Dear Editor,
Professor Gordon Rohlehr shaped hundreds of Caribbean teachers to appreciate the value of English Literature and expected a more prominent place for the subject in the school curriculum. He surmised that illiterate and alliterate boys in particular needed more, not less literature but that need could not be satisfied by teachers who believed that Literature was an elitist subject. That need is even more vital today, but the literature experience will not advance in schools to meet the needs of any student once CXC’s revised plan for the subject is implemented. CXC’s successive revisions of the original conceptualization of literature teaching and learning has been so detrimental to the discipline that it is now time for teachers to advocate for another examining board to oversee the advancement and protection of the discipline.
Originally, in the 1980s English B offered schools a 3 year cycle of choice of a minimum of 5 from 12 possible set texts. What a joy it was to teach and assess the responses of students and candidates from the region! What diverse perspectives were offered and what mature discussions were generated among teachers at the marking tables. CXC was not hemmed in, then, by the need to select ‘the brightest candidate’ in the region or in each territory, as its initial vision was decidedly democratic and inclusive, determined as we were to create a postcolonial regional ethos and ethic.
CXC’s challenge was the wide variation among the distribution of marks in the 22 optional questions. Instead of addressing the issue by developing markers’ skills in detecting and assessing the quality of the candidates’ generic skills set in interpreting the questions and responding to the texts, this ‘entrepreneurial’ regional institution jettisoned the best interest of Literature and introduced in 2006, the first major blow against the original ideal of wide reading, choice and thematic focus in Literature Study – the equally weighted three profiles of Drama, Poetry and Prose. The disaster that created in teacher self-confidence and student reaction to Literature still reverberates throughout the region today.
Over time, CXC reduced the examining time, candidate choice of text and questions, discouraged the most efficient markers and presided over the most precipitous decline in candidate entries even as the majority of Caribbean nations achieved universal secondary education.
The most recent revision in keeping with CXC’s self-serving business plan is to offer a five-year cycle, remove choice of question on set texts in the profiles and publish Study Guides to coach candidates’ parroting in examinations which will not involve marker discussion of responses. And I have not even factored their SBA plans for English. Is this not an evil that must be rejected?
Professional teachers of English Literature who have been influenced by Professor Rohlehr must feel enraged by these developments. It may very well be that the Caribbean will have to look to genuinely autonomous Caribbean teacher leaders to ensure that a genuine movement of teacher professional action will stave off this new CXC onslaught, before effects worse than those of 2006-08 are repeated.
It is time to protect our future from CXC’s present plans for English Literature.
Yours faithfully,
Martin Jones
Trinidad and Tobago
