Dennis Minott | Harmful buffoonery

Behind the neat rows of school timetables lies harmful buffoonery, where pools-timetabling locks children’s dreams into cages and wastes national talent.

Each new school year, thousands of Jamaican secondary students discover that their academic aspirations are subject not to their abilities, interests, or dreams, but to the crude dictates of a mechanism known as “pools-timetabling”. What appears, at first glance, to be an innocuous administrative practice is in fact a source of great harm. It is a policy that constrains choice, suppresses ambition, and mocks the very purpose of education. Pools-timetabling is not only inefficient in the long run, it is profoundly damaging to Jamaica’s future.

WHAT IS POOLS-TIMETABLING?

In theory, it is a device to simplify scheduling. Instead of constructing timetables around the diverse subject combinations that students might reasonably wish to pursue, Jamaican schools group whole cohorts into “pools”. A limited set of subject options is attached to each pool, and the timetable is constructed accordingly. The administrator breathes a sigh of relief, for order has been imposed. But the cost of this apparent order is borne entirely by the locked out student.

The result is that a child with genuine passion for physics and literature may be told, “You cannot do both; they fall in different pools.” Another who aspires to combine French with information technology is forced to abandon one. Some combinations are quietly deemed “impossible”, not because of pedagogical reasoning, but because the timetable designer prioritises convenience over learners’ needs.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

It matters because education is meant to be a ladder out of limitation. When we deny students the freedom to craft their own academic journeys, we do more than frustrate them; we actively foreclose their futures. Jamaica’s brightest children are quietly bludgeoned into compliance, taught from an early age that the system is indifferent to their aspirations.

This is not mere inconvenience. It is intellectual vandalism. The minds that could have explored unusual and powerful combinations of knowledge are diverted into bland uniformity. The very creativity that Jamaica needs to thrive in the 21st century is systematically blunted.

SYSTEM THAT ENTRENCHES INEQUALITY

One of the most disturbing features of pools-timetabling is the way it deepens social inequality. Well-resourced private schools, and a handful of urban institutions, often manage to construct flexible timetables that accommodate unusual combinations. Their students are encouraged to follow their passions. Meanwhile, in the majority of schools, particularly those in rural or under-funded communities, the pools are rigid. The less privileged the child, the more likely she is to be denied choice.

Thus, pools-timetabling becomes another mechanism by which the already advantaged pull further ahead, while the majority are boxed in. For a society already fractured by inequality, this is more than buffoonery: it is educational malpractice.

THE NATIONAL COST

The Caribbean Examinations Council has repeatedly drawn attention to the decline in entries and performance in subjects critical to regional development—mathematics, sciences, and foreign languages. Jamaica cannot afford to produce fewer scientists, engineers, and linguists. Yet, pools-timetabling ensures precisely that outcome, by making it harder for students to access these subjects in flexible combinations.

Consider the girl child who wants to combine chemistry with Spanish in preparation for a career in pharmaceuticals in Latin America. Or the actress cum data scientist who deeply loves theatre arts. These combinations reflect the future of work, hybrid skills that cut across disciplines. Instead, pools-timetabling steers them into the most pedestrian choices. National competitiveness suffers, for talent is squandered before it ever matures.

EFFECT ON MOTIVATION

Education thrives on curiosity and self-direction. When a student is permitted to choose, motivation soars. When choice is denied, motivation collapses. Many teachers, especially those in compulsory subjects, know the deadening experience of facing students who are present only because the timetable dictates it. The spark of enthusiasm is extinguished.

Teachers themselves are demoralised. Instead of working with self-selecting groups of genuinely interested learners, they must cajole and coax the unwilling. Pools-timetabling poisons classrooms, breeding frustration and mediocrity.

DISHONESTY OF ‘EFFICIENCY’

Defenders of pools-timetabling will insist that the practice is efficient. They argue that schools cannot afford the luxury of custom-built timetables for each child. But what is efficiency if it comes at the cost of wasting talent? It is efficient only in the narrowest bureaucratic sense. In truth, it is ruinously inefficient, for it produces graduates less well prepared for higher education and the world of work.

There is also a deep dishonesty here. Efficiency is a managerial virtue; education is a human one. When we allow administrative tidiness to trump human growth, we invert the proper order. We betray our children for the sake of a tidy spreadsheet.

TOWARDS A BETTER ALTERNATIVE

The alternative is not mysterious. It requires investment in better timetabling software, training for administrators, and above all, a shift in philosophy. Students must be placed at the centre of timetabling, not at its margins. If that means smaller classes in certain subject combinations, so be it. If it means creative use of shared resources across schools, let us explore it. If it means lobbying the ministry for more teaching staff in under-supplied disciplines, we should not shrink from the demand.

Above all, it requires the courage to admit that the present system is educationally indefensible. Pools-timetabling is not a regrettable necessity; it is a harmful convenience.

THE MORAL DIMENSION

At root, this is not only a technical issue, but a moral one. To deny children the right to shape their education is to teach them cynicism. It says, in effect, that their dreams are negotiable, that their curiosity must bow before bureaucracy. We should not be surprised, then, when so many of them lose faith in the system altogether.

For a small island nation, blessed with an abundance of talent, but short of natural resources, education must be sacred. We cannot afford the luxury of buffoonery masquerading as policy. To persist with pools-timetabling is to waste what is most precious, the intellect and imagination of our young.

Pools-timetabling is harmful buffoonery; it should be abolished forthwith, or it will keep crippling Jamaica’s brightest students.

Dennis A. Minott, PhD, is a physicist, green energy consultant, and longtime college counsellor. He is the CEO of A-QuEST. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.