Lascelve Graham | The business of sincere ignorance

Phillip Williams, in a letter to the editor dated October 27 titled, ‘Ban on recruitment will hurt students the most’, declares that, if schools were prevented from bringing in children based on their sports ability (in other words, if schools were stopped from acting as sports academies, clubs), the biggest losers would be students since, “not all the institutions have the capacity”. He goes on to state that sports is big business and that, if our schools stop recruiting based on sports ability, they will be “punishing the students and deprive them of a great future”.

Punishing which students? Not the sports recruits who have problems fitting in psychologically and otherwise at their new school. Certainly not the children of poor people, who have earned their places at the school, are there, but whose spaces on the team are taken by sports recruits. Definitely not the poor children, who would/should have been in the school, but are not, because sports recruits took their spaces.

Decidedly not the majority of sports recruits, and others, who, because of the overemphasis on winning at sports, neglect what should be their focus in school, and end up failing at what is the most competitive career in the world. A number of studies have shown that only an extremely small percentage of high school students make it in sports or get sports scholarships. Surely no children will suffer from the source school, whose robbed sports stars (who they discovered, nurtured, developed and brought to prominence), would have helped to bring some glory, pride and confidence to the school as well as associate them with excellence, not to mention helping the school in its drive for funding. Unquestionably not the children at schools which will now get a chance to build their sports programmes.

I guess Williams must be talking about the foreign sports recruits from the Caribbean and as far afield as Africa, who have been taking the spaces of poor Jamaican children. Schools recruit to win at all costs, not to help (Jamaican) students!

EDUCATION TOP PRIORITY

Our schools are not the developmental arm of the various sports associations, and should not be scouting for sports talent in the first place! The education/socialisation mission of our schools is top priority! We tamper with that at our peril. Most Jamaicans seem unaware, sincerely ignorant, of the enormity of the education/socialisation task of our schools, especially with the dysfunctionality of our families. Leave our schools to do their crucial work and stop putting obstacles in the way!

Our people need to understand the concepts of priority, efficiency, efficacy and division of labour and, therefore, that schools cannot be all things to all people. Schools cannot serve two masters. They must be single-mindedly focused on their indispensable mission.

Bringing in students based on their sports ability is what sports academies and clubs rightly do, since their mission is the development of sports talent. This is not the goal of our public schools, which have a mission which is much more fundamental to the sustainability of our society!

The view expressed is shallow, narrow, myopic, blinkered and doesn’t look at the bigger picture. I wouldn’t be surprised if Williams is a coach who is using the students as his shield while really trying to protect his narrow self-interest, which is having strong sports teams at all costs. In the scenario where recruiting is banned, coaches would essentially be social coaches and their jobs would be more demanding, especially since they could no longer just assemble an all-schools team at their school. If indeed he is a coach, numbered among the multitude of others who have been deceived by the silence of the leadership in education into thinking that recruiting for sports purposes by schools “a nuh nuttn”, he had better heed the suggestion of the favourite, most hackneyed phrase in interviews given by coaches, and “go back to the drawing board”.

DIFFERENT ROLE

In schools, the role of sports (an extra-curricular activity), is different to its role in a sports academy or club. In school, its role is as a socialising, teaching/learning tool, as is the role of all extra-curricular activities. It is for the students who have legitimately qualified to be at the school, whether stars or the other extreme, since all our children need to be properly socialised.

One would not go scouting for someone to bring into the school because of his ability as a cadet. This is because, in school, being a cadet is not an end in itself, but rather a tool, a means to an end, that of helping to socialise the children at the school. The same principle applies with respect to all extra-curricular activities, including sports. Our schools should not be scouting for sports talent, but for youngsters with potential in the academic, technical or vocational spheres, who, for one reason or the other fell through the cracks, since this is in keeping with their mission and since “not all the institutions have the capacity”.

Schools perform a most vital, critical function and have an extremely important mission in our society. The primary mission of our schools is to formally educate all our children, focusing on the academic, technical and vocational areas. They are also one of the main socialising agents of society and so have to, especially at this time in Jamaica, use all their wherewithal, including sports, to help in the inculcation of pro-social values, attitudes, behaviours and life skills to these same children. Bringing in youngsters based on sports ability is a conflicting, double standard which undermines, beats the system, and is teaching wrong lessons and sending bad messages to our children. It must stop!

Given his narrow perspective, and genuine lack of knowledge of the ramifications of the subject matter of which he wrote, I empathise with Williams and others of his ilk, and will only say, as has been voiced elsewhere, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”.

Lascelve ‘Muggy’ Graham is a former captain of Manning, All-Manning, All-Schools and All-Jamaica football teams. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com