Dear Editor,
Firstly I want to extended congratulations to Terron Alleyne of Regma Primary who topped at the National Grade 6 Assessment examinations and also his classmates Carol Hopkinson in third position and Teryka Mohabir in sixth, along with all the other students who have performed well. I wish all of them well in the future, and to all the teachers in Region 10 who have worked hard with them, I say well done and keep up the good work; the best is yet to come.
It is indeed soothing and a good feeling to see that the Linden community has for the first time won the top spot at the Grade Six Assessments. Quite apart from the fact that we have been doing fairly well from time to time, placing in the top ten, Terron Alleyne’s emergence as number one was certainly the icing on the cake, an achievement that has done wonders for the spirit of the community. By the way, in passing let me remind Linden folks that last year the teacher of the year was also a Lindener, Ms Roslyn Henry. Over the years McKenzie/ Linden has turned out brilliant students and scholars; at one time it seemed normal, but that was a long time ago.
In November 1974 the hearts of Lindeners lit up when Alfie Collings of McKenzie High School became Linden’s first Guyana Scholar, which prompted then Principal of McKenzie High School Mr C McDonald to remark: “A new era has dawned and one which we hope will provide a guiding light for others to follow.” 1974 to now – 37 years later – is indeed a relatively long period. Editor, because most of the students who scored high marks will be attending MHS come the new school year and also because MHS is designated the top secondary school in Region 10 with a reputable history, I would like to make some remarks directly related to it without the least disrespect to the other secondary schools. I do so in good faith, with the hope that it will serve not only to take people’s mind back in time to when it stood tall, but that persons here or wherever might be goaded into some good action and the old flame will be rekindled, only this time along with all the other secondary schools.
It was in the golden days when the McKenzie High School was the pride of our community, where at the Common Entrance examinations every child had only one dream: achieving the required marks for a coveted placement at that school; thus there were intense battles. Those were the days when MHS stood like a colossus and locked horns with Queen’s College and Bishops’ High, considered the two top schools by far in the country. But MHS did not only produce brilliant students, it fashioned luminaries with distinction. Whenever students from MHS left for Queen’s or Bishops’ it was easy to forecast the final outcome: one could have bet pennies to pins that they would emerge with flying colours. Though there were many who could have gone, some remained at MHS and were equally successful. I need here Editor to mention the names of some outstanding achievers who were weaned at MHS: Winston ‘famous’ Blair, Joe Baker, Valerie Stephens, Cynthia Barclay, George Nooten, Michael Bacchus, Andre Rock, Charles Langevine, Osmond Phillips, Alfie Collins, Harry Lorrimer, Berkley Pollard, Daphne Casey, Janice Gibson, Horace Benjamin, Conrad Taylor, Grace Chapman, ‘Lar’ Grant, Vincent Adams, Bruce Ward, Joan Robinson, Roy Ifill, Desmond Benjamin, John Huntley, Clare Adonis, Lennox Richardson, Julia Caesar, Terrence Evlyn-Bovell, Mona Babb-Foster, Allan and Leslie Monroe, Aubrey Norton, Robert Corbin, David Yaw, Sam ‘Butch’ Wright and brother ‘Shakaton,’ Charles, Aubrey and Kenrick Lee, Stephen and Ranee Simon, Frankie Smith, Maurice Fortune, Wallace Alfred, Charles Parks, Yvette Phillips, Ian Blair, Jeff Trotman and many, many more high achievers whose names have eluded me.
And may I ask what has become of all these brains/these remarkable luminaries who once made our community proud, except for Dr Adams and Dr Stephens and a sprinkling of others who once in a blue moon would come in a touch and go; the community hardly hears anything about them because such a long time has passed. Though MHS functions first and foremost as a learning institution, in those days it seemed to have possessed another attribute which made the community look up to it, for it was the embodiment of academic/scholastic achievement; it was an inspiration to children at the primary level who longed to belong and be held in high esteem by all. It was highly regarded by the then Demerara Bauxite Company which took special interest in it and played a vital and meaningful role in many ways. In fact many of the cadet scholarships that it gave out were primarily won by MHS students. Corporations and business entities were eagerly on the hunt for those students who had completed their exams and were entering the world of work. By some unwritten order it set the criterion for the standard/performance by which all secondary schools were challenged and motivated to measure up; the benchmark was high. There is no doubt there were other excellent performances from other schools, but they were sporadic, unlike MHS; it produced more than its fair share of the top notch. And hand in hand with all that brilliant performance in the classroom was the physical aspect – sport, especially athletics. Their annual sports events were keenly contested with the vigour, enthusiasm and intensity, recording creditable results.
Well, McKenzie/Linden has in my opinion had a prolonged period of academic drought, but Terron Alleyne has provided us with the opportunity to repeat what a former principal of MHS, Mr McDonald, said 37 years ago. With hard work, dedication, a sense of purpose/ accomplishment and a craving for the sky, we can still once again bask in the limelight of great achievement, even though we cannot turn back the hands of time. But we do not only want high flyers at the Grade Six Assessments; while excellent performance at this infant level is wonderful, very encouraging and hopeful, we need to focus on a sustained high performance continuum so that at the end of the secondary level we have results replicating those we are now celebrating.
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe