Garth
Rattray
Even now, weeks after the results came out, I'm seeing casualties
of the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT). It replaced the Common Entrance Examination
in order to guarantee every primary level student a place in a secondary level
school. It also better prepared students for secondary education by raising
the academic level and expanding the scope of the examination. However, the
GSAT is a 'one-shot' exam that requires extensive and expensive extra lessons
if candidates are to score high enough to secure a place in one of the better
secondary educational institutions.
Parents who can afford it, spend many thousands of dollars submitting their children to several days of extra lessons each week. Some even synchronise their leave from work in order to study with and coach their children during the critical period before the exam.
Every year the media publicises inspirational stories of scholarship winners and glowing reports of happy children that achieved their life's dream of going to the high school of their choice. But there are many that (having done their personal best) end up at one of the lower-ranked schools of secondary education ... these children are cause for concern.
Sadly, the GSAT has come to represent the insidious institutionalised marginalisation of many children. The process of division and disenfranchisement begins in those primary level schools jam-packed with unfortunate/-underprivileged children whose schooling is limited by gang warfare, financial constraints and negative socialisation (that downplays education while promoting survival by means of sex, hustling and/or violence).
Prestigious high schools remain exclusive because some children are lucky enough to be academically gifted and/or some have far more opportunities than others. Interestingly, girls are at a slight disadvantage here because they generally perform better than boys and therefore must compete against each other at a higher level for their top school choices.
We, as a country, are propagating social divisions in our children at their most fragile and impressionable age. Many secondary level schools are stigmatised as second-rate because only a 'certain class' of children end up there. Many of those children see themselves as inferior and perhaps even failures. They sometimes feed on each other's negative emotions and acquiesce to the temptation of idleness, indiscipline and sometimes even violence.
UNFAIR GROUPING
It is presumptuous and unfair to lump together children that are perceived as equally yoked academically especially when so many extraneous factors go into the performance of these stressed-out young students.
We reward top-performing children for their excellence, but we also seem to punish (perhaps, 'condemn') countless others for their lack of it. Any child that is forced to attend a school while harbouring preconceived negative ideas about it is being programmed for failure.
It befuddles me that with all that we now know of the developed and developing human mind, with what we now know about the psychology of criminality and other antisocial behaviour; we let stand this untenable situation.
STRESSED PARENTS
Every year I see many emotionally devastated, dejected, depressed, demoralised and panicked parents and children running around like headless chickens (oftentimes vainly) pulling strings and seeking transfers from inferior schools.
I have, in the past, suggested that secondary level schools share facilities, rotate students and teachers, because the current educational system facilitates estrangement, classism, segregation, disharmony and eventually violence.
Our badly torn and ragged society will never heal until and unless we promote unity by providing equal opportunities for everyone. We must do everything that we can to provide all our children with educational institutions of equal standard.
Dr Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice.
