In a few short weeks, thou­sands of Trin­bag­on­ian chil­dren will re­ceive their SEA (Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment) ex­am re­sults; for most of them it will be their tra­jec­to­ry of life set in stone, at the ripe old age of 11 or 12.

It will set the tone for the tem­plate of two-tiered sys­tems that dom­i­nate the na­tion’s so­ci­ety and di­rect­ly feeds the out­comes that lead to the run­away crime that cur­rent­ly, can­not be ar­rest­ed.

In a few months’ time, the Trin­bag­on­ian peo­ple will have the lat­est na­tion­al bud­get read to them and be told that, as per usu­al, a size­able chunk of funds will be al­lo­cat­ed to ed­u­ca­tion, as it should be. Yet, the same is­sues of mass in­equal­i­ty with­in the sec­ondary school sys­tem will per­sist, mean­ing that the coun­try con­tin­ues the bad busi­ness sense of throw­ing mon­ey in­to a struc­ture that is not work­ing and worse, that di­rect­ly fa­cil­i­tates the dis­par­i­ty that sup­ports the woes of T&T. It may be the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor, but it does not mean it en­gages in smart spend.

We are acute­ly aware of the is­sue; the most re­cent ut­ter­ings from the Prime Min­is­ter about the sec­ondary school en­trance as­pect about SEA is on­ly the lat­est ob­ser­va­tion of its dis­ad­van­tages and how it hin­ders the evolve­ment of a so­ci­ety. For decades, the na­tion—in­deed the re­gion—has recog­nised the prob­lem and the best that they have come up with is a change of name from ‘Com­mon En­trance’ to ‘SEA’.

No doubt, it is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to find an al­ter­na­tive. Do we un­der­take the Ju­nior, Mid­dle and High School mod­el of North Amer­i­can schools? Can we in­tro­duce sec­ondary school­ing by postal ar­eas? Un­like­ly, but we need to have the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion to ex­plore op­tions and ta­ble them for con­sid­er­a­tion, be­cause fu­ture gen­er­a­tions await and the re­ver­sal of the dire crime sta­tis­tic has many po­ten­tial foun­da­tions in the class­rooms, ALL of the class­rooms.

We seek to in­stil crit­i­cal think­ing in­to those young minds at SEA lev­el and above, but for our sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion we need to recog­nise cer­tain re­al­i­ties and prac­tice cre­ative think­ing.

Think­ing that suits our sit­u­a­tion, cul­ture and the re­quire­ments of the stu­dents. Think­ing that has clear tar­gets of achieve­ment with­in be­hav­iour­al change, by cre­at­ing in­no­v­a­tive cul­tures rather than sole­ly con­cen­trat­ing on lessons. Think­ing that pos­sess­es the bold­ness to of­fer new, un­tapped op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The first piece of re­al­i­ty is that we are un­like­ly to change the SEA sys­tem, or any de­riv­a­tives of it, at any time in the near fu­ture. In the first in­stance, we would have to come to the ground­break­ing de­ci­sion that we are go­ing to elim­i­nate it, in the sec­ond in­stance we would have the con­sid­er­able task of de­riv­ing a vi­able and fair al­ter­na­tive.

Giv­en this truth, while the dam­ag­ing dis­par­i­ty of “elite schools ver­sus the rest” re­mains in place, the log­i­cal ap­proach to tack­le the dis­parate tra­jec­to­ry, is to find nov­el ways to em­pow­er the stu­dents of “the rest.” If the en­trance sys­tem to sec­ondary schools will not change soon, then change the floun­der­ing sec­ondary schools through cre­ative think­ing. There­by re­duc­ing the ef­fects of a life be­ing mapped out be­fore one reach­es teenage years, by giv­ing these stu­dents a sec­ond (and third, fourth, if nec­es­sary) chance of suc­cess.

Cur­rent­ly, the al­ter­na­tive that is pro­vid­ed is to learn a trade. It is a good op­por­tu­ni­ty, one to be com­mend­ed, with stipends, trans­port and on-the-job train­ing but it can­not ap­peal to all, and its scope is lim­it­ed in of­fer­ing on­ly a cer­tain ca­reer, when what we re­quire is the of­fer­ing of a cul­ture.

The ‘elite’ schools cre­ate a sense of pride and self-worth, through in­still­ing lessons in lega­cy, val­ues and trib­al­ism, with many of these teach­ings com­ing from out­side the tra­di­tion­al class­room. There is a sense of be­long­ing to some­thing larg­er than a sim­ple place of learn­ing and dif­fi­cult as it is to fath­om do­ing the same to a for­mer se­nior com­pre­hen­sive that has been re­named, it is pos­si­ble.

En­ti­ties ex­ist to be mim­ic­ked or even bet­ter, en­gaged. Ex­am­ple, a sim­i­lar move­ment to the Scouts would cre­ate the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the true T&T, a sense of aware­ness of the phys­i­cal beau­ty that is ours, cre­at­ing pride. Home­grown pro­grammes ,such as Don Ja­cobs’ ‘Don Jit­su Ryu’, are cur­rent por­tals for cul­ture shifts by cre­at­ing an all-en­com­pass­ing pos­i­tive mind­set. Nu­mer­ous oth­er sim­i­lar cur­ric­u­la can be tapped in­to, if the in­ten­tion is to en­cour­age a lifestyle; our schools are the on­ly place that of­fer the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so in the for­ma­tive years.

It is not about sole­ly ap­ply­ing the con­cept of ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties such as sport, that can be avoid­ed or are for­got­ten about up­on leav­ing the school com­pound, but rather bring­ing mod­ules that will gar­ner im­me­di­ate in­ter­est and buy-in by the stu­dents.

If such op­por­tu­ni­ties were of­fered up­on en­try to schools that are be­low par, it would be a case of grab­bing them young, cre­at­ing ex­po­sure to pos­i­tiv­i­ty, to tack­le the per­vad­ing neg­a­tive in­flu­ence of the ills of T&T. And yes, we must have the courage to in­tro­duce sex ed­u­ca­tion in­to schools.

We must make our ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor nim­ble to cope with the 21st cen­tu­ry and the seg­ments of degra­da­tion that ex­ist glob­al­ly, in­stead of con­tin­u­ing with a ham­strung be­he­moth tied down by a decades-old colo­nial sys­tem that has long passed its in­her­i­tance val­ue.

We have made the cor­re­la­tion be­tween our school­ing and crime, now it is time to make the cor­rec­tions.

Shel­don Wait­he is the Cre­ative Di­rec­tor at Com­mu­nique Me­dia Ser­vices Ltd web­site: com­mu­ni­quett.com