#BTEditorial – For Pupil #3544

Dear Pupil #3544

Sadly, we had high hopes that we would not have to write this particular letter to you. Your Government had promised that you and your classmates would be spared a system designed to glorify a few and shame or ignore the many, one that pits you and your friend against each other and sends future citizens into a winner-take-all, topsy-turvy race to adult citizenship – paid for by the grownups.

So it is again our duty to urge young pupils not to fret that your name may not yet be featured in the pages of this newspaper. But do not doubt you are a hero or heroine to your parents, guardians, grandparents, godparents, family friends and your community.

And that is more than enough.  For you have also striven against a new foe – a virus that has claimed many lives and changed many more.

Now – through no fault of our own nor yours – it falls to us to tell you the following.  You are about to enter a secondary school and sit in a place that was bought and paid for in large measure by the efforts of those by your side and those who have gone before you. In the time of your ancestors, education was a privilege, the fullness of which was denied them. Yet they believed that it should be a right and fought for you to have it. Value it.

There is something you must learn as you enter First Form that few if any in your primary school have prepared you for:  what it takes to be a man or woman in 21st Century Barbados.

You are being prepared for a job that you yourself may have to invent for no one has yet thought of it.

Many of the benefits for which your forebears have laboured and still strive, through something known as taxes, will be mocked as entitlements. The choice will be yours when you become of voting age to ensure that the ladder put up for you will not be kicked down for others.

No doubt you must be wondering why ten people out of 3,544, not a few of whom have had the benefit of small classes, low teacher-student ratios, paid tuition and abundant resources their parents can afford, are now the beneficiaries of the spotlight.

You will be told, as your colleagues were last year, that the private schools from which so many of them have sprung must be superior to your own taxpayer-funded, public school.

Do not be fooled by this. Thirteen of the 22 high-flying, top-scoring maths whizzes in the exam attended a public school where dedicated teachers still strive amid low pay, high workloads and parlous amenities. Thank them.

You know – even if our leaders do not – that the vast numbers of students who will rub shoulders with you at our nation’s high schools did their work, checked it over, and are proud of their efforts whether this newspaper recognises those efforts or not.

Do not despair that there will be no shouting from the rooftops of the lad who turned a D into a B, or a lass’s persistent failure into respectable success.

But no one has yet told you that the ultimate test – the great examinations of all – will come not from the choice of school tie or tunic but in the first paper set by a university, community college, technical school – or first employer.

Here, the examiner cares neither a jot or tittle for a parent’s wealth, connections or ability to game the system and place you in the school of their choice.

For whether you will graduate from Frederick Smith or Queen’s College or Darryl Jordan, The Lodge School or Lester Vaughan, Foundation or Parkinson, the test of life will be the same and many high-flyers may be found wanting.

But you, dear pupil, for your mighty and valiant struggle against being taught to tests, against those who disregarded or misunderstood your innate desire to learn and style of learning, will be rewarded. You will have won the battle against an ancient and unjust era that still exists, with its hide-bound traditions of elitism, exceptionalism, and homework.

And while you will yet encounter many vestiges of a weak and archaic education system in high school, you must nevertheless strive for that one quality which no school can bestow – the desire to keep on learning all your livelong days.

Seek and find knowledge. Do not to yield to ignorance, well-worn platitudes and tired clichés. Put fact before fancy, principle before personality, ideas ahead of individuals.

Do not entirely forget all you were taught in primary school. We do not mean the multiple-choice answers and the ready essay phrases – dump those.

Live by the Golden Rule. Love the truth. Question power. Be honest, fearless and just; give respect, show understanding, care and love.

If you do these things, you will leave for all time and all who shall live after you a better nation and world than the one we have entrusted to your care.

We apologise most humbly for the less than pristine state of your inheritance. It has been worn down by environmental degradation, inept leadership, weak governance and not a little greed.

Sadly, some of your compatriots may not live to see the full flower of the potential, for they may be cut down by bullets, which some unscrupulous guardians let pass and which we are now powerless to stop.

We are sorry for our sins of commission and omission and hope that you may make a better fist of it than we have.

But know that this tiny island nation was built by nothing but blood, tears, toil and sweat to be mightier than its size, with vistas greater than many mortal eyes can yet see, its destiny to be determined not by fate or fortune but by your enterprise and excellence in whatever you do.

Remember the words of the Pledge of Allegiance – by your living do credit to your nation wherever you go. Live by the simple, honest creeds of your Creator, whoever you perceive him or her. Honour your mother. Honour your father. Honour thyself.

And above all things be true to yourself; that way you cannot be false to anyone.

Now savour the fruits of your labours. Play your heart out this vacation period but safely.

For come September, you enter a portal to manhood and womanhood. You’ve made it thus far, through a tougher year than many have ever know. You will make it if you keep trying your best.

For you, dear Pupil 3544, the real journey is only just beginning.

Godspeed.