Patrick Robinson's study of Jamaica's athletics achievements Jamaican Athletics: A Model for the 2012 Olympics, 2009, Arnold Bertram's study of a history of Jamaica's cricket Jamaica at the Wicket, 2009, and Delano Franklyn's forthcoming book to be launched on April 29 Sprinting into History, Jamaica and the 2008 Olympic Games, 2009, all share one important idea in common. They identify our high schools as having been (among) the most important preparation ground for developing the talent, brains and character of the country's young people over the past 50 or even 100 years. We must remember this so as to keep a balanced perspective against the view that the youths, the schools and education have failed.

Franklyn, for example, maintains the idea that the Jamaican secondary school system has, over the years, been at the forefront of driving excellence among our youths. Its success lies in the efforts of the students, teachers, coaches, PTAs, alumni associations and an array of volunteers. Despite the indiscipline and violence from some, the situation might have been worse had it not been for the many performers.

Our education system and our young people are embraced in a fascinating, if sometimes frustrating social experiment critical to nation building and personal development. Thus a major puzzle for all social engineers is how to get the best education for society and how to get the best out of our young people. One theory holds that society needs to reproduce its elites to lead because classes of people are not equal. This is an old view, but survives through elite institutions. Another view is that society works best when there is equal opportunity because brains, talent and character reside in all classes. This is a more modern idea.

THE KC EXPERIMENT

Students leaving the North Street-based Kingston College. The all-boys institution experienced record CSEC and CAPE passes in 2007. - File

When Bishop Percival Gibson started Kingston College (KC) in 1925, he did so out of the belief that the young men of Kingston needed more opportunity for a good education. When KC won Champs and TVJ's Schools' Challenge Quiz recently, the school proved that it could achieve in both 'brains' and 'brawns'. It continued to prove the worth of the idea of equal opportunity for all the classes.

When Kingston College students made headlines in 2007 for scoring record passes in Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE), they justified the hope in young people and the mission of Bishop Gibson and teachers of the school over the generations.

When the school launched its five-year development plan in October 2008, it continued to invest its faith in giving students the best in order to get the best from them. The most striking goals set for 2013 are for all teachers to have a minimum qualification of a university degree and a teacher's diploma; all students to leave school with a minimum of six CSEC subjects, including mathematics and English and all grade 13 students to leave school with a minimum of 7 units of CAPE subjects. In pursuing these goals, the school intends to improve the number of those passing six CSEC subjects from 66 per cent in 2007 to 100 per cent in 2013. It plans to improve those passing three or more CAPE subjects from 82.4 per cent (2007) to 100 per cent in 2013.

POSITIVE SOCIOLOGY VS MALE MARGINALISATION

Kingston College's performance proves a number of things. Male marginalisation is not inevitable. Private schools do not have to perform better academically than public schools. Young people from poorer or less-advantaged communities and households can achieve and while poverty hinders, it is no excuse for failure. Young people from broken homes and single-parent families can achieve given good personal and institutional guidance. Committed students and teachers who have confidence in each other can make up for money and other disadvantages. 'Free education' and 'performance pay', helpful as they might be, are no substitute for the will to succeed and the pride in succeeding. Young people do not have to dream about migrating to do well; they can do well right here in our schools. .

KC's founders could have established the school 'uptown' instead of 'downtown'. They could have compromised their ideals by depending on the private patronage of the privileged. They could have rejected young people from certain classes and charged high fees. They could have kept the student numbers small and manageable against costs. They could have striven to be an exclusive, elite school.

The founders did the opposite in all respects. They were radical social experimenters. They set up business downtown, opened the doors to great numbers from all classes, raised money from the public purse and made modest demands on students to make education affordable. The only restriction was that KC would be a boys' school and this was only so to have as much space as possible for boys.

The school was not built on social snobbery, class status, religious prejudice, or some colonial mission of civilising the pagan natives. It was not suffocated by the oppressiveness of religious discipline, the militarism of the boarding school regime, or the intolerance of the colonial schoolmaster. It grew up in a different age, more socially liberal, more free-spirited and more trusting of what a new generation of young Jamaicans could achieve in a decolonising society.

But most importantly, the experiment drew its energy from the boys of all classes of Jamaicans with the certainty that this was where the best resources of the country lay.

EDUCATION EMERGENCY

Maxine Henry-Wilson wrote recently that our degree of under-achievement is an education emergency. From one perspective, the education emergency can emphasise the failures in education as part of a larger view that our failures are evidence that where we succeed, we won't succeed for much longer. For others, where we succeed is evidence that we won't continue to fail where we are failing if we stand our ground and give commitment, such as special intervention in the poorest performing primary and secondary schools.

I agree with the PSOJ's Education Committee that when students spend 10 years or more in our educational system and have not achieved grade-four mastery, this is an emergency. I agree that we must find ways to make each cohort pass each grade before they are promoted. I agree that the problem of safety is an emergency. Finding the wage bill each year that will pay our teachers what they deserve is an emergency. Achieving and maintaining the annual budget that will pay for our educational transformation plan are an emergency.

But when 26,000 people fill the national stadium on the night of the final of Boys' and Girls' Champs, it tells us that the nation expects something special to happen when our schools, all of them, go on show. When Jamaica's men and women cricketers can demonstrate the team spirit to win the regional cricket competitions just this past week; when our young people can dominate the region through CARIFTA for the 25th successive year; when our young women netballers can thrash their English counterparts, it means that among our young people are some the best in the world.

Robert Buddan lectures at the University of the West Indies, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm or columns@gleanerjm.com.