Lascelve ‘Muggy’ Graham | The PNP/JLP are united! Alas and alack, it is to Jamaica’s detriment

THE PNP and JLP are agreed.

Our specialised educational institutions must continue to pursue the win-at-all-costs approach to sports. After all, it has produced the recently ended world-acclaimed Champs and exciting schoolboy football competitions, etc. These produce field days in marketing for our private sector. People come from far and wide to support these occasions. What excitement! What spectacles! What top-class entertainment!

Hence, it is okay for the rabid, unbridled marketplace to determine the direction and focus of our specialised educational institutions. Allow our specialised educational institutions to be used as sports academies, clubs, thereby wasting our scarce, educational/socialisation resources in the misguided pursuit of producing world-class sports performers.

All this, of course, while our schools are failing miserably in their mission to deliver formal quality education/socialisation to all our children. Both the PNP and the JLP are united in this cause and the Church, a major socialising agent of the society, stands aside, refusing to get in their way!

CHAMPS FRENZY

The question is, at what cost? What price are Jamaicans paying to whip up the type of frenzy generated by Champs and other school sporting events? The cost includes contributing to the indiscipline, lawlessness, crass, crude and antisocial behaviour so rampant in our society. Added to that is the swelling of the numbers of what the prime minister euphemistically refers to as “unattached youth”.

Of course, it’s of no consequence to our leaders that our children are crowded out of scarce educational/socialisation resources by foreigners. In fact, this is marketed as something that is very positive.

Some years ago, The Marquette Law School Review, based in the USA, published an article warning schools that they needed to act urgently in order to preserve the educational and community values of the interscholastic athletic environment. They warned against schools being entrapped in the “iron triangle” of television, recruiting and the competitive value of athletics (i.e., the economic pressure to win), which would pollute the educational and community values of their educational institutions. They were concerned about restoring balance to the education/sports equation. They recognised that they have a problem.

Do we? A resounding “No!” thunders back as the answer to that question.

If a sports academy were to accept youngsters based on their academic, technical or vocational performance, we would immediately label that as absurd. This would be so, because they are specialised sports institutions and their mission is to develop sports ability, and although a certain level of academic preparation is useful, it is secondary. There are many brilliant sportsmen and women who have a very low academic standing. If a dance school should bring in persons based on their academic or athletic ability, we would see that as ludicrous, although both are helpful to the dancer.

However, when the shoe is on the other foot, and our schools recruit youngsters based on their sports ability, we see nothing wrong with that, although the primary mission of our specialised educational institutions is to give opportunity to, and develop our citizens in the academic, technical and vocational skill areas.

In this scenario, sports and other extracurricular, co-curricular activities are secondary although important, and function as socialising tools helping in the inculcation of the pro-social values, attitudes and behaviours the society requires.

If sports is going to be fit for purpose in our schools, the mantra must be, “it is not whether you win or lose, it is how you play the game!”

Because our schools are one of the main agents of socialisation, we need to be very careful about how they operate, what is done there, how and why, because, with every action, they are sending signals, teaching lessons, impacting our children for good or bad.

ALARM BELLS

Our schools, along with our families, represent the core, the heart and soul, the foundation of our socialisation system. One would expect, therefore, that our children would be on their best behaviour in the school environment. Of course, social media has disabused us of that notion, by just about every day showing antisocial behaviour in our schools. That should have made alarm bells go off in the heads of our leaders and made them understand that we have a serious crisis on our hands which needs immediate action.

However, this has not been the case. It has been business as usual, with regular lip service, platitudes, clichés strutted out re school, education, discipline and socialisation. There has been no fundamental change in how we do things in education/socialisation at our schools.

The prime minister frequently laments that he will have to bring in skilled workers since there is a lack of such here. He cries about the number of unattached youth in our midst. He bemoans the indiscipline in our society. However, very little, if anything, has been done to attack these problems at source, which would involve improving our education/socialisation system.

Champs and other school sporting events don’t need recruiting for sports purposes to be exciting. Without it, sports would be a much more efficient and effective socialising tool in our schools. Recruiting for sports purposes by our public specialised educational institutions is not in the best interest of our children or Jamaica and should stop NOW! We need to change our philosophy re socialisation/education!

A career in sports is the most competitive in the world and the odds against making it are severe. The statistics show that very few get meaningful sports scholarships. Overemphasising sports in our schools, as we do, has sent the wrong messages to our youth. It is leading the great majority of our participating youngsters down a dead-end street and dooming them to the trash can of life.

Our leaders, including those in education, have chosen sports for its entertainment, money value over socialisation/education in schools. Wrong decision!

Woe is we!

Dr Lascelve ‘Muggy’ Graham is a former captain of the senior Jamaica football team. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com