Instead of writing my planned 11-Plus essay in sympathy with the children of Barbados who did the real thing on May 3, I finished the exam – and what a test it was! – with an open letter to my son, and all the others who were this year’s victims.
Dear Child,
The day your 11-Plus results came out was the worst of your life – and you’re going to the most desired school in Barbados this year! You did wonderfully – 98 per cent in maths, 81 in English and an A in the essay, better marks than mine 40 years ago (and, as an “Exhibition” winner, I was in the top three per cent in Trinidad).
Despite your first-class performance, you did not get into your first choice school. Maybe it was some zoning something, because we know there is at least one other student who got into your first choice school with lower marks than you. (They’d need 99 or a perfect score to beat you in the maths.)
And you were shattered. The shock of the world telling you that you were not first choice was almost impossible for you to hear and bear.
And it broke my heart, for you, that I could do nothing to prevent or alleviate your suffering.
And you scored ninety-firetrucking-eight in maths!
And I thought of the other children who worked their fingers to the bone, who beat their poor little brains half to death, who sacrificed everything good about childhood – play, song, sport and the sweet idleness of innocence – in the name of this Godforsaken but all-important test, those little ones who gave their all, and were still given the shocking news, by a slip of paper that looked like an electricity bill, that they were failures.
If you felt so horrible, how did others who did not do as well – which would be most of the children who sat the damned thing – begin to cope?
This is not you, child; this is a system that files away people like things and does not cater to the exceptional individual (even the exceptionally good). There have always been and always will be systems that force first-rate people into second-rate positions. The clearest historical example we have in these parts – that of slavery – reduced millions of fine human beings into someone else’s possessions, most of the time, someone of lesser moral stature.
You and I are lucky. There was no stretch from your marks to a first choice school. But what about all those other excellent boys and girls, whose parents love them, who simply didn’t do as well on the day.
Who can contemplate the tragedy of those little ones who will not even have their parents’ support and understanding, will get instead licks and ridicule.
And I understood the major, bizarre, tenet of Christian faith in John 3:16. It is better a father put his son to death than be unable to defend him; and no father, not even God the Father, can take the cup of the loss of innocence from his son’s lips.
