In his own inimitable way, the Mighty Sparrow can sometimes get across a point much more effectively than our supposedly learned elite who, from time to time, favour us, humble folk that we are, with their precious words of wisdom. A case in point was when the Birdie sang, among other thing, "Children go to school and learn well/ Otherwise later on in life you go ketch real hell/ Without an education in your head/ Your whole life will be all misery, you better off dead/ There is simply no room in this whole wide world/ For an uneducated boy or girl/ Don't let idle companions lead you astray/ To earn tomorrow, you've got to learn today."
In an earlier incarnation, Gypsy's Little Black Boy/Girl was simply an application of the general admonition proffered by the Mighty Sparrow at an earlier time. Perhaps the reason why Sparrow's words had such resonance with some of us was because it was just the sort of message that we would have received from our own parents-ad nauseam-and whose wisdom we can now retrospectively and gratefully concede far exceeded their learning at school and even our own then presumptuous knowledge.
I seem to recall one of our teachers at school, in the lower form, telling his unwilling students that "those who are down need fear no fall, but those who are down can be trampled on." Another teacher, no doubt intending to cut us down to size, would belt out, "He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool, shun him." Of course, little ones that we were then, this bit of wisdom was naturally wasted on us. Long after, I discovered that the legendary Socrates claimed that he found out that he was wiser than most because "he knew that he knew not."
But I digress. Sparrow's own mother might have been more pragmatic by drumming into the young Birdie's head that education was the poor boy's "meal ticket," although I have it on good authority that she wasn't convinced that a calypso career was the way to go. Once upon a time when an education-pardon me, an exposure to primary and secondary schooling-was considered a privilege for those from the humbler walks of life, the opportunity was appreciated and cherished by both parents and student beneficiaries alike.
Nowadays, "schooling," as some prefer to call it is, by some misguided souls, is taken for granted as "a right" or entitlement "from de government" with, in a number of cases, monumental indifference to the concomitant responsibilities associated with that "right." Those numskulls are completely oblivious of the fact that it is "the taxpayer" and not the government that's subsidising "freeloaders." Well has Bob Marley said that "a fool can die of thirst in an abundance of water."
In an earlier era, being functionally illiterate or enumerate at the end of one's primary school career was a rare exception rather than the norm. With limited access to secondary schooling, many a bright primary school graduate, throughout the British Caribbean, was able to hold his/her own in the civil service and even rise to senior positions. Our own Dr Williams claimed that his father had only a primary education and was denied promotion at the post office because of a combination of factors, including social and colour considerations, but I didn't get the impression that his primary education background was a primary factor.
As a matter of fact, when Eric won the Island Scholarship, his father is reported to have proudly boasted that none of those who edged him out for promotion had a son who had won an Island Scholarship. Unless I'm mistaken, in the colonial days, not only in Trinidad, one had "prestige primary schools" in much the same way that there are now "prestige secondary schools." In fact there are people who have gone on to distinguish themselves at the tertiary level and still proudly identify themselves with their primary school beginnings.
It therefore amuses me sometimes when some people try to downplay "prestige schools," even to the extent of referring to them with half a synthetic sneer as "so-called prestige schools." Some of the cynics even suggest that those are inimical to the system as a whole as they continue to attract the higher ranked students, thereby depriving the other schools and perpetuating a "vicious cycle" of success. There is also the charge that, even in the prestige schools, inordinate attention and resources are focused on the top performers who are accommodated at the expense of those of more moderate abilities.
There is the view that compulsory zoning in selection is the answer. However one comes up against "parent and more importantly student preferences." It's mostly the politicians who have made the issue of prestige schools a political football. They sometimes contend that "all schools are prestige schools," which is manifestly untrue, and fools no one. In fact, many a prestige school-so deemed-started in modest circumstances and had to earn its spurs by dint of hard work, application and striving for excellence.
No one bothers to ask why two schools which compare favourably as far as personnel, student intake and other resources are concerned can be as different as chalk from cheese where general performance is concerned. Perhaps that has to do with imponderables like a particular tradition and ethos, as over time the institution developed a sort of corporate personality of its own with its own corporate image, traditions, self-esteem and aspiration levels transmitted quite possibly by some sort of inexplicable social osmosis.