Recently, features were done on TVJ news focusing on the boarding schools at Munro and Hampton. The advantage that these schools have is quite clear, and if it were affordable, this type of institution would be the solution to our education problem.

What you have in each case is a community of students who are constantly under supervision and who follow a daily programme of work, play and study. What takes place in the classrooms is perhaps not much different from what happens at most other schools in Jamaica. However, with organised prep (study time) which is run by older students, a culture of collaborative study is developed where the strong helps the weak to improve and no one, at the boarding school at any rate, is abandoned to struggle entirely on his own. Youngsters develop the habit of helping each other and leadership skills are honed in the better students.

Munro is easily the most disciplined boys' school in the country. It is the only one that I know of where the old-style authority of older seniors over juniors is still in effect. It is in fact the seniors who are the disciplinarians and under the guidance of an excellent boarding master, Mr J. Rowe, bullying is controlled most of the time and is neither excused nor tolerated. The coaches live on campus and see to it that the athletes and footballers go to prep like anybody else.

Class biased

This sort of culture used to be the norm in most, if not all our schools at one time. It had been achieved primarily by means of a selection process that was class biased but which tended to ensure that students came from a stable home background with sound middle-class values. At Wolmer's, in the 1960s, we had to respect the older students even when they were not prefects. There were certain things that were not done even when you got into a fight, something that is almost inevitable where young males are brought together for any length of time.

I remember boys being held by others when they sought to use any sort of weapon or stone to defend themselves. It was not 'cool' to pick up a stone during a fight. You were far more respected when you stood your ground and took your 'licks' like a man and at the end of the day victor and loser might well be see sitting beside each other at a Manning Cup game.

I agree that boarding schools should be encouraged and made available to those who can afford it. It is, however, not practicable to view them as a solution for everybody. They are far too expensive an option to become the norm. How can we justify subsidising the education of some child from Kingston whose parents choose to send them to Malvern because they cannot get into Campion or Immaculate and, at the same time, force some child from the same district to take three taxis to Black River? Subsidy can only be justified where a student lives in such an isolated area from which transportation is too difficult to access.

Recapture the culture

However, we should try to recapture the culture of the boarding school in our other schools. The best chance we have of doing this is to restructure the system so that students go to school in or near to their own communities. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I believe that the main reason for low performance of our students is a lack of supervision of their time outside the classroom. Keep them in school for longer hours with organised extra-curricula activities and study sessions. Use older and more capable students as class monitors to supervise prep with teachers being required to do duty one day per week until 6 p.m. to oversee and give support to the class monitors.

We need our brighter students for leadership. A system such as this would help to develop their leadership skills and make them visible role models for other students to emulate. At present, the only activity in our schools that gives bright students any status or glamour is Schools' Challenge Quiz. Helping other students at prep will help the better students clarify in their own minds concepts that they learned intuitively, and they too will benefit. It may well earn them the respect of their junior peers and help to improve discipline generally.

I am, etc.,

R. Howard Thompson

roi_anne@hotmail.com

Waltham

Mandeville