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No doubt life for working people in the Caribbean is hard, just nowhere near as tough as in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines, Brazil, Argentina and almost all of Africa (including north Africa) apart from probably Botswana. https://twitter.com/Kaztrami/status/1321437806204473346
With the exception of the garrisons of Jamaica and Trinidad of course.
Now if someone were to argue that the timing of the migration and the class composition of Windrush era Caribbean’s meant that (even in the total absence of discrimination)...
their grandchildren were unlikely to do as well in school/life as the children of Igbo accountants or a select group of east African Gujarati’s that’s probably true, but that would require demographic specificity not lazy nonsense.
But let’s go further... here are a sample of the Jamaican high school league tables for 2017... if you check pass papers I’m
sure you’ll agree the exams are at least of comparable difficulty to the GCSE (I think slightly harder)
sure you’ll agree the exams are at least of comparable difficulty to the GCSE (I think slightly harder)
As you can see in the top performing school every single child got 5 passes including maths and English, but that still does not tell even half the story...
Between 30-40% of Campion Colleges student body come from families too poor to afford the relatively modest fees they charge (it’s not an Eton style private school)
Which means that even many of Jamaicas poorest children - some of whom come from areas with low intensity civil war levels of violence - are still more likely to leave school with good grades than their English cousins...provided they are lucky enough to get into a good school.
And the general reality that working class parents break themselves to pay children’s school fees because secondary education is not free as Buju put it...
‘When mama spend her last and send you go class, never you ever play’
This structure of schooling applies across the Caribbean is and is why so many senior members of govt and even a number of primeministers grew up poor... even in classist, colourist, Jamaica...
But let’s keep playing, because this game is fun, for me at least.... on a personal note....
There is a school I visits in Jamaica called Boystown all age school... on the border of Rema and Denham town, it’s not one of the ones in that list
For anyone unfamiliar with Jamaica this is not the nicest part of town, to put it mildly. So picture the scene...
I walk into the classroom, 40 teenagers in a room fit for 15, slap bang in the middle of the ghetto, the building itself is not in the best of shape and I ask the boys what they want to be when they are older...
Or do for a living or general aspirations, some generic question like that...
The first boy raises his hand, stands up and says ‘marine biologist, sir’ with his whole entire chest. None of the other boys laugh or any of that, instead the all raise their hands to announce their ambitions...
These times I wondering how a 13 year old even knows what a marine biologist is, let alone aspires to be one... let alone in a place such as this.
The rest of the boys announce their ambitions and if my memory serves me correctly I don’t think a single one said rapper or footballer, though half the class wanted to be in soldiers because...
At the time the army was patrolling their area ‘to keep us safe from the bad man dem’.... we can debate how accurate that description is, but that’s certainly what the boys thought/felt.
Jamaica also has one of the best and largest literature festivals, despite the fact that the relative cost of books to the average wage is horrendous. It would be as if books in England cost more than £100...
