GOWN WITH THE WIND

Jun 29, 2009 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

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One morning as he watched the school children pass in the street below their lodging at No. 22 Baker Street, the redoubtable Dr. Watson asked his friend, the famous sleuth Sherlock Holmes, “I say old man, what school did you attend?”  The answer was immediate, “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
The problem now is that elementary is not as elementary as it used to be.  In fact, it is the primary issue with the education of children today.  I suppose I should have spotted the change when a “copy” book became an “exercise” book.  We also had “drawing” books.  A few years ago when my children’s booklist included “construction” paper, I figured that we had crossed into new territory.  First I did not know what it was and when I found out, I realised I had known all the time but had not known that I knew.
This is a byproduct of education known as the “sleeper” effect, something that affected me a lot in those early days when my father or mother shook me awake at 04:30 a.m. to catch the 05:30 a.m. bus or 06:00 a.m. bus to San Fernando, or even before that when I had to be dressed for 06:00 a.m. for my Uncle Percy to take me to school in Port-of-Spain.
In those days the big thing was the “College Exhibition”.  I am not sure of the origin of the term, but how it worked was that children in Standard Five wrote an examination and those who excelled got “College Exhibitions”.  Those who did not get Exhibitions were reviled, rebuked and ridiculed by their parents.
The crux of the system was that the number of free places was extremely limited.  By the time I wrote the exam, the number had increased to 200.   If you passed the examination but were not one of the Exhibition winners, your parents had to find the money to pay for your Secondary education, which included books by the ton-load, passage money and lunch money.
If you were lucky enough to go to a Catholic school, there were always more hidden costs than a Hire Purchase agreement.  Sounds familiar?  Well, the name has changed but as Sherlock Holmes or the famous sleuth, Inspector Jury, created by Martha Grimes might have said, the case has decidedly not altered in these many years.
From College Exhibition it became Eleven Plus, then Common Entrance and now, in Trinidad, SEA (Secondary Entrance Assessment).  However, the malady lingers on.  The poor kids are still at SEA and in danger of being swallowed up by a pernicious system, the essentials of which have not changed for generations.
Another thing that has not altered at all, and perhaps might be the root of the dilemma we now face in education, is that our desire that our children should do well and go to good Secondary schools, coupled by our fear of failure (theirs and ours), make us pay for “extra lessons”.  It was ever thus.
Every evening after school we had more school.  Every Saturday was lessons.  My parents, and all the other parents of the kids in my class, paid my teacher for us to have extra lessons. Some teachers had built huge reputations on their ability to prepare children for the examination.
Parents swapped tales of teachers the way Westerners spoke about gunfighters. Our Teacher was the Pat Garrett of his day. Unfortunately, I was Billy the Kid and got more licks than a long time lollipop.
There were virtuoso teachers of College Exhibition whose results were guaranteed.  Then they became Eleven Plus wizards, Common Entrance giants and perhaps now SEA Monsters.  They had in common that they never missed a beat- either in cashing in on their positions or in punishing their pupils.
Through the years, the basic common denominator has been greed.  The syllabus, they say, cannot be completed in the time officially allotted to it by the Ministry of Education.  The children need extra lessons.  The parents must pay.  If you decide that your child does not need the extra lessons, then the child is in serious trouble during the regular class time.
I was not surprised when my children’s teachers did not finish the syllabus during class time. I was not surprised when they had to do extra lessons.  What astonished the heck out of me is that we did not have to pay for the lessons.  But, we had to pay for the “graduation”.
My first graduation was at University where, having earned a Bachelor’s Degree, I wore the gown and the mortar-board cap and had my picture taken.  Not so these days.  Nowadays, there are graduation ceremonies at every step of the way.
Nursery school children on their way to kindergarten have elaborate graduation rituals complete with gowns, caps and Pampers.  Kindergarten kids graduate into the Elementary School system with full ceremonial rites.  My children, having written the Common Entrance examination, and the school having no further need for them, decided to add to my cost by staging a Graduation.
The rental of the gowns was US$60 each with the promise that if we returned the items in pristine condition we would get half of the money back.  Knowing Jasmine and Zubin, I wrote-off the entire amount up front.  Dinner with all the accoutrements (corsage and cake) cost another US$40 each.  Graduation pictures US$60.
The Ceremony on a hot evening in a hotter Church segued into a dark night dinner fiasco where the arrangements were as inadequate as the food.  Even as we smothered our children with congratulatory kisses, we kissed our hard-earned money goodbye. I kept thinking that a simple Speech Day with simple speeches would have sufficed and ended earlier.
The problem with such things is that we love our children and want the best for them.  On the one hand, we believe that graduation should not be trivialized and should take place at the big moment – University. On the other hand, we believe in celebrating small victories.
More, we don’t want to disappoint our children and they look forward to these events with a hope and excitement that dwarf our petty concerns.  Perhaps, when the photographer lined us up for the big picture, I should have got my own back like the man whose wife cajoled him into posing for a picture with his son, resplendent in graduation gown and cap.
“Let’s try to make this look natural “she said.  “Junior, put your arm around your dad’s shoulder.”  The father answered, “If you want it to look natural, why not have him put his hand in my pocket?”
*Tony Deyal was last seen saying that if there was a pill for every occasion and for every issue, the elementary school graduation pill would be the biggest of all because he found the whole thing hard to swallow.

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