At 5.30 each morn­ing, 12-year-old Joshua wakes up, not be­cause he wants to, but be­cause he has to. He bare­ly got six hours of sleep. By 7 am, he is sit­ting at a desk in school. Through­out the day, he is told to study, fo­cus, re­vise, pre­pare. Some­times he stays in dur­ing lunchtime. Some­times he gives up his break time to fin­ish his work. Af­ter school, there are lessons. When he gets home, there is home­work and more past pa­pers to do.

Every side he turns, there are adults ask­ing the same ques­tion in dif­fer­ent ways: “Are you ready for SEA?” Some­where be­tween the non­stop study­ing, the pres­sure, and the fear of dis­ap­point­ing every­body around him, Joshua has qui­et­ly stopped be­ing a child. And that, to me, is one of the great­est tragedies of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) in our coun­try.

Next week, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18,000 stu­dents will sit the SEA. Every year, as the ex­am ap­proach­es, we keep say­ing the same thing over and over.

We say chil­dren must work hard. We say sac­ri­fice is nec­es­sary. We say this is part of life. We say ed­u­ca­tion is the key to suc­cess. We say they need to learn to be strong. Maybe all of this is true to some ex­tent. But what we do not say enough is that SEA has be­come one of the most so­cial­ly ac­cept­ed ways in which we de­ny chil­dren their right to child­hood, in the months and years lead­ing up to it.

By the time many chil­dren reach stan­dards four and five, they stop play­ing be­cause that time has to be spent be­hind a book. They don’t get time to sleep be­cause they go to bed late and wake up ear­ly. They don’t sleep prop­er­ly be­cause they are stressed out, wor­ry­ing about week­ly tests and all the re­vi­sions they still have to do. They stop ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties be­cause they need to do ex­tra lessons or ex­tra home­work.

We can all agree that SEA is stress­ful. But I think we need to take this con­ver­sa­tion a lit­tle deep­er. Per­haps it is time we be­gin to see SEA not on­ly as an ed­u­ca­tion is­sue, but as a chil­dren’s rights is­sue. Ar­ti­cle 31 of the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child recog­nis­es the right of the child to rest and leisure, and to en­gage in play and recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties ap­pro­pri­ate to the child’s age. The UN Com­mit­tee on the Rights of the Child goes even fur­ther, de­scrib­ing play as a “fun­da­men­tal and vi­tal di­men­sion of the plea­sure of child­hood.” Play is not a lux­u­ry and chil­dren are not wast­ing their time when they play. It is part of how chil­dren grow, so­cialise, imag­ine, man­age emo­tions, build con­fi­dence and ex­pe­ri­ence joy.

And yet, in T&T, we have built an en­tire ed­u­ca­tion­al cul­ture around the op­po­site idea. We treat play as some­thing chil­dren can have lat­er, af­ter the SEA ex­am is done. We act as though rest must be earned. We tell chil­dren they can go to sleep when they are fin­ished with their home­work or re­vi­sions, not when they are tried and need to rest. We con­vince our­selves that we are prepar­ing our chil­dren for suc­cess on­ly when they are study­ing and re­vis­ing.

But UNICEF has warned that in many coun­tries, “a cul­ture of over-test­ing and ex­ams” is turn­ing chil­dren away from learn­ing and squeez­ing play out of ed­u­ca­tion. This is ex­act­ly what we are see­ing here in T&T.

We of­ten try to soft­en all of this by telling chil­dren that the ex­am is not every­thing, that it does not de­fine their whole life. But say­ing that does not re­move the emo­tion­al, men­tal and phys­i­cal trau­ma that comes with prepar­ing for it.

I un­der­stand, of course, why par­ents be­come so in­vest­ed. For many par­ents, they want their chil­dren to pass for pres­tige schools be­cause they want safe­ty, op­por­tu­ni­ty, dis­ci­pline and a bet­ter fu­ture for their chil­dren.

They know that school place­ment can shape ex­am re­sults lat­er on, con­fi­dence and even life chances. But that is pre­cise­ly why we need a more hon­est na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion. If one ex­am at age 11 or 12 car­ries so much emo­tion­al, so­cial and sym­bol­ic weight, then the prob­lem is big­ger than parental anx­i­ety. The prob­lem is the sys­tem it­self.

I am not ar­gu­ing against stan­dards, ef­fort or dis­ci­pline. Chil­dren should be chal­lenged and ed­u­ca­tion is im­por­tant. But a good ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem should teach chil­dren with­out steal­ing their joy. It should pre­pare them for the fu­ture with­out forc­ing them to give up their child­hood. A so­ci­ety that tru­ly val­ues chil­dren can­not keep treat­ing play, rest and leisure as re­wards to be earned af­ter per­for­mance. They are es­sen­tial to healthy de­vel­op­ment and they are fun­da­men­tal rights of the child.

So, as thou­sands of chil­dren pre­pare to sit SEA next week, let us wish them all the best but al­so, let us ask our­selves a hard­er and more hon­est ques­tion - when did we be­come so com­fort­able with a sys­tem that asks chil­dren to give up so much, so soon?

And if a sys­tem rou­tine­ly leaves chil­dren ex­haust­ed, anx­ious, emo­tion­al­ly over­whelmed and de­prived of the very things they need to grow in healthy ways, then we must have the courage to say that this is a form of harm. And, in that sense, it comes dan­ger­ous­ly close to what many would con­sid­er child abuse.