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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>Some realities in childhood education</SPAN>
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Mark Wignall
Thursday, November 30, 2006
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=86 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Mark Wignall</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>It was about mid-morning on an unbearably hot day during the long summer holidays that she approached me in a shopping plaza near to where we both lived. She was about 36 years old and lived in a dense ghetto community on the fringe of a middle-class residential area, and she had something to tell me.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"Mr. Wignall, yu 'ave to 'elp mi. Mi have a likkle daughter just pass GSAT for T... High School and mi know if she go there, her life gwine mash up," she said. She lived with her daughter in one small side of a modest house deep in the heart of one of those lanes with just one address but numerous households.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"Mi nuh have no man fi help mi. Is just me alone an mi try hard, hard, but Missa Wignall mi can't afford fi mek she go through whey me did have to live through."<P class=StoryText align=justify>Her concerns centred on the fact that her 11-year-old daughter had just passed the Grade Six Achievement Test for a high school which was considered close to the bottom of the ladder in its overall ratings. Like her immediate environment, the school was situated in an inner-city area, and in Jamaican parlance, "it nah seh nutten".
She wanted me to assist her in getting the child placed in a brand-name school like Ardenne, Meadowbrook or Queen's. I asked her to secure for me all available transcripts from the primary school which the child attended. Something told me that I should meet the child, speak with her and question her in some effort to do my own assessment.
I decided against it because in the end if I found the child to be "slow", I would be forced to tell her so. I also had to accept that I had no training in that area, and in any event, the final judge in any successful shift to a "better" school would be the accepting school itself.<P class=StoryText align=justify>I wrote two letters to two schools. The letters were quite basic; introducing the child, the mother, her concerns that her daughter would become lost over the next five or six years while attending a school that fell short on the "brand name" rating. I used the mother's concerns as the main factor driving the desire for wanting her daughter to attend the "high-grade" high schools.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The weeks ran off and the holidays ended. One school responded saying it would use the assessed progress of the child in its first term at the "no-name" school to determine if her grades and conduct met the standards desired. One month into the school term I was into one of my regular haunts inside the ghetto area where the mother lived. As I rounded a bend I saw her seated on a large stone near to a rickety wooden gate. She was crying.<P class=StoryText align=justify>She saw me just about the same time. Wiping away her tears she stood up and greeted me. "A was just about to call yu, Missa Wignall," she said.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"What's happening, why are you crying?" I asked.
According to her, one of the teachers at the school her daughter attended had addressed her in Grade 7 (first form). Some children had been misbehaving (misbehaving in Grade 7?) and in her effort to control the class the teacher told them that they were all dunces. She impressed upon them that the only reason they were attending the school was because they were all "dunce-head pickney" who had no "behaviour".<P class=StoryText
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Mark Wignall
Thursday, November 30, 2006
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=86 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Mark Wignall</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>It was about mid-morning on an unbearably hot day during the long summer holidays that she approached me in a shopping plaza near to where we both lived. She was about 36 years old and lived in a dense ghetto community on the fringe of a middle-class residential area, and she had something to tell me.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"Mr. Wignall, yu 'ave to 'elp mi. Mi have a likkle daughter just pass GSAT for T... High School and mi know if she go there, her life gwine mash up," she said. She lived with her daughter in one small side of a modest house deep in the heart of one of those lanes with just one address but numerous households.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"Mi nuh have no man fi help mi. Is just me alone an mi try hard, hard, but Missa Wignall mi can't afford fi mek she go through whey me did have to live through."<P class=StoryText align=justify>Her concerns centred on the fact that her 11-year-old daughter had just passed the Grade Six Achievement Test for a high school which was considered close to the bottom of the ladder in its overall ratings. Like her immediate environment, the school was situated in an inner-city area, and in Jamaican parlance, "it nah seh nutten".She wanted me to assist her in getting the child placed in a brand-name school like Ardenne, Meadowbrook or Queen's. I asked her to secure for me all available transcripts from the primary school which the child attended. Something told me that I should meet the child, speak with her and question her in some effort to do my own assessment.
I decided against it because in the end if I found the child to be "slow", I would be forced to tell her so. I also had to accept that I had no training in that area, and in any event, the final judge in any successful shift to a "better" school would be the accepting school itself.<P class=StoryText align=justify>I wrote two letters to two schools. The letters were quite basic; introducing the child, the mother, her concerns that her daughter would become lost over the next five or six years while attending a school that fell short on the "brand name" rating. I used the mother's concerns as the main factor driving the desire for wanting her daughter to attend the "high-grade" high schools.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The weeks ran off and the holidays ended. One school responded saying it would use the assessed progress of the child in its first term at the "no-name" school to determine if her grades and conduct met the standards desired. One month into the school term I was into one of my regular haunts inside the ghetto area where the mother lived. As I rounded a bend I saw her seated on a large stone near to a rickety wooden gate. She was crying.<P class=StoryText align=justify>She saw me just about the same time. Wiping away her tears she stood up and greeted me. "A was just about to call yu, Missa Wignall," she said.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"What's happening, why are you crying?" I asked.
According to her, one of the teachers at the school her daughter attended had addressed her in Grade 7 (first form). Some children had been misbehaving (misbehaving in Grade 7?) and in her effort to control the class the teacher told them that they were all dunces. She impressed upon them that the only reason they were attending the school was because they were all "dunce-head pickney" who had no "behaviour".<P class=StoryText