The Editor, Sir:
Peter Espeut, in his article on August 22, writes: "Our talent is home-grown and home-trained, and hearty congratulations to our Jamaican coaches. Things foreign are not necessarily better." Our athletes and their coaches deserve all the credit for the outstanding performance. But we must not fool ourselves into believing that all of this reflects a high quality of physical education in Jamaica.
Many of the schools that do well in Champs, Manning Cup or daCosta Cup do not have any physical education (PE) programmes to speak of. They have good programmes to win Champs or daCosta Cup. In effect, what we often have are sports clubs attached to these schools. The aim, it seems, is to identify and develop outstanding talent. It is important to note that neither of the two top male athletes went to the top sports schools. One went to William Knibb and the other to Charlie Smith, neither of which is very competitive at Champs. This was also true for outstanding athletes of the past, like George Kerr, the Spence twins and Keith Gardner.
World-class coaches
The fact is that our world-class athletes would have been world class, regardless of which schools they attended, as long as they attended a school of some sort. Their talents would have been recognised and developed at the higher level by our world-class coaches.
However, all the gold medals in the world will not make our young people more physically fit, nor will they make us more healthy as a nation. In sports, as well as in academic matters, we have developed a counterproductive competitiveness.
Below-average students
We hustle to recruit the best athletes to win Champs, while we screen out the lower performers in academics to win the 'CSEC Champs'. In all this, the masses of average and below-average students are the losers. Nobody wants to have anything to do with them, lest they all be labelled failures and non-performers.
In fact, I believe that it is this backward attitude that has been responsible for the sorry state of education in this country.
We need to change this attitude to one that recognises that the real achievement for a teacher is when the student who was headed for a grade five or six ends up achieving a grade two or three, or even a four, and not when the exceptional, self-motivated student wins the Jamaica Scholarship.
The PE teacher should worry more about the fat student who has bad eating habits and takes little exercise, than about whether the talented athlete in his class will come first at Champs. Today, about nine out of 10 Jamaicans cannot swim. I hope that before we win any sort of medal for swimming at the Olympic Games, we will get that number down to even 50 per cent.
I am, etc.,
R. HOWARD THOMPSON
roi-anne@hotmail.com
Rockton, Waltham,
Mandeville
