THE figure of $300,000 is what the propaganda, sorry, e-mail, from my Past Students' Association suggests as an estimate of the cost to finance the school's football campaign for the upcoming season. Indeed at my alma mater, and former place of employment, where the principal's vision is "to be recognised as the Best Catholic Boys' School by 2010" through deployment of strategies aimed at "raising the public profile of the school in all spheres," success at football has been named explicitly as being integral to realising his vision in the administrative policy framework.
Every year when exam results are released an alarm is raised about the performance of boys in general and boys' schools in particular. One explanation given short shrift in analyses is the carnival mentality of "half days" and "whole days" off to attend football matches in the important first term in some schools. As much as one-third of class time can be lost in the first term with the unreasonable expectation that all teachers can and must somehow manufacture more time for their students.
Many of the non-competitive, occasionally athletic, students make up such deficits by seeking out extra lessons. The top girls' secondary schools are not so encumbered. Some of the under-performance of boys in examinations is perhaps attributable to this lost face-to-face class time and not to some inherent deficiency on their part or to poor teaching.
The necessity of winning, demonstrating dominance and increasing recognition no matter the cost, perhaps at almost any cost, is fiscally irresponsible. The girls' schools, by not engaging in such massive single expenditures, perhaps have more resources to draw on for funding the no-less-visible or important academic and co-curricular pursuits.
The winner-take-all mentality, the obsession with being the best at any cost marks, masks, and makes the bodies of our young talented footballers into economic commodities-semi-professionals.
Individual skill is traded up for the educational capital in our society of having worn the uniform of a prestige school and access to those networks of power and privilege. Coaches scout and poach talent everywhere. Like other flesh-peddlers they make promises, play on fears and dreams and take advantage of ignorance.
One of the follies of football as policy is that it treats individuals as a means to an end - with little concern for what happens after the season and any vain glories celebrated are over.
Football as policy also serves to undermine teacher professionalism and systems of meritocracy upon which a sustainable culture of academic excellence can be built. Government-assisted secondary schools have final discretion in who they allow into sixth form. What many are unaware of is that the process of selecting the sixth form intake has already begun. With the e-mail sent long before CSEC results have been released the machine has been turned on.
Teachers are not part of that process. Even when they are part of the process to enact a completely meritocratic selection based on past performance (academic and behavioural) they are too often thwarted by principals, coaches or the board. Many schools are businesses masquerading as intellectual enterprises. Indeed, "busy-men", not patient thoughtful teachers or educators, dominate educational decision-making.
Once a student is selected for a non-academic reason, with sub-par grades, either the minimum requirements or not even that, anyone with grades as good as or better who has applied, but fails to be admitted, has a valid case for being admitted also under a system which proclaims that admission policies are fair, just and based on principle.
Fear of litigation perhaps leads to the excessive intake of students such that class numbers are sometimes double the recommended number in some schools. Teachers must shut up and suck it up as their professional autonomy is undermined. Again these are elements of a genre that perhaps contributes to the continued underperformance of Catholic boys' schools relative to their female and Presbyterian counterparts.
Denominational schools however are partially protected from litigation arising from academic discrimination by not having to make their decision-making public, in much the same way they don't have to justify who they take on the 20 per cent for the SEA.
Government and the people of T&T may not think that they pay to subsidise students coming into a sixth form to play football in order to increase the prestige brand's recognition. If they think about it at all, they might believe that they are paying for the all-round development of the individual-for whom football and other curricular activities are appropriately balanced. How naive of them!
Unfortunately, not selecting the best students that one can, undermining teacher autonomy and professionalism, over-subscribing courses of study in enacting the football as policy folly has consequences for teacher morale, health, absenteeism, good-will, school spirit and student achievement.
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