Letter of the Day | Ascot Primary incident not the disease, it is a symptom

THE EDITOR, Madam:
The national debate over Ascot Primary School’s decision to deny graduation gowns to students who underperformed in the PEP examination has generated more heat than light. While many have rightly expressed outrage, we should resist the temptation to condemn anyone involved in the decision-making process. Instead, we should consider a more uncomfortable thought: The Ascot incident is not the disease; it is a symptom.
We are all struggling in the roaring current of an educational river that has flowed through Jamaica since plantation slavery and colonial times. It is a system built on sorting, separating and rewarding the “best”, leaving others to believe they are somehow less worthy. Long before PEP, there were the Common Entrance Examination, the Grade Nine Achievement Test, the CXC examinations, and CAPE. At every stage, the system has been designed to identify the “fittest” rather than to develop every child’s potential.
This is why the 2021 Patterson Report, The Reform of Education in Jamaica, deserves far more attention. It is no coincidence that its principal architect, Professor Orlando Patterson, is a historical and cultural sociologist. My reading of the report is that its deepest challenge is not merely to reform educational structures but to transform the mindset of those who shape and operate them. Without a change in consciousness, structural reform will achieve only limited success.
The roots of this mindset lie deep in our sugar plantation history. A society organised to serve a colonial economy had little interest in educating the masses. Many of the earliest educational opportunities for the children of the formerly enslaved came through churches and benefactors such as John Wolmer. Yet, even after Independence, we largely retained an educational culture that measures children by their examination scores and too often confuses academic ranking with human worth.
The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire warned that the oppressed often internalise the oppressor’s values. Bob Marley expressed the same truth in a different way when he challenged us to “emancipate yourselves from mental slavery”. I believe the Patterson Report is a practical application of Bob’s words in the field of education. 
Perhaps that is the real lesson from Ascot Primary. Let us not waste this moment assigning blame. Let us instead begin the national conversation needed to transform not only our education system, but also the consciousness that continues to shape it.

FR DONALD CHAMBERS
frdon63@hotmail.com