One morning, as he watched the schoolchildren pass in the street below their lodging at No. 22 Baker Street, the redoubtable Dr Watson asked his friend, the famous sleuth Sherlock Holmes, "I say old man, what school did you attend?" The answer was immediate, "Elementary, my dear Watson.''

The problem now is that elementary is not as elementary as it used to be. In fact, it is the primary issue with the education of children today. I suppose I should have spotted the change when a 'copy' book became an 'exercise' book. We also had 'drawing' books. A few years ago when my children's booklist included 'construction' paper, I figured that we had crossed into new territory. First, I did not know what it was and when I found out, I realised I had known all the time but had not known that I knew.

In those days the big thing was the 'College Exhibition'. I am not sure of the origin of the term but how it worked was that children in Standard Five wrote an examination and those who excelled got 'College Exhibitions'. Those who did not get exhibitions were reviled, rebuked and ridiculed by their parents. The crux of the system was that the number of free places was extremely limited. By the time I wrote the exam, the number had increased to 200. If you passed the examination but were not one of the exhibition winners, your parents had to find the money to pay for your secondary education which included books by the ton-load, passage money and lunch money. If you were lucky enough to go to a Catholic school, there were always more hidden costs than a hire purchase agreement. Sounds familiar?

pernicious system

Well, the name has changed but as Sherlock Holmes or the famous sleuth, Inspector Jury, created by Martha Grimes might have said, the case has decidedly not altered in these many years. From College Exhibition it became Eleven Plus, then Common Entrance and now, in Trinidad, Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA). However, the malady lingers on. The poor kids are still at SEA and in danger of being swallowed up by a pernicious system, the essentials of which have not changed for generations.

Another thing that has not altered at all, and perhaps might be the root of the dilemma we now face in education, is that our desire that our children should do well and go to good secondary schools, coupled by our fear of failure (theirs and ours), make us pay for 'extra lessons'.

greed

My parents, and all the other parents of the kids in my class, paid my teacher for me to have extra lessons. Some teachers had built huge reputations on their ability to prepare children for the examination. Parents swapped tales of teachers the way westerners spoke about gunfighters.They had in common that they never missed a beat - either in cashing in on their positions or in punishing their pupils.

Through the years, the basic common denominator has been greed. The syllabus, they say, cannot be completed in the time officially allotted to it by the Ministry of Education. The children need extra lessons. The parents must pay. If you decide that your child does not need the extra lessons, then the child is in serious trouble during the regular class time.

I was not surprised when my children's teachers did not finish the syllabus during class time. I was not surprised when they had to do extra lessons. What astonished the heck out of me is that we did not have to pay for the lessons. But, we had to pay for the 'graduation'.

My first graduation was at university where, having earned a bachelor's degree, I wore the gown and the mortar-board cap and had my picture taken. Not so these days. Nowadays, there are graduation ceremonies at every step of the way. Nursery-school children on their way to kindergarten have elaborate graduation rituals complete with gowns, caps and pampers.

My children, having written the Common Entrance Examination, and the school having no further need for them, decided to add to my cost by staging a graduation. The rental of the gowns was US$60 each with the promise that if we returned the items in pristine condition, we would get half the money back. Knowing Jasmine and Zubin, I wrote off the entire amount up front.

Tony Deyal was last seen saying that if there was a pill for every occasion and for every issue, the elementary-school graduation pill would be the biggest of all because he found the whole thing hard to swallow.