By Tony Morrison, Staff Reporter
A former Munro College student once described Stephen F. Harle as being a legend everywhere else but in his own mind.
SANTA CRUZ, ST. ELIZABETH:
HE HAS been icon, iron man, role model and mentor to his colleagues as well as to more than 2,000 young men over the last 45 years.
"He taught us respect for people, regardless of where you came from," remembers Caribrake Director Winston Brown, who was a sixth-former at the all-boys Munro College when Stephen F. Harle arrived from England just under 45 years ago.
"In what was then still colonial Jamaica, he was the first person I met in my life that placed no social category on who should be afforded an education. An important lesson we also took from him was that while he never shirked responsibility, he also never abused power, and was impeccable in his fairness."
Literature professor and renowned poet, Mervyn Morris, a Munro old boy, taught with Mr. Harle in the late '50s and mid '60s. "As a colleague, he's one of the most honest people I've ever encountered. If he gave his word, you could turn your back and walk away counting on it. As a teacher, he was absolutely outstanding at teaching chemistry."
THEY CALLED HIM STAGGY FAR BEHIND HIS BACK
In addition to being the traffic warden of the school's activities, "Staggy," (as students called him far behind his back) was the policeman who also enforced discipline. If you attended Munro in his time, you only started to suspect that he really wasn't as ferocious as he seemed when you grew tall enough to see the twinkle in his eyes. Before you get to that stage though you saw him as the sheriff in town who sauntered like a western gunfighter, driving fear into the hearts of young boys when he snarled his trademark "Hey there, sonny boy," in you direction.
"Barring abject inability, you are almost guaranteed a pass by just
being in his class, where he teaches chemistry without a textbook."
Mr. Harle has been teaching Chemistry at the Malvern, St. Elizabeth school since he came to Jamaica from England in September 1956, fresh out of university at
age 23.
He has become known for getting the best out of his students and in these parts his legend has grown in the almost half a century. Barring abject inability students are almost guaranteed a pass by just being in his class, where he teaches Chemistry without a textbook.
He has always enjoyed a 70 to 90 per cent average pass rate for CXC/O' level and GCE A' level Chemistry and time has yet to dim his Midas touch. The school got its best results ever in Chemistry and other science subjects as recently as 1998.
ADMINISTRATOR EXTRAORDINAIRE
A hallmark of Mr. Harle's tenure at Munro has been his tremendous juggling act and his ability to successfully wear more than one hat at a time. For more than 30 of the last 45 years, he was Vice Principal, handling the school's internal administrative, academic, and disciplinary matters, while carrying a full teaching load as head of the Chemistry Department.
Mr. Harle was also the house master of one of the school's five houses, taught adult literacy and extension O' level classes for members of community, and served as Chairman of the Western Athletics Championships and Secretary of the St. Elizabeth Football Association.
Plus, while organising Munro's after-school games programme he ran five different football competitions for the central and western part of the island. Still, he found time to play a little football (it's rumoured he tried out for Newcastle United as a teenager) and to single-handedly plot the complex class timetable for the school each year without a single clash, ever.
Asked how he does it all, he refuses to acknowledge any special powers of focus, or concentration, preferring to put it down to experience and hard work.
He did indicate once, in a 1982 interview for the school magazine, that getting married to his wife, Judy a few years prior, had been a big help. His output and performance had "improved considerably," since marriage, he told the magazine.
Former colleague Merle Roper wrote in 1982, in the 125th anniversary issue of the school magazine: "...The words, "there's no teacher like Mr. Harle," have passed very swiftly from flattery to fact."
He was the indispensable right hand of celebrated former headmaster Richard Roper for more than 20 years, and several times since Mr. Roper's retirement in 1982, the job could have been his had he wanted it.
"...I prefer to be in the background rather than the foreground...I don't mind taking the decisions, and I'm quite happy to do the work and handle the organisation, but some of the official functions of a headmaster just don't appeal to me."
Mr. Roper describes him as "absolutely dependable. He always does what he sets out to do, without any beating around the bush, and usually well in advance. He was forward thinking, always having ideas to keep pace with the growth of the school, and he was my right hand man in a very real way."
A JAMAICAN LOVE AFFAIR
He made up his mind about staying at Munro and in Jamaica once and for all in late 1960s, when he went on leave for two terms and taught at a high school in North East England. It "wasn't bad," but he says he realised that he preferred Jamaica.
"I like the people, in particular in St. Elizabeth.
I was very happy with the students...they want to learn...that's pretty important, and they're appreciative, you know, everybody's appreciative, and it's good to see them succeeding."
He then glances over his shoulder, towards the western windows of his beloved chemistry lab. Munro perches atop the Santa Cruz Mountain, and beyond those windows are the aquamarine ripples of the Caribbean Sea lapping at the edges of the sprawling expanse of the Pedro Plains.
With one of his rare smiles, he then adds: "I'm living in good surroundings. I can be teaching my class, leave some work on the board, stroll outside, look at the view why would I have been in a hurry to leave?"
Despite his room with a view, he is now thinking of finally leaving the classroom though he intends to stay in the parish.
"This could well be my last teaching year at Munro!"
History indicates that Munro's extended family might well be advised to hold the tears, however at least for just a little while.
Back in 1996 Mr. Harle also announced his retirement from the Vice Principals post but, largely due to the urging of the school community, didn't get around to doing it until 1999.
He escaped the ghetto
but comes back to help
LIVINGSTONE COLLEGE in North Carolina, US, is a far way from east Kingston's Wareika Hills and from the teeming inner-cities of Kingston.
Lawrence Reynolds, born 26 years ago in the volatile hills and who moved from one Kingston ghetto neighbourhood to the next is an Admissions Counsellor at the College.
He escaped the ghetto, but he has never forgotten where he came from. In the last few years he has arranged scholarships to his school for more than 20 Jamaican teenagers from various local high schools, including his alma mater, Kingston College.
"I always had the interest of recruiting students, and giving them an opportunity, especially those in the inner city, because I grew up there and I knew what it was like."
Mr. Reynolds who lived with his mother in areas like Greenwich Town, Chisolm Avenue, and Arnett Gardens remembers that life was never easy. "We lived on meagre means and did without a lot of things. I remember one pair of shoes lasting me four, five years.
"It taught me survival, and appreciation for whatever I had."
For a while he also lived with his grandmother in a room at the back of a house in Harbour View, Kingston, where she worked as a live-in helper. It was there, he says, that he learned how to use a knife and fork, went to school with the children of his grandmother's employers, and had the opportunity to express himself in a manner different from his playmates in the inner city.
This ability to articulate later helped the former Kingston College middle distance runner to get into New York's Thomas Jefferson High School at 18. He graduated a year later with several scholarship offers at hand, but accepted a full scholarship from Livingstone College at the urging of another Kingston College old boy who wanted him there to assist the schools track and field programme.
"I never met my father until I was about 12 or 13, and over the years I never realised how much I suffered from not having a father figure."
He has arranged scholarships for girls as well as boys, but coming from a society where it is difficult to find male role models, Mr. Reynolds says he feels a particular responsibility to help other young men.
"If I can help someone else now by being a father figure, I am more than happy to do so.
"I never met my father until I was about 12 or 13, and over the years I never realised how much I suffered from not having a father figure. Now that I look back I realise how having a father figure could have helped me tremendously."
In addition to the work he had been doing on his own, he came home again recently with other US-based recruiters at the invitation of the Grace Kennedy Foundation.
"It has been a wonderful event," he enthused at the time. "For the first time I've seen a wide cross-section of Jamaican student athletes from across the island. We went as far as Mandeville and Ocho Rios, where people from other parts of the island came to meet us, and we really had a chance to see what the entire island had to offer."
He was so impressed that his new mission is to now build on what his school has been doing by encouraging other American schools to get involved with the Grace Kennedy programme and reach out to more talented students in Jamaica's depressed communities.
"More people are being proactive in helping others these days, and that's a good thing," he says, "but for the most part, for most of them to ever really have a chance, it has to be about who they know, and that's kind of tough, because most of them don't really know anyone who can help them."
LAWRENCE REYNOLDS BELIEVES
"If fathers would take more responsibility, then we wouldn't see a lot of the problems we are facing now-- because if you don't have someone to lead and guide and teach a young man to be a man, it's easy for him to fall by the wayside."
"For the most part, there is empathy, and a certain level of concern, for youngsters in the inner city. I ask myself, will these guys ever get an opportunity? What can I do? I want to ensure that I can help someone else to make it...if I can help just one person per year, then I've done my job..."
"Religion kept me on track all my life. As far back as I can remember, I've been going to church every Sunday morning, and in so many instances when I've been at the bottom of the well, with no hope, prepared to give up, religion kicked in and kept me going..."
