THERE IS nothing wrong with the 11-plus exam. Everything is wrong with us humans. We like to feel important. We like to believe that we are better than others. It is all about pride and the class thing. It is about the type of car we drive and the house we live in.
To maintain that image all a developer has to do is to take an ordinary piece of land that has little value, erect an attractive wall entrance, plant a few palm trees, and maybe add a park and a little lake, and come up with a covenant of some sort.
He may or may not choose to import a North American house design having no more square footage as a traditional Barbadian home. Give the area an exotic name. Finally ask for an arm and a leg and the bait is set. People will pay through their teeth to live there.
It is for this same reason we want to keep the Harrison Colleges, the Combermeres, Queen’s Colleges, and the list goes on. It is about our pride. We can’t let our children mix with them. Strange enough, there is no such division at Cave Hill.
The concept of zoning is brilliant. Confirm your pronouncement that all the teachers are equally qualified. Now go to the logical conclusion – all schools are equal and there is no need for the so- called older secondary schools.
Prison will always be bad because we put all the bad people in the same place. The same is true when we bunch all the low graders at the “newer secondary schools”. If we insist on doing that then there is a case for higher pay for teachers within the newer secondary schools. They are expected to work harder.
The 11-plus serves to maintain a standard. We need it. Use it to grade the children’s development and provide the necessary programme. There will be equal distribution of students relative to the grades with each school having the same classes. In my time the classes were A, B, and C. I guess we have become more sophisticated. Call them what you like. In my time I was promoted from 1B to 2A because the system allowed for it. This is much more progressive than what we do now. Sit the 11-plus once and your school allocation is cast in stone.
You will stay there until you are superannuated whether or not you are learning. But I guess, I am wasting my time, for two reasons, maybe three. Nobody knows me. My solution is too simplistic. We would die first before we give up our foolish pride. It is a class thing, isn’t it? There is good reason to believe some us will give up our place in Heaven only because our poor neighbour is living next door.
– Pastor Joseph Griffith