollutes the essence of childhood… the child must be given room enough and time to work out a child’s destiny, before he/she graduates to tackling challenges and enduring the trials of another stage.” So true, yet it remains a tall order for the ministry to check, and where parents are concerned, ‘stick break in deh ears’ and ‘you can preach like Paul.’ Trying to convince them is like talking to the dead, and I think Dr McDonald knows this well deep down inside, which is the very reason why he states, “Extra lessons now seems irremovably rooted in our educational system. Even when they are no longer required they are still imposed.”
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe
