Editorial

a box by any other name

Friday, February 26, 2010

WE note with interest the charge issued by Mr Denham McIntyre, principal of Cornwall College, in yesterday’s edition of our sister title the Observer West.

According to Mr McIntyre, academic streaming, a process whereby children are grouped for tuition according to their academic abilities, needs to stop.

“All children can learn and should be taught equally,” he says.

True.

But in an imperfect world where countries like ours have set up a virtual lottery for a space in a high school which can actually deliver an acceptable education, the fact is that what Mr McIntyre would like to see is easier said than done.

Let’s face it. Academic streaming, in this society at least, starts from conception. Having brought a child into the world, parents — the reasonable ones at any rate — want a good start for their children.

Most would have read up on the wisdom of capitalising on what is globally known in educational circles as the Critical Learning Period, by exposing their children to print-rich and other environments that stimulate their appetite and potential for learning. A box by any other name...

Faced with a choice between the private early childhood institutions and the State’s public institutions which are — to be fair to them — trying, but have yet to get their act together, they’ll pay through their noses for a space at the former if they can.

If they work along with the teachers — neither public nor private institutions, no matter how good they are, can do it alone — their offspring will more than likely have a comparative advantage over the child that has to duke it out in the public system, devoid of parental support.

Don’t point us to the exceptions, we are aware of them. Our argument is about what is likely, and does, in fact, generally happen to the average child in the absence of a comprehensive system of support at school and at home. Fast-forward to the Grade Six Achievement Test.

Poor parents who are not just paying lip service to the matter of parenting know that anything under a 95 per cent average cannot guarantee their child a space in a competent public school at the secondary level.

Ninety-five per cent!

So a brilliant child who ends up with a less than 95 per cent average, say 90 or even 85 per cent, for argument’s sake, could find himself/herself in a most unfortunate situation in terms of the quality of educational environment that the State is able to afford him/her.

Again, this is not an invitation for anyone to start getting defensive.

For the truth is that there are some schools which are simply not fit to teach, where the leadership is of such that they cannot or will not mobilise the human or economic resources that are necessary to make them successful.

So they disintegrate into holding areas for poor hooligans who, starved of the individual attention that would more than likely address their particular learning needs, literally take over and frustrate the entire educational situation for everyone else.

Many times, the only tangible that the school, beset with under-achievers, can point to as justification for support is the achievement of its exceptional students who, miraculously, beat the odds to excel.

Is it any wonder then, that faced with a lack of resources and strength of character to lead them, schools indulge in academic streaming in a short-sighted attempt to make life easier for themselves and, unfortunately, more difficult for the society which must eventually accommodate these ‘special children’?

Like Mr McIntyre, we would like to see this exclusionary practice come to an end.

Would that our desires were unanimous.

Did you watch American football's Super Bowl on Sunday?
	Yes, but just for the advertisements
	Yes, just for the game itself
	Yes, for both the game and advertisements
	No, I did not watch the Super Bowl.

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