Titchfield

  By cleveberry

 The news in the Daily Gleaner Aug 21, 2010 that Titchfield High School is showing cracks and portions of the building may collapse, did not evoke an ounce of sympathy in me. There were stories about the contemplated move of the school to the Folly grounds, no pity here. As far as I am concerned if every brick and mortar, drift wood and nails would fall in a rubble, it would be the justified deterioration of an institution that way into the late fifties denied entry to the poorest Portlanders.        Unless your parents were seen as “upper-class” you were systematically excluded from taking the scholarship exams. Later when you were eligible for the entrance exams the “poorer class” couldn’t afford the tuition.  The disgusting tentacles of Jamaica’s colonial past, and the misguided caste system that upper-class blacks wishing they were British citizens, gave Titchfield its identity.

 During WWII young men who refused to enlist for the war were beaten and jailed and even killed. The Daily Gleaner ran scathing editorials chastising Jamaicans for refusing to fight for Britain even when the British did not want blacks to join the army. The explanation was that they would not allow colored men to kill white men although they the Germans were the enemy.

 Titchfield, among other high schools became the colonial culprit mimicking the oppressive legacy of the British. Endless number of bright men and women in Portie had to find alternate ways to acquire an education. Many fell by the way side; a sizable number formed a sub-culture that has lasting psychological effects even to this day. Disadvantaged youths dived for coins when the tourist ships docked at the wharf, some stowed away on ships to England, others took menial jobs to survive. Teenage girls got trapped in unwanted pregnancies and the society battered and bruised limped along cocooned in a vicious socio-economic decay and illiteracy.

I am not blaming Titchfield for all the problems of Port Antonio, but they contributed to the decay and the educational malaise of the period, and fostered a climate of learned helplessness. I accessed this site wikimapia.org and read all the accolades that are being heaped upon the institution; one of the oldest and revered schools in Jamaica, the best school for biology and physics, and yet  the alumni making these glowing platitudes never experienced the discriminatory practices of this instiution up to the late fifties.

 The poorer class in Port Antonio Upper School in the fifties, didn’t know didly shit about biology and physics. We used to wonder what squares and compasses were used for.       Until Michael Manley changed the educational system that allowed poorer children to go to high schools, attending high school was an unattainable dream.

Although we shared the buildings, Titchfield students were forbidden to mingle with Port Antonio Upper students. When they played tennis in the back by the “battery” no PAU student dared to go back there, not even to retrieve a poorly hit ball.  PAU students could only watch from afar as the girls played net ball. When school groups called houses (Brown, Grossett, Plant and Ashmeade) were engaged in competitions of cricket, football and track and field, primary school student could not share in the athletic enrichment that every young person required for optimum development.

Young boys and girls because of economic deficiencies stared longingly and with envy knowing that participating in sports and getting to use a slide rule were way off in a distance that may never be attained.

So yes, whether the fortress falls apart or they move the whole kit and caboodle to the Folly Grounds I wouldn’t give a shit. As far as I am concerned that would be poetic justice for all the consternation and denied opportunity that taints the scared walls of that crusty institution. My younger siblings attended the institution and received a good education, but one cannot heap praise upon Titchfield High School without having some awareness of its past and the impact it had on the cultural and economic stagnation of the town. Indeed, history does not look kindly upon the sordid legacy of an institution that did not lift a finger to mitigate the poor conditions of the pedagogical landscape.