THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY

BC PIRES

LAST THURSDAY, 18,000-odd 11-year-olds sat the Secondary Entrance Assessment, all hoping to pass for a 'prestige school' which, in Trinidad, means one where the teachers are more worried about their students getting nine CXCs under their belt than they already having TEC Nines in their book bags.

Last Friday, I did the maths section of a Newsday practice test. Today I will wrestle with what we now call 'language arts' because we're too ashamed of how poorly we do 'English.'

Language Arts. Section I.

Task 1. Correct the six spelling mistakes:

Simba sirveyed the bed below him. The new dog, which the humans affectionatly called 'Chino,' was sleeping contently on it. Simba wanted to play! He swished his tale, wiggled and pounced on the creature. Chino howled and jumped! Simba felt satisfyed. The spelling mistakes are obvious, apart from 'contently' for 'contentedly,' which modern 11-year-olds will think isn't a mistake at all, because they will think it refers to 'content,' ie, any stupid 15-second video they post on TikTok, but you have to look for the cultural/socio-economic errors. Unless Simba and Chino are pets in a stoosh household, eg, what the firetruck are they doing on the bed? Except possibly in Westmoorings, Trinidad dogs are outside in the rain. With one end of an old rope tied around their neck and the other to a mango tree valued more highly than them.

Task 2. Correct the six punctuation and capitalisation errors:

romano observed the tadpoles and fish darting between rocks in the pond As he stared at them in awe a voice shouted, 'Boo'. romano fell into the pond. His brother, Trevor, exclaimed, Got you!' There is a lot more wrong with poor Romano than not having his name capitalised, such as having a surname for a forename and not having a PS4 or any gaming platform at all - otherwise why would he be in awe of tadpoles and fish darting in a firetrucking pond? This is a little boy in Trinidad, not Sir David Attenborough on the BBC. Romano's biggest problem, though, is clearly his brother, Trevor, who got the good first name and who has poor Romano in such an extended state of hyper-anxiety, he needs to watch tadpoles to calm down. Romano's best correction will be to NEVER stand near the edge of any precipice if Trevor is within shouting distance.

Task 3. Correct the six grammar errors:

Black vultures known as 'corbeaux' at Trinidad are important to the environment and helps to keep it clean. Despite they reputation around being dirty, black vultures often clean itself by bathing in rivers and streams. Before the grammatically incorrect, we must deal with the politically incorrect, viz, why are the vultures being described as 'black?' It is now racist to use 'black' as a descriptive, following the penalising of the European football club official who identified the only black person on the field by saying, 'the black guy' instead of, say, 'the third-tallest player on the team that is losing at the moment' or 'the player nearest the goalpost