"A teacher is a part of eter­ni­ty for who knows where his in­flu­ence ends?" In quot­ing this Chi­nese proverb, Dr Mar­lon Jame­son, co-chair­man of North­Gate Col­lege, seemed to set the con­text for the school's 2011 Grad­u­a­tion and Awards Cer­e­mo­ny. Some 60 fifth form and 18 sixth form grad­uands crossed the stage at the cer­e­mo­ny, which took place on June 26 at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. Dr Jame­son's re­marks, de­liv­ered in the ab­sence of North­Gate chair­man, Dr Noel Woodroffe, high­light­ed the im­por­tance of a qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion in the con­text of a glob­al de­cline in moral stan­dards. "So­ci­ety has nev­er been as bereft of lead­er­ship as it is in this time," Jame­son said.

"How­ev­er, I am re­li­ably in­formed that light shines brighter in the con­text of dark­ness. And so we rel­ish the op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­leash these young peo­ple in­to the dark­ness of the so­ci­ety in which they are called to func­tion, and up­on which they are des­tined to bring pos­i­tive and sig­nif­i­cant im­pact." Dr Jame­son high­light­ed the Col­lege's on­go­ing Male Em­pow­er­ment Ini­tia­tive as one ex­am­ple of the com­mit­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of in­ter­nal char­ac­ter. "We are specif­i­cal­ly fo­cus­ing on our young men be­cause we recog­nise the sig­nif­i­cant lead­er­ship re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that these young men will hold in the con­text of their fam­i­lies, their com­mu­ni­ties and the wider so­ci­ety," Dr Jame­son said. Yolande La Pierre, North­Gate Col­lege di­rec­tor, de­liv­ered a pre­sen­ta­tion with sim­i­lar em­phases.

"For most ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions, the big con­cern is to en­sure that stu­dents do well in their ex­ams and pass their tests. At NGC, we al­so want our stu­dents to pass their tests. The dif­fer­ence is that, for us, the test is not some­thing that has been de­vised by an ex­am­in­ing body in some re­gion of the world; our stu­dents must pass the test of life. There­fore we have to im­bue them with last­ing val­ues that will pre­pare them for life." Keynote speak­er, Dr Gra­ham King, ex­plained that it was this close at­ten­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of stu­dents' per­spec­tives, val­ues and think­ing sys­tem that made North­Gate Col­lege "dif­fer­ent." Dr King, a lec­tur­er in the Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing at UWI St Au­gus­tine and a di­rec­tor of Glob­al Lead­er­ship In­ter­link, elab­o­rat­ed on what made North­Gate Col­lege dif­fer­ent.

"The North­Gate Col­lege dif­fer­ence is the de­lib­er­ate at­ten­tion that is paid to these un­der­gird­ing el­e­ments, the hid­den di­men­sions, the un­seen nine-tenths. At North­Gate Col­lege, there is an in-built as­sump­tion that what is not seen is more im­por­tant than what is seen." Speak­ing to the live­ly group of grad­uands, he said, "Process is more im­por­tant than out­come. We don't need you to get the high­est pos­si­ble grades, but we do need you to have the best pos­si­ble process." Dr King en­cour­aged stu­dents to re­mem­ber, cher­ish and re­tain all of the in­tan­gi­bles that they had ab­sorbed dur­ing their time at the Col­lege. "North­Gate Col­lege is on­ly the in­cu­ba­tor; we have plant­ed a seedling," he said. "It is now your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to nur­ture its growth to full fruition."