caribbean literature || curricula, syllabuses and examinations in english

CURRICULA, SYLLABUSES AND EXAMINATIONS IN ENGLISHAuthor(s): C. R. GraySource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 3, Caribbean Literature (SEPTEMBER 1975), pp. 41-57Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40653253 .

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CURRICULA, SYLLABUSES AND EXAMINATIONS IN ENGLISH

OBJECTIVES It is often said with regret that teachers in the Caribbean neglect the education

of their pupils to prepare them for examinations. Most of the time it is a teacher bemoaning this alleged state of affairs. Referring to the position in England ten years ago Brian Jackson wrote "There is no bigger blockage to the serious teaching of English than the English language paper at 'O' level." (Jackson, 1965). But just as often, in lamenting the neglect of education for examination results, teachers put the blame on the parents, the society, 'the system' and other nebulous entities. Sometimes a defiant self-defence is made with the statement that the pupils have to pass their examinations, regardless of any 'idealistic' talk, if they are to get 'good' jobs. The issue often appears to be whether the teacher can afford the luxury of educating the pupils and endangering their chance to pass the examination they have to sit sooner or later. But are those really the alternatives? Is the teaching of pupils so that they can pass an examination necessarily neglecting to educate them? One answer to that seems to be that it depends on the examination, the syllabus it encompasses, and the kind of teaching done by the teachers.

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that teachers in the Caribbean and elsewhere (exceptions there must be but they are not easy to find) seem to make themselves the slaves of textbooks and the prisoners of examination syllabuses. Jackson made this point "All examinations in English purport to be testing devices. All experience shows that their techniques immediately become teaching devices." (op. cit.) The truth also seems to be that if some other state of affairs becomes desirable and desired in the Caribbean it will not appear before another decade or two. That the syllabus and questions set for an examination determine what is taught and how it is taught can still be taken as a fact of life in Caribbean secondary schools. Yet, there should be regret or anger at this only if the examination set does indeed damage or limit the pupils' chances of being educated. It seems perfectly reasonable to say that it is possible for a teacher to educate pupils and get them through examinations at the same time if the examination syllabus is one conceived with the ends of education in mind. If such a syllabus can be devised by the teachers in our schools slavishness to its requirements would then become instead the greatest virtue.

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Perhaps, however, in the real circumstances, the teacher himself or herself, since he/she tends to accept control by any given syllabus, does not need, as an individual, to consider what education is. Perhaps that responsibility lies, in our present circumstances, in the hands of the syllabus planners. Of course the syllabus makers should be the teachers themselves, but, in any case, somebody must consider the question if the syllabus to be monitored by the teachers is to be educative. The teacher who wants to be more than a monitor and who wants to educate young people would want to consider for himself what educating means, what it implies for teaching methods and the material, content or syllabus to be taught. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking all teaching is educating. Most of us do. However, a little effort at reflection must raise doubts. As soon as we begin to ask whether a person can be said to be educated regardless of what and how he/she has been taught we are doubting whether there is not a distinction between having learnt (and, therefore, having beerf taught) and being educated.

Does being educated mean having been initiated into 'worthwhile activities' (Peters, 1966)? Does it mean being able to grow and enjoy 'adequacy of life, irrespective of age' (Dewey, 1916)? Is it being trained to make full use of human resources (Ulich, 1961)? Is it having certain good and desirable states of mind such as 'capacities for the different forms of thought and awareness of which the human mind is capable' (Downie, et al, 1974) or having the capacity for 'the good life' in terms of self-determination, self-realization, and self-integration (Broudy 1961)? Perhaps it means having acquired the art of the utilisation of knowledge (Whitehead, 1932), having achieved human excellence (Aristotle, circa 350 B.C; Macdonald, 1965), or excellence in schooling and intellectual development (Bruner, 1960). Whatever the nature of education is taken to be the committed teacher has tò be guided by it - as he/she sees it - because 'the uncommitted teacher has no business to be a teacher' (Reid, 1962 p. 37).

This writer has contended elsewhere (e.g. Gray, 1974) that since the process of education is necessarily some sort of changing of a person a teacher must keep in his/her mind what he/she is changing the pupils to become. It seems reasonable to say that it is only when the teacher has an answer to that question that he/she can begin to try to effect desired changes. But in arriving at an answer that satisfies this probing the educator is asking and answering to his/her satisfaction why certain changes are desirable in a human being. Which of the many innate capacities given to every human being ought to be developed, and why? That is the question that provides the chance for a teacher to see what the changes are that he/she has to arrange his/her teaching to effect. It appears to this writer that when we consider human needs for human living the picture ought to show that an educated person is one in whom these powers have been developed and are developing:

(a) the powers of inquiry, i.e. finding out about and understanding* the environment;

(b) powers of reasoning and judgement, i.e. the attitude and the skills of critical awareness, skepticism and objectivity; and

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(c) powers of feeling and experiencing, i.e. being able to apprehend diverse facets of living, to enjoy and interpret them, to respond with understanding.

For instance, whatever be the specifics of the environment a person living in it can thrive only if he/she is able to learn about that environment: how it works, what are its 'laws' and how to survive in it. Living in the Amazon forest requires abilities to find out and do things necessary to survival. No less are such abilities necessary in the increasingly complex industrial and agricultural environment of a Caribbean country today. For the teacher that fact means equipping the learners with the skills to get that knowledge because the teacher cannot transmit all, or even any substantial amount, of the knowledge now available and necessary for thriving in the environment. For the teacher of English it means, therefore, ensuring that the learners have the skills to comprehend what they listen to and read when they require knowledge.

Then, in all modern societies the individual always has to apply reasoning and judgement to facts and information to assess their relevance and degree of useful- ness in a context of a need. Still more does the individual need to be able to use judgement and reasoning if he is living in a democratic political and social system where the quality of life of each member can be heavily dependent on the wishes of the majority. So, together with knowledge acquired through the ability to enquire and comprehend, the wise exercise of choice in such systems requires the crucial capacity to weigh and consider views and arguments in order to get to, at least, formal truth. Perhaps, though, the most important use of critical thinking is in keeping one's state of being as a person or self (Reid, 1962) in the face of forces that press us all to be robots, automatons and puppets. (Packard, 1957) The dehumanising influences are strong and numerous around us. To save ourselves we have to be able to see through their disguises and their motives (Thompson, 1964).

Being human also means having the capacity to react with suitable emotions to sensations, perceptions, concepts and experiences which belong to a plane of understanding that other animals do not seem able to reach. Man perceives how experiences affect him. He strives to express what he experiences. He creates not only means of securing food and shelter but also forms of art to communicate his insights and his sufferings, his joys, his satisfactions. He turns to what others have succeeded in expressing in those forms for further illumination and confirmation with feeling of what he has lived through and also felt about. It is true that in West Indian societies it is not common to see people seeking sustenance from works of art - few are capable of doing so. But that only serves to emphasise for the teacher of English that from schooling every pupil 'should have gained sufficient pleasure in drawing on the wisdom of all forms of verbal culture to feel, as he lives on, the need to read something of. . .literature'. (Holbrook, 1961 p. 27)

It is being argued here that if what is practised as the process of educating the young in any society is failing to develop the individual's power of enquiry,

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of judgement and reasoning, and of experiencing and feeling, education is not taking place whatever other changes are effected in the individual. Hence, it is being proposed that a teacher who wishes to educate will select the components of the curriculum specifically to bring about the development of those powers.

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From a more concrete angle teachers of a language have to be controlled in their choice of what their pupils must learn by the needs people have for language in their daily lives, remembering at all times that the two major aspects of needs are understanding and expression which together constitute communication. Taking the curriculum to be 'a programme of activities designed so that pupils will attain, as far as possible certain educational ends or objectives' (Hirst, P. 1968) we have to face the fact that teachers of English in secondary schools in the Caribbean often have to include activities for the acquisition of basic language structures and forms in their main work of extending the abilities to understand and produce language in all its various modes and contexts. English is still the language used for giving and acquiring most information and knowledge, expected to be used for argument in many situations, and resorted to for certain forms of exploration of the experience of living. Whether an examination is in the use and understanding of Jamaican English, Guyanese English or Trinidadian English it is the needs for its use by an educated person that must guide us.No Caribbean secondary school is fulfilling its role unless it is guided by Frank Whitehead's charge: ' . . the true task of English teaching is to help children to refine, polish, raise to a higher level of sensitivity, effectiveness and precision a language they already possess . . .' (F. Whitehead, 1966).

It is, therefore, an analysis of the functions of the language in living a full life that gives us our concrete base for choosing what to use our energies to try to teach. The life of the learner as we would wish it to be is the goal we have to head for. To ignore the language needs for living a full life is to misappropriate the time and lives of those we aim to educate. Those needs have now to be considered.

One way of doing that, of analysing the functions of language in satisfying living, is to look at a day in the life of the person we would like our pupil to be. We would immediately see doing a job to earn a living as a necessary part of that day. We could not avoid seeing certain forms of recreation, sports, fun, games and social intercourse taking up some hours of that day. And we should see the pursuit of broadly civic (nor merely political) interests, duties and obligations, such as attending a meeting or discussing a social issue, as part of many of those days. Thus, one might look at how language is needed and used for vocational purposes, how it is used and needed for leisure and recreation, and its role in those contexts where the interests of the community as a whole are being spoken or written about. For it is the ways language is used in such contexts that determines the decisions affecting the quality of life of every member of a community. The forms of leisure and recreational activities could be on the same

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level as those enjoyed by rabbits, mice, dogs or birds; or they could be ones which draw on human powers of discernment, understanding, discrimination and

response. "The point and the justification of leisure are not that the functionary should function faultlessly and without a breakdown, but that the functionary should continue to be a man . . .that he should fulfill himself, and come to full possession of his faculties, face to face with being as a whole." (Peiper, 1952). Which forms of leisure are we to spend their time preparing our pupils to enjoy?

There is no doubt that the pressures are heavy on teachers to prepare their

pupils to be functionaries that function faultlessly during those hours of the day

spent doing their jobs. Very few indeed are the times when a teacher in the Caribbean questions whether the total purpose of education is for living or

earning a living. (Holbrook, 1961). The persons of influence and loud voice in West Indian societies are those whose only interest in people seems to be an economic one and teachers easily succumb to their vociferations (frequently vocalised through the mouths of political representatives). The other interest

easily seen is in the 'good behaviour' of the masses of the societies. But

apart from those two aspects of preparing people to come to terms with their environment it must truthfully be said that comparatively little else gets emphasis in Caribbean countries.

Now and then a little lip-service is paid to the idea of preparing pupils to think for themselves. But that does not always mean making an independent judgment. Most often it means seeing an issue in the same way as the speaker or writer. And it would be much further from the truth to say that teachers are

pressured in any way to prepare their pupils to pursue leisure time interests and activities which involve intellectual creativity of any kind. Who really cares

(does something), for example, about getting them to prefer good quality films, although the cinema and the television will occupy so much of their lives? As Albert Hunt wrote if you go to see rape and murder, rape and murder are what

you are likely to respond to; a fact which makes it all the more important to bring to the screen an active critical judgment.' (Hunt, 1964) Isn't it taken that leisure time is time to be filled with doing almost anything (although preferably charity work and sports) as long as time is filled until the workshops, or office or

factory opens again?

Yet, while training a person to be employable as a functionary - whether

curing the sick or driving a tractor - is not necessarily educating him/her, that

person does need to be able to understand and produce language to perform efficiently whatever the job or function is. Some functions possibly require a lower level of critical, creative thinking than others, and the capacity to feel and

experience does have less place in executing most jobs than it has in personal growth and being. But it should easily be accepted that the two needs for

language most felt by most people in the context of earning a living are for

getting information and for giving information. Giving directions, instructions, demonstrations, explanations and so on constitutes a large part of what most jobs involve, which is not to disregard that getting and giving information is as essential in contexts of civic activity, such as a trade union meeting, for instance.

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A language curriculum in a school must, then, give pupils the skills and habits to enable them to get information as they need it to continue to perform job functions efficiently, at least, as well as to enable them to give information to others in a clear, complete, concise and precise manner. If, for example, in attempting to communicate to others a foreman uses value terms which lack precision and common meaning, or is verbose, or presents ideas in an order which hinders clarity, confusion is very likely to be caused. Efficiency suffers. The kind of language habits and skills needed in such a context are those which belong to the impersonal, objective use of language and the organisation of ideas for impersonal understanding. Most curricula in schools show a recognition of the importance of giving the pupils the skills for effective communication of that kind and both internal and external examinations attempt to measure those skills in some way.

However, when we are executing functional tasks as well as when we are not the expression and receiving of opinion (as distinct from the giving and getting of factual information) is a pervading phenomenon of group life. But opinions can be expressed in heady subjective language as well as in language that is nearly completely impersonal. Owens and Marland(1970) put this into perspective ". . . as important as inducing children to feel is getting them to think. Just how the transition is made from personal to impersonal writing is still not clear, but unquestionably one of our major tasks is to help children to think clearly and logically, to stick to the point and avoid non-sequiturs, to retain the thread of an argument, to watch carefully for bees in the bonnet and red herrings in the flow of the argument, and to link phrase to phrase, sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph in a connected sequence." Discussion and argument may be mostly done, generally speaking, in situations where civic (social and political) questions are the points of issue. But they are done with almost equal frequency in other situations of daily living. The need to be able to evaluate the worth of an opinion or view shows itself in all three facets of living referred to above: vocational functioning, civic activity, and the enjoyment of leisure. It is incontestable that the language learning activities in any school must prepare the pupfls for both expressing and judging opinions. Traditionally examinations have often aimed to measure the abilities needed for effective expression of opinion. But not yet has anybody found it important enough to measure the skills for evaluating opinions expressed. Yet we do a lot of talking about democracy. Is it that the people of power and voice in our societies do not want the masses to have those skills? Why do we condone any examination that ignores the testing of the candidate's ability to analyse and assess expressions of opinion?

Perhaps employers are not interested in whether their employees are able to protect their minds against destructive assaults. What they should be but are certainly not interested in, as employers, is what has been described as the capacity to feel and experience. Holbrook (1961) calls this 'the very culture of the feelings' and names one of its enemies as the pressure towards standardisation which inhibits the engagement of teachers and pupils with the imaginative power of the word with which we must all be concerned even when acquiring

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fact and technological skills. The importance of what that means can perhaps be suggested by pointing to the difference in the level of existence between human beings who can respond to experience communicated by art, by music, and by the language of novels, short stories, plays and poems, and human beings who cannot. The capacities of the latter to enjoy, to understand, to respond are limited to what their very immediate environment and actions provide, and to those aspects of living which do not require the efforts of the educator; the gratification of physical appetites and the emotional excitement of physical movement.

But man has always used language to communicate the feeling and meaning of personal experiences. The urge to do that is as strong as the urge to communicate anything else. And man has also always drawn on such communications for interpreting, understanding and illuminating his own individual experience. 'An additional mode of existence' is how one writer puts it. (Flower, 1966). Hitherto Caribbean teachers as a whole have given as little time as possible to the development of such sensibilities in their pupils. And, worse, examinations that pretend to test what is called literature have always been designed with another objective in mind, viz. to measure what the candidates can remember of what they have been told about a certain few specified texts, instead of measuring whether they have the ability to read (or listen) and receive the feeling and meaning of communicated experience and insights infused into the art forms of language.

In short, if we are not to rob our pupils (and ourselves by robbing our society and our culture) of dimensions of life that enrich human living we cannot omit adequate emphasis on preparing them to derive the satisfactions and pleasures from language used in fictional ways as literature; as well as on preparing them to be able to communicate their personal and special perceptions of human experience to others who in turn will enjoy pleasure and satisfaction. Deriving pleasure from certain uses of language and giving pleasure by producing language used in certain ways seem to be as vital abilities for complete living as any that can be thought of. The teacher who wishes to educate will plan a curriculum to develop those abilities and ensure that the examination the pupils have to be tested by measures those abilities. We have to regard language as 'the predominating medium for all forms of experience and conscious knowledge'. (Gurrey, 1958).

Finally, in considering the total scope of the curriculum, the teacher will underpin all activities with the importance of the ability to speak and write the language correctly. That, of course, is not a separate aspect of the preparation we have been taking to be the language teacher's share in the process of education. The correct use of the language being acquired and extended or refined is implicit in three of the six major applications referred to: in giving information, in expressing opinions, and in communicating experience. Nevertheless a grave danger threatens when correct use of the language is taken to set the limits of the curriculum, when teaching about the language (what every West Indian teacher means by teaching grammar) is thought to be the means of getting learners to

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use the language correctly, and when, consequently, examination questions are asked to test knowledge of categories and terms used in describing the language. This is the greatest threat of all. To ask a person to define or point out an adverbial clause is completely irrelevant to finding out whether he/she can use such clauses effectively. To assume - as nearly every one of us does - that teaching learners to distinguish relative pronouns, dependent clauses, objects of

prepositions and so on is helping them to use the language correctly is to ignore all that every teacher of experience knows and what the bulk of research confirms: there is no connection between knowing what a verb is, for instance, and the habit of using verbs correctly. As Flower points out (1966) "Studies by other researchers reveal the same complete lack of correlation between the teaching of grammar and the pupils' improvement in the writing of English."

One researcher who investigated the value of teaching grammar as teachers understand the term concluded that 'Its real value appears at Sixth Form level: first in examining with specialist curiosity the formal structure and abstract

pattern of the language . . .' (Harris, 1962) He came to the view that it does not do what it is being used to do for the fifteen-year-old. But any teacher who teaches grammar for many years, especially in primary schools, becomes aware of the ineffectiveness of the time spent in so far as getting the learner to produce the language. Curriculum activities to help the pupils acquire habitual use of the correct forms and structures of a language are explained and demonstrated in numerous texts (e.g. Tiffen, 1969; Moody and Gibbs, 1967; Moody, 1966; Dacanay, 1963; Pittman, 1967; Billows, 1961; Close; 1962; Allen, 1965; Hornby, 1959, 1961, 1964, 1966). Every teacher of English in the Caribbean

hj*s the pressing responsibility of becoming familiar with those activities and

placing them in the over-all plan of the language curriculum with emphasis in proportion to the levels of language acquisition already reached by their particular pupils. THE EXAMINATION SYLLABUS

If teachers of English in our schools accept the responsibility for developing the language abilities suggested in the preceding section of this paper, as well as the educational objectives outlined, the language curricula of schools would

undergo several changes in content and emphasis and an examination would have to be designed to measure those abilities and objectives which the teachers are concerned about. Facing the fact that many teachers will seldom teach what is not in an examination syllabus and that the examination syllabus, therefore, tends to determine how much educating pupils get in schools and understanding that any examination paper tests a sample of what the candidates are expected to have learned, we become impelled to outline a syllabus that takes into account the whole spectrum of all the refinements and needs for language in the life of the educated persons we want our pupils to be.

In a syllabus structured to give the pupils what they need for a full life there must of course, be activities to increase comprehension and to increase curiosity. Training to develop information-getting skills will not be left to chance or the indeterminate periods called 'comprehension lessons'. The syllabus must name the precise comprehension skills to be taught and tested. (See e.g. Lewis and 48



Sisk, 1963; Massey and Moore, 1966; DeBoer and Dallman, 1970; D'Arcy, 1973, Gray, 1973). The school library will be seen as the heart of the school and of the syllabus. Class libraries (which may just be large portable cartons filled with paperbacks) will be used as the main arteries. Library skills and note taking will be taught and tested. Pupils will be allowed to read and not be exhorted to but prevented by excessive homework. Regularly pupils will do 'research' and use will be made of what has been read or listened to.

When information obtained from listening or reading or observing is channeled into use, the teacher will be aiming to see that the pupils attain the insights, habits and skills to communicate information clearly, concisely, accurately and completely. The relevant insights, habits and skills will be set out in the syllabus and measured in examinations given to the pupils.

The ability to evaluate opinions heard and read will be an important objective of the syllabus. The pupils will be exposed to the presentation of views and opinions in such a way as to lead them to learn how to discern the

logical and honest from the illogical and biased. Material from radio talks, newspapers and television will be increasingly used going up the school. The

pupils will be trained to detect when their feelings are being manipulated for the

profit of others; when their minds are being twisted away from a truth-finding course; specifically, for example, in recognising bias in coloured terms. Every vehicle of propaganda will at one time or other be used to supply material, from personal letters and conversation to more formal discussions and debates

(oral, written and recorded). The teachers' reference library in the school will have useful texts such as those by Marland (1967) (a) and 1967(b),Braithwaite. (1972), Anderson (1963), Firth (1968), Gordon (1966), Tucker (1966) and Boutwell (1962).

Complementarity, the syllabus must offer clear-cut organised training in sound argument. This cannot be left to chance, with the hope that it will come out of the goalless activity we call class discussions and debates. With the help of the analyses of Jepson (1948), Stebbing (1939), Thouless (1953), Flesch (1951), St. Aubyn (1957) and Emmet (1960) a syllabus can be planned for the upper forms of the school naming the special skills and insights the pupils must acquire to avoid the pitfalls of faulty argument such as unsupported general- isations, baseless inferences, inadequate definitions, and so on. For the satisfying life our pupils need to be able to put their views convincingly and with honesty in the vocational and civic contexts of living, and often, too, in those situations where leisure is being used for humane purposes and with humane values. Hayakawa (1965), who might well be the teacher's prophet in this respect, reveals very convincingly what this kind of language in action really means in our daily lives.

Above all,understanding that the real difference in the quality of life between one person and another, while probably having an economic base, has its manifestations in the kind of leisure pursuits that time is given to, teachers of English will lay down a syllabus that ensures that every school-leaver has the necessary abilities and inclinations to derive the real satisfactions that literature has to offer. For some teachers this will mean changing the classroom activity

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from one of learning ABOUT literature to one of learning HOW TO READ literature. The special comprehension skills needed for reading the best novels, stories, plays and poems will be listed in the syllabus. And any sensible examination will be arranged so that what is measured in the candidates is not how much they can remember but how well they can read. For those teachers, the very few, who now wisely aim at giving their pupils abilities and dispositions rather than knowledge it is still important to reiterate that it is only literature which has to do with life and living as the pupils know it that can start the growth of those abilities and dispositions. For West Indian children it must be West Indian literature to begin with.

Many teachers will see it as just as important to develop those skills which enable people to give expression to experience in ways that give pleasure and satisfaction. Even people responsible for setting the present inadequate examination tasks as tests ask candidates to write about their personal experiences as well as forms of experience in their environment, e.g. 'Popular Music in Your Country'. Some teachers, lacking in insight into the value of that for the human psyche, or not being interested in people as human beings, dismiss or de-emphasise those skills because they do not seem to serve any 'utilitarian' purpose, such as are required for earning a living. So, activities which are unfortunately called 'creative', and thereby given a connotation of specialness and elitism, are still too often regarded as dispensable from the syllabus when the teachers view their pupils as 'dull' or 'low -class' or inadequate in their mastery of the mechanics of English. Personal writing in all its forms, including verse writing, and the writing of stories and plays is necessary to promote the growth of all our pupils regardless of their particular linguistic and other circumstances. Dixon (1967) gives ample stress to the school's role in this regard. Alington (1961) says 'This reflection upon experience, difficult though it might be to contrive practically, is one of the important activities of the mind which we do not yet encourage sufficiently in schools.' But several teachers have demonstrated that it is not too difficult to contrive practically (e.g. Gwynne and Gurrey, 1967; Langdon, 1961 ;Bolton, 1966;Druce, 1970;Clegg, 1964; Alington, 1961; Gurrey, 1954; Schiller, 1967; Rosen, 1967; Clements, 1967; McCree, 1969). There should be little doubt that a syllabus must specify the learnings which have to take place in this regard, and any examination or test must measure those learnings in an appropriate way.

What is, without doubt, emphasised by probably seven out of every ten teachers in our secondary schools and ten out of ten in our primary schools is an activity called teaching grammar. In the context of syllabus planning this has to be referred to again. Many misguided teachers and the people who control teachers merchants, journalists, civil servants, politicians, industrialists

expect that an examination in English (and consequently the school syllabus) must test what the pupils know ABOUT the language, assuming in their ignorance that knowing ABOUT the language is the same as being able to USE the language. Hence, a huge waste of pupils' time in school is the common practice. Time that should be spent immersing the pupils in the language well- used, and in giving them practice in' using the language well, is spent giving so-called explanations of the forms and functions of words and the parts of

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sentences and their functions, as if the learners have already acquired the language and can now spend time analysing it like scholars. Any syllabus for English teaching in one of our schools today should stipulate the grammatical structures and patterns those particular pupils need to acquire and the order in which they are to be drilled in so the pupils can use them habitually and spon- taneously in appropriate situations. As said before, curriculum activities will take the form of interesting ways of getting that drill and practice done. The same applies of course to other conventions of the mechanics of language production, e.g. punctuation. How this could be measured will be referred to later.

TESTING THE ABILITIES

It is assumed that to set up a form or scheme of examination for pupils in a school or for those leaving school the teachers will first set out the objectives they wish to achieve through their teaching. Bloom's analysis of behavioural objectives (1956) might be of some use, but KrathwohFs (1964) although of necessity less overt, are certainly as related to the work of the teacher of English in Caribbean secondary schools. In any case it is the teachers who must clarify their objectives, then work out the curriculum (see definition above) to achieve those objectives and finally they too, must measure the attain- ment of their objectives (Wiseman, 1961). An idea of what ought to be measured has already been suggested. How the measurement should be done depends on agreement on what is to be measured.

The essay-type test item seems a valid way to test the abilities related to the production of language to express factual ideas, opinions, and personal and creative insights. It is the least reliable method of examining because of the large element of subjective judgement that enters into it. However, this danger has been focused on for some time and studies such as those done by Britton, et al ( 1 966) have helped to indicate how large subjective inputs by examiners could be evened out. On the other hand objective-type tests items seem suitable for testing understanding of the language, both with regard to impersonal and personal communications. Comprehension skills seem to be validly and reliably tested by batteries of objective items, and it should not be too difficult to use them to measure a person's ability to discern bias, weakness of argument, emotional force of language used and interpretive meaning of poems, stories and so on (Hudson, 1973; Secondary Schools Examin- ation Council, 1964). Britton's experiments did not offer conclusive evidence that a mark for mechanical accuracy in compositions (grammar, punctuation, spelling) was u valid measure of such written work, but it is possible that if teachers wish to get some separate guage of a candidate's mastery of mechanical accuracy objective tests could be used for such a purpose. This writer's experience of using such tests for that purpose leads to the view that they do not tell anything of the pupil's competency in using the language.

On-going assessments of pupils during all or a period of school life can be done internally by the school or externally by a panel of examiners, or a combination of both. It seems, however. Io be a fact of life in the Caribbean that jealousies,

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competition, rivalries, envy and mistrust will have to be eliminated to a significant extent for any form of internal assessment, on-going or not, to be run smoothly, even granted agreement among all teachers on what constitutes different levels and stnadards. Forty-three years ago Whitehead (1932) wrote 'no educational system is possible unless every question directly asked of a pupil at any examination is either framed or modified by the actual teacher of that pupil in that subject.' Numerous countries follow that line of thought but only over the past twenty years or so have teachers in the United Kingdom given thought to ways of doing it. (Secondary Schools Examinations Council, 1963) The mode 3 of the C.S.E. (Certificate of Secondary Education) there allows a percentage of a pupil's final grade to be accounted for by work done by the pupil in the normal course of schooling. Have we been taught so well to mistrust one another that we cannot start now with allowing, say, 20% of a candidate's marks to be arrived at by internal on-going assessment, increasing the proportion as we gain confidence? Dixon's( 1966?) survey for the N.A.T.E. of England reported that nine out of fourteen regional examining Boards conducting the C.S.E. included course work. The weights ranged from 10% to 30% of the grade given to a candidate.

In the United Kingdom the Schools Council (1955) issued useful guidelines for setting up school-based examinations and teachers in the Caribbean could learn from that exercise. As Dixon asked (1966): if teachers cannot be trusted to examine, why trust them with children's intellectual, emotional and moral development at all?' The experience of some teachers in organising school-based examinations in English and in Physics was reported by the Schools Council in Examinations Bulletin No. 15 (1967). All the steps taken between May 1964 and April 1965 are clearly set out. The methods of examinations used were:

(a) written ( i) essay type (ii) objective type

(b) oral (c) practical (for physics, or project work for English) (d) study of course work (e) continuous assessment

The question of testing our pupils' mastery of oral communication should now be taken up as a vital one. It is certainly a vital objective that everybody is concerned about. Isn't it strange that there is no clamour for it to be the prime feature of any examination in language? Not even a shout for it to be part of the examination at all? No-one thinking about it and realising how it goes to the heart of the matter would let that realisation blind him/her to the problems to be solved in examining oral English, especially for a single Caribbean examination. But no-one interested in an examination in language communication should allow those problems to appear to be insuperable. In Examinations Bulletin No. 1 1 (1966) the Schools Council gave an account of an experiment in examining oral English. Four methods were selected forexperimentationrreading aloud, prepared talk, private conversations about a visual stimulus and group discussion. The problems that emerged most strongly were those traced to the attitude of the

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candidate towards the particular examiner causing reticence and nervousness, and problems related to the nature of oral examining, such as what 'communication' means, is social ease to be judged and the ability to talk about serious issues, and what speech norm is to be posited. Caribbean teachers will, no doubt, have to have an oral test of some kind in an examination which is measuring one's acquisition of language skills. Do we need the linguisticians to keep on reminding us that language is speech?

Another question that ought tc be considered is whether there are not times when an open-book examination is a better and more appropriate test. Dixon for the N.A.T.E. of England reported (1966) that five out of thirteen regional examining boards allowed texts in the examination room when candidates were being examined in the reading of literature. This seems in keeping with measuring the ability to read rather than the gift or memory. The Schools Council (1967) said that candidates are 'required to show they have read with understanding and appreciation literature selected from a given list'. This forces a teacher who finds the list one that his/her pupils cannot understand nor appreciate to resort to getting the pupils to retain the teachers lectures. The N.A.T.E. thought 'the effort was being made to see that the examining of literature is a real sampling of understanding and response' (underlining mine). This attitude allows for texts to be brought into the examination room or for unseen extracts to be presented for response as was done by five of thirteen examining boards. But perhaps the most obvious use of the open-book method is to test the candidates reference skills. This writer once had to do such a test and it proved to be a much more true-to-life and valid test of competency.

Some of the abilities set out in the previous section, e.g. the ability to evaluate opinions and make judgements about them, might seem unexaminable at first. The area of reacting to views expressed by others can be probed indirectly as in these questions set by the Southern Regional Examinations Board in May 1965 (Schools Council 1967): (a) A newspaper must be owned, directed, organised and generally run by somebody or something. What then, do you think, is meant by a free press? (b) Show with examples taken from the press, television and hoardings, how some advertisements take unfair advantage of people's feelings and emotions to persuade them to buy something they may not want or need, (c) 'In a democracy advertising plays a vital part in giving the people a choice between various brands of the same product - thus ensuring that the public gets value for money.' Discuss this comment on the part played by advertising in this country, (d) Intelligent and educated people should be able to discuss or debate matters together clearly and without quarrelling. Why, then, is it necessary for every Committee Meeting or Debate to have a Chair- man?

A more direct test of the candidate's acuteness in this respect is aimed atin this question by the Welsh panel fDixon, 1966?):

'Two masters write these reports on David:

(a) David shows an intelligent interest in most subjects and has a mind of his own. He shows some originality and thinks for himself. He could develop valuable qualities of leadership.

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(b) David has been very impertinent this term and questions the decision of those in authority. He is stubborn and argumentative and is beginning to have a bad influence on his fellow pupils.

( i) From these class reports what kind of boy do you think David is?

( ii) Both statements really say the same thing though the two masters see him very differently. Can you think of any reason for this?

(iii) Make a list of favourable words or expressions in (a) and unfavourable ones in (b) which create the impression desired by the writer and which really describe the same traits of character in David.'

This is a crucial time in the development of the level and quality of education in the Caribbean. If a poor examination system is now substituted for the Cambridge *O' Level examination we would have taken a step backward, instead of seizing the chance to go forward. The key to that growth is the syllabus. Let us formulate a syllabus to educate our pupils in the fullest sense and let the examination follow the syllabus. In no single year will an examination be able to test all that the syllabus requires to be learnt. And there is where our goal will get its chance to be achieved: teachers will have to teach the whole syllabus to give their pupils sufficient preparation for the sampling the examination will make. An outline of the elements of such a syllabus has been offered in this paper as the basis of what we should call our Certificate of General Education. That outline is not by any means too much to prescribe, unless we are, in fact, afraid to really educate our children.

C. R. Gray



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caribbean literature || curricula, syllabuses and examinations in english

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