Calabar board has it wrong

THE EDITOR, Sir:

IF ISSA and the Ministry of Education want to give any modicum of appearance that academics is an high school’s first priority, they need to step in right this minute and, at the very least, suspend these boys from competing in the Boys and Girls’ Champs.

Further, the coach, who it seems is part and parcel of this behaviour, should be banned for at least three years from being a coach in any high school in Jamaica, and be reported to the IAAF so that he can’t just head to another country to ply his obnoxious behaviour.

The board of Calabar seems to have their mission all wrong. If they were willing to kick out 50 boys last year for not having a 60 per cent average, I dare them to show that all the participants of the track team have that average.

Since we may not be able to depend on them to provide accurate grades, the Ministry can step in and administer at least two tests – mathematics and English – to determine whichever grade the students are at this time.

If the board of Calabar is able to get away with the excuse of internal affairs to deal with the matter, we can put in the garbage bin any semblance of talking about right or wrong in this country of ours. Even if they directly had no hand in the teacher being offered a buyout to quash the case, their actions precipitated the corrupt individual(s) who made that offer.

The board has shown its hand as being incapable of having, under the circumstances going back to last year, any moral compass. One of the main concerns of education is for the socialisation of moral principles. The board of Calabar needs to self-examine.

Calabar may want to bawl now that they would be victims at this stage, days before the championships. Not so. The school and its board had three full months to deal with this in the proper fashion. Athletics is, let me state, ‘an extracurricular activity’ in the school, not the reason for attending school in Jamaica. Action is needed now to protect the priority of education for our children. COLIN MCDONALD, BEd THE MICO CEO/Managing Director Our Story Tours Kingston 5 ourstorytours@gmail.com