I HAVE SOME advice for officials at the Ministry of Education: Find a new “Matlock” or bring the old one out of retirement.
Our school system needs a new Geoffrey Barrett or two on the streets every Monday to Friday morning to see that our schoolchildren have few opportunities for lagging when they should be heading to school or at school.
Each day, it appears, there are scores of children who get untold pleasure from liming at bus stops while one by one the buses pass by. Now this is not a new problem, but from the number of children who can be counted chatting away at bus stops each morning without a care in the world, sometimes until well after 9 o’clock, it is a growing issue.
We all know the Transport Board has its challenges, but I am convinced that many of our children use the Board’s inability to adequately cover the routes as it would like as an excuse. In fact, I am satisfied that if the Board could dedicate 200 buses entirely to transport children each morning, there would still be hundreds of tardy students.
But I also recall the days when “Matlock” patrolled the streets in and around The City looking for the late movers and habitual shirkers.
As a matter of fact, I can recall driving along Baxters Road and Tudor Street when suddenly a hoard of students took off running as though Bridgetown was on fire. However, it only took a glance in my rear-view mirror to figure out what was happening. A couple of vehicles back from me was the infamous white Toyota Hiace van with the Ministry of Education sign on the sides, a policewoman in the front passenger seat and “Matlock” in the seat closest to the main passenger entrance waiting to pounce.
These loiterers could smell “Matlock” 200 metres away. Apparently, “Matlock” didn’t play. If you did not have a good reason for being at the bus stop when you should be on your way to school, especially when buses were passing with seats available, this school attendance officer provided one for you – directly to the school compound. No one wanted to arrive at school accompanied by the school attendance officer.
Clearly something has gone wrong since “Matlock” retired. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not putting the blame for this situation on the Ministry of Education, although clearly as seen in the “Matlock” era, the officer has a role to play.
Yes, all over this island thousands of parents go to work, leaving their children at home with the confidence that they will properly attire themselves and leave home early enough to get to school on time. And each day thousands live up to their parents’ expectations.
But there are scores more who gather at bus stops, and various hang-out spots along the streets, and wait for some special ride. We see them every day. It’s 8:45 a.m. in Baxters Road, or along Black Rock, Eagle Hall, Tudor Bridge, Wildey, Warrens or so many other locations and they are headed for St Lucy, St Peter, St James, St Andrew, St Joseph, St Philip or Christ Church, and you know that even with a police escort and siren blaring, they could not make it to school before classes start.
They are as cool as cucumbers. Not a hint of bother. Not a face to suggest: “Boy, if my mother know I out here at this time she gine kill me!” Nothing so!
Then up comes a minibus headed to Town and a throng of students rush across the street to jump in, like Columbus “going east to get west”. They are already late but they opt for the long way to school, at a fee, when a Transport Board bus would have taken them directly there at no cost hours earlier.
Then our principals face the proverbial dilemma: close the gate and deny them entry, and suffer the wrath of adults on Facebook and the radio call-in programmes, or let them in with some alternative punishment that seems not to make a difference.
I understand the dangers of sending them back home, especially when parents have not been notified, but I suspect that some principals have resorted to this tactic because regardless of the offence, some parents just will not visit or otherwise lend disciplinary support to the schools.
What’s particularly worrying about this trend is the number of junior school students, those in first through third forms, who are among these hoards of loiterers.
Without firm principals, a few Matlocks and some parents who are prepared to accept their responsibilities to their children, our society is in for a rough ride.
Matlock closes casebook Flashback February 7, 2004
It’s after 9 a.m. in the Constitution Road bus terminal.
A few students stand chatting as they wait patiently for their favourite “ride” to arrive, ignoring the line of empty vans parked before them, when all of a sudden the alarm is sounded: “Matlock coming! Matlock coming!”
The students make a mad rush for the nearest van and out of “nowhere” approaches a man clutching a book in one hand and a pen in the other.
This scenario has been played out to eerie precision in bus terminals and van stands throughout The City for the past 12 years.
Only one name has the ability to make secondary schoolchildren shudder after the clock strikes “nine”.
Not that of their headteacher nor even a parent, but that of senior school attendance officer Geoffrey Barrett, also known as Matlock.
More than a decade after he took the challenge to clean up the streets of Bridgetown, Barrett, 59, has retired.
Many a student will not soon forget his firm scoldings on tardiness and wearing school uniforms incorrectly, or his uncanny knack of showing up at schools just when students thought he had forgotten their faces.
“Oh once I see a face I never forget it,” he quipped.
“I reckon if you are supposed to be at school for 8:45 a.m., you cannot expect to be in the bus stand at that time waiting on special ZRs. The ZR culture is very catching amongst our schoolchildren. I don’t mind them taking them but it depends on what time it is,” he said. (Excerpt from a feature by Melissa Rollock upon the retirement of Barrett more than ten years ago)
Short walk to school no hardship
Now a little advice for parents.
I know we all want our children to avoid the “hardships” we endured, but sometimes we have to reconsider what we regard as hardships.
Each morning I am amazed by the number of children who are standing, for instance, at the bus stop outside the Psychiatric Hospital, sipping a “sweet drink” while waiting for the bus to Ellerslie Secondary. And, based on my observation, they can stand there for half an hour to 45 minutes.
Something has to be wrong when on a warm, clear morning a 12-, 13-, 14-, 15- or 16-year-old finds it to be too much to walk a couple hundred metres to school, but will fill their stomach with diabetes-inducing drinks.
Don’t think I am picking on Ellerslie students because I see it with Coleridge & Parry students as well – in fact, all over this country. Students catch the bus at Warrens and Jackson to travel four or five stops to Lester Vaughan Secondary. And we wonder why so many of them are so fat and reluctant to participate in sports.
We owe it to our children to encourage them to exercise, and walking to school in areas where there are sidewalks and no fears of interference would be a great start. Encourage them to walk to and from school in groups even.
