In his own inimitable way, the Mighty Sparrow can sometimes get across a point much more effectively than some of the supposedly learned elite who, from time to time, favour us, the humble folk that we are, with their precious words of wisdom. A case in point, was when the Birdie sang, inter alia, "Children, go to school and learn well, otherwise you might end up catching real hell ... There's no place in this whole wide world for an uneducated boy or girl... Don't let idle companions lead you astray... To earn tomorrow, you got to learn today." Calypsonian Gypsy's Little black boy/girl was simply a specific application of the general advice proffered to what he considered a more-at-risk group.
Perhaps the reason why both Sparrow and Gypsy's songs apparently had such resonance with many of us was presumably because it was just the sort of message we would have received from our own parents, whose innate wisdom may have far exceeded what we now regard as book learning. Sparrow's own mother might well have drummed into the young Birdie's head that education was the poor boy's future "meal ticket." As the saying goes, "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a life time. There was a time when "a formal education" or, as some might say, "an exposure to primary and secondary school teaching" was considered a privilege for those from the humbler walks of life.
And there were primary and secondary schools in those days which were considered prestigious and whose products could have stood up to rigorous scrutiny.
Such educational opportunities, limited as they then were, were so cherished by both parents and children that they took seriously the maxim that, "If you fail to prepare, you should prepare to fail," notwithstanding the attendant "weeping and gnashing of teeth," for opportunities needlessly lost. If I might digress a bit, whatever the late Dr Eric Williams' failings and foibles were, and there were significant ones, in my view there's no gain saying that extending educational opportunities to a larger community is perhaps what he would most be remembered for. His admonition that the future of the young citizens and, by extension that of the country, should reside in the school bags, has lasting relevance and he can't be blamed if such admonition has gone unheeded in certain quarters.
Now, even if the broader educational opportunities offered today were "free"-which they aren't, as someone else has to pay for them-it cannot be right or fair that they should be frittered away in an irresponsible manner. Generally, we tend not to count our blessings and take for granted an impossibly unrealistic "culture of entitlement." Even in the USA, responsible public figures are reminding the populace that their own country has to be in a competitive educational mode both within and without. Which means being nationally as well as internationally competitive. When I refer to the "culture of entitlement," permit me to clarify what is meant.
A number of today's students do not appreciate the fact that they enjoy benefits and facilities that their parents and/or grand parents may not have dreamt of and our natural resources that, in the main, are responsible for funding them are neither inexhaustible nor independent of the political and/or economic vagaries playing themselves out in the external, international environment.
Politicians, the world over, tend to campaign in poetry and subsequently are forced to govern in prose.
So as far as they are concerned "educational statistics" have more to do with, what I choose to call, physical "school spaces" rather than quality "school places." By that, is meant treating the situation as "exploiting a parent voting bank." I'm aware that we're sometimes inundated with "politically inspired educational statistics." I once came across a booklet titled, "How to lie with statistics," and an aphorism, "Figures don't lie but liars can certainly figure." What has bothered me a bit is how a significant number of students have been able to pass through the primary school system, emerging both functionally enumerate and illiterate.
Let me be the first to admit that I've no researched data at my disposal to base my judgement on but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
There may be all sorts of reasons, if it's what I suspect. It may well have to do with the curriculum, hidden or otherwise. But supposing I'm anywhere near correct, one is virtually "spinning top in mud," if you've got an "assembly line type system" churning out who knows what, where an unacceptably significant number of students are expected to build an educational superstructure, where the requisite foundation leaves much to be desired. That, in my humble opinion could result in all sorts of frustration, loss of self-esteem, and mindless indiscipline. Now I'm not making a blanket excuse for the generality of mindless indiscipline. Perhaps, I'm drifting out of my depth here, but I'd like to register my disgust with the manner in which politicians have, in the past, shamelessly sought to score political points, at the expense of Comprehensive School students, without understanding the uphill challenges they were confronted with.
I cringe at their attempts to hold systems up to ridicule to score political points. At times, it was fashionable to downplay prestige schools, even to the extent of referring to them with, a half synthetic sneer, as "so-called prestige schools." Equally idiotic in my view, was the suggestion that all schools are "prestige schools." Fooling whom? I may ask. That's not to say that the potential is not there, given the appropriate conditions.
Over time, a school may develop a sort of corporate personality of its own, with traditions, corporate image, self-esteem and aspiration levels, transmitted often quite unconsciously by a sort of osmosis, from one generation to the next.