Children were never treated better

May 02, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- Last week, our nation’s Grade 6 students sat for the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA)—a two-day academic ordeal that, quite frankly, should have its own national holiday. The atmosphere around the country was electric. Schools were sanctified. Homes were transformed into meditation retreats. And most notably, parents turned into a peculiar blend of star chefs, therapists, and motivational speakers, all rolled into one.

If you had strolled past any school last week, you might’ve thought you were witnessing a scene from a coming-of-age film. There they were—mothers and fathers, eyes moist with emotion, kissing their children goodbye like they were boarding a space shuttle to Mars. Hugs were dispensed generously, encouraging words flowed like honey, and in some cases, I suspect incense may have been lit to ward off negative energy.

And why not? On exam days, these children are not just children—they are precious vessels of promise. For two glorious mornings, they get hot breakfasts with names like “brain-boosting porridge” and “omega-3 omelettes.” Parents, who normally struggle to locate their child’s school shoes, were suddenly wide awake at 5:00 a.m., making smoothies, packing tissues, and asking if their children “felt mentally ready.” Mental readiness, mind you, was not a topic of discussion during the preceding years.

Lunch was no longer a cheese roll or a sandwich. No, no. These children were treated to gourmet experiences: Church’s Chicken, Pizza Hut, Chinese from “the nice place, not the usual one,” and in a few reported cases, a four-course meal – because nothing screams “Excel on that Composition paper!” like having a good meal.

And it wasn’t just food. Stationery was upgraded.  Extra pencils were bought – HB 4. Sharpeners and erasers were counted and recounted with the precision of a NASA launch sequence. Parents walked their kids to school as though guiding them through a minefield of academic doom. And before the afternoon session? More hugs. More kisses. More encouragement. You’d think the fate of the Western world depended on these kids correctly identifying the subject and predicate in Sentence 3.

Naturally, the children were ecstatic. They began to wonder why exams couldn’t happen more often. After all, it’s not every day you get to eat fried chicken in the car while being told how wonderful and capable you are. If there were a petition to make NGSA a monthly event, the student body would sign it unanimously.

But here’s where the comedy turns tragic—the majority of those doting, cooing, well-intentioned parents are going to be deeply, profoundly, heartbreakingly disappointed. Most of their children will not be awarded a spot at the elite schools of their dreams. Queen’s College, The Bishops’ High School, St. Rose’, St. Stanislaus and St. Joseph’s, the last time we checked, do not have the square footage to accommodate the national population. Supply simply cannot meet the tsunami of parental expectations.

And when those results are released, when the names are not on the list, the narrative will change. Oh, how it will change.

The same parents who massaged their children’s temples before exams and whispered affirmations into their ears will now look bewildered and betrayed. “After all I did? After the extra pencils? After the pizzas?” The heartbreak will quickly spiral into blame. And who better to blame than the small human who dared to score below the invisible line of parental satisfaction?

The truth, of course, is far more boring and far more inconvenient: love and learning are not things you can microwave. They don’t respond well to last-minute panic and a side of fries. You can’t reverse a year of yelling and indifference with two days of hugs and pepperoni pizza. You can’t undo a childhood of neglected reading habits with a heartfelt note tucked in a lunchbox.

But try telling that to the parents, many of whom genuinely believe that their two-day transformation into paragons of parenting should’ve guaranteed a scholarship and a marching band. The tragicomic twist is that children notice these things. They’re not fooled by last-minute affection. They know when the kindness is temporary, when the love is conditional, and when the attention is purchased by a $4.500 pizza order.

Worse, all this pampering can backfire. Children begin to internalize the notion that love is performance-based. Do well, and you get fatty foods aplenty. Fail, and you get silence—or worse, scolding. That’s a dangerous lesson to teach a ten-year-old.

The point is not that parents shouldn’t support their children during exams—they absolutely should. But they must also support them every other week of the year. The home should be a loving, stable, nurturing environment, not a two-day carnival of affection tied to a national test. Learning is not a sprint; it’s a long, slow, beautiful, maddening marathon.

And as for the parents who feel let down by their children’s results, maybe—just maybe—they should ask themselves if two days of kindness were ever enough to make up for a year’s worth of neglect. Or if that extra pencil really stood a chance.

 

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) 

 

 

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