THE EDITOR, Sir:
NO ONE can convince me that we need two days to evaluate the basic academic competence of eleven-year-olds. In less than three hours, any well-designed test can measure any child's basic language and problem-solving skills.
Furthermore, so much of what we inflict on our children through GSAT is already repetitive of what they will go on to do at the secondary level. We should be devoting our children's primary years to the development of skills they so desperately need: reading, written and oral expression, creative thinking and problem solving. Too many GSAT veterans (many scoring in the eighties and nineties) enter and leave the high school system and tertiary institutions intellectually challenged.
Since we insist that we simply must perpetuate our homegrown system of academic apartheid, the least we could do is accomplish our system of authorised child abuse in less time. We can administer a reading comprehension test, a composition/communication task and some mathematical test that requires children to use computational and problem solving skills... then send them home to their parents to a nice warm bowl of porridge and a glass of cold lemonade.
How much more of this nonsense is this nation going to tolerate in the 21st century?
I am etc.,
NOVA GORDON-BELL
nmgbell@uwimona.edu.jm
Monterey Drive, Kingston 6
Via Go-Jamaica
