Young Adult Literature in Jamaica

    I am writing this blog post to clarify points made in an article in the Gleaner on Monday, November 27, in relation to questions raised about young adult literature.

Who do you think of when you hear the phrase “Young Adult”?  People in their late teens and early 20’s? These young people read adult literature, so that genre is not for them. The Vic Reid Award accepts manuscripts suitable for readers ages 13-18 years and older. For many authors and publishers it means 12 to 15 year-olds, and includes books such as “The Hunger Games”, The Twilight series and the Harry Potter series. The popularity of subcategories in this genre change rapidly. The popularity of fantasy is taken over by vampire novels and then by dystopian novels. The publishing industry has a hard time knowing what is going to be next.  

Another dilemma is that age is not a good guide when writing and choosing books for children and teenagers, especially in Jamaica.

The ideal transition is as follows:
Parents read picture books to young children, talk about the story and pictures. Toddlers get board books, which are resistant to tearing and chewing.
When children go to Basic School or kindergarten they are introduced to phonics and have more story  books read to them. They have access to simple picture books with few words, which they can read often. Thus, some children begin to read from as young as four years old.
In grade 1, in primary or elementary school, phonics teaching continues, children have graded readers  and hopefully a plentiful supply of reading books appropriate for their age and reading level. By the end of grade 1, at age 7 they should be reading independently. They then move on to simple and later more complex chapter books, and hopefully to a life of enjoying reading.
Unfortunately, for many  Jamaican children one or all of these stages is missing. Some of them remain illiterate, while others are reading below their grade level. So they are not reading young adult books. They also develop a negative attitude to reading. What they need is an abundant supply of multicultural books appropriate for their reading level from grades 1 to 11. There is a pressing need for many more books by Jamaican authors to fill that gap. What is sorely needed are more HiLo - high interest, low difficulty books. Nine-year-old boys would prefer to read about cars and trucks than about teddies and bunnies.
      Because the readership for young adult literature in Jamaica is small, authors of this genre have to target the wider Caribbean and international as well as Jamaican audiences but it’s still hard to get published.

I was asked why I thought none of the entries for the Vic Reid award were of a high enough standard to merit the award. I know nothing about the authors of these entries, but I suspect they, like me when I started writing, thought “anyone can write a book”, not realizing that it is a craft to be learned. I wrote the first draft of “Lost in the Cockpit Country” in 2006. It was rejected by all the publishers I sent it to. In subsequent years, I rewrote sections of it several times and rewrote the last half completely in 2017. (It has still not been published!)

Several activities led to improvement in my writing.
1. I have an online critique group which has been meeting regularly since we took an online course in children’s writing in 2004. There are only three of us now, but what we lack in quantity we make up for in quality. Critiquing other’s work teaches one a great deal about one’s own writing.

2. In 2007, “Delroy in the Marog Kingdom” was accepted for publication by Macmillan Caribbean. Working with my editor, Joanne Johnson, I learned more than I had from all the writing books I had read. I rewrote my story, chapter by chapter, some chapters more than once, until it met her stringent requirements. Much of her advice was transferable to my other writing. My only difficulty was to convince her that some of the ways she wanted me to express something were  Trinidadian, not Jamaican. You don’t have to wait to have a book a accepted for publication, to work with an editor, but in that case, you would have to pay the person.
3. Reading out loud to yourself or others reveals flaws which you might not spot otherwise.
4. Reading as many books as possible in the genre you want to write in is also recommended - read once to enjoy the story and a second time to analyze the structure, study the style, characterization, dialogue and description.
5. Reading books on writing. I have found the following books invaluable:
(i) The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing by Evan Marshall
(ii) The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler
(iii) The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
(iv) The Art of Fiction by John Gardner
(v)  20 Master Plots and how to build them by Ronald Tobias
Most authors have websites and blogs where they give tips on writing, but the volume of this information can be overwhelming.

Writing is a somewhat solitary occupation. That is why organizations such as the Jamaican Writers Society (JAWS) are formed, to put writers in touch with each other. They do organize workshops, so perhaps a workshop on writing Young Adult Fiction is timely. I also think that there needs to be more discussion about what exactly is required of works entered for the Vic Reid Award.

GSAT Ranking and School Size

The Jamaica Gleaner recently published an analysis of 2013 GSAT Scores, ranking schools according to their performance. The analysis revealed that the average performance of students attending Prep Schools exceeded that of Primary Schools. Most of the ensuing discussion focussed on reasons for this disparity. However, after taking part in the Twitter Chat on Feb 18, 2014, I was interested in putting together some data on the differences between rural and urban schools in St. James. I chose four rural, underpopulated schools and three urban schools for my investigation. I took data from Jamaica's Ministry of Education website  and the Gleaner's Survey.  The figures show that there are indeed underpopulated schools, with enrolments far below their capacity. They have enviable pupil teacher ratios, but abysmal performance. Their average GSAT scores are well below the  national average of 258, as shown in the table below. 

Parish: St. James

 School Name               %       Capacity    Current       No of     Pupil       # of           Ave 

                                 attend                     Enrolment  Teachers   Teacher  GSAT      Score      

                                                                                                 Ratio       entrants

Lottery Primary             82         260             53            6              27:1         6            211

Mount Zion Primary       93         150            38            3              19:1         3            161

Mount Horeb 

All Age and Infant          76         200            42            4              14:1         1            163

Salters Hill All Age        90         215            40            3              20:1          4            220

Granville All Age           73         710           385          26            18:1         74            239

Corinaldi Ave Prim        95         875         1,675         52            36:1       265            313

Chetwood 

Memorial Primary         94         585          1,157         33            39:1       191           284

     Of the urban schools, Corinaldi Avenue and Chetwood Memorial Primary are overpopulated, but are performing above the national average. Corinaldi made it into the top 100 schools in the survey, and GSAT's top boy, Mark Brown, attended Chetwood.  What is is about these urban schools which makes them perform so well? Yes, they have good teachers and good principals, but that cannot be the only reason for their success. I contend that it is the parents who make the difference. Parents have choices and the more concerned parents are the first to register their children in what they perceive to be the better schools. Being concerned parents means that they have done the best for their children up to the point of entry to the primary school, with many of these children alreay being able to read. These children perform better, therefore raising the standard of the school even more. 

      The underpopulation of the rural schools occurs not only because of rural-urban drift, but because these particular schools are seen as non-performers. What may have begun as a result of weak leadership, ends with concerned parents removing their children from these schools. With the exodus of better students, the standard of these schools drops even more. I think the facilities could be better used if these schools were turned into basic schools, and the present students sent to the nearest suitable school. Mount Horeb All Age and Infant School is about 4 miles from Cambridge where there are both primary and secondary schools. Based on the numbers, there would only be 4 students per grade to transfer. There is always an outcry when a suggestion is made to close a school, but as far as I can see, these schools are not benefitting the children attending them. 

      One reason Corinaldi is able to do so well is the the classes, although large, are more homogenous in relation to the ability of the students. There is a six-stream entry and, as children are ranked according to ability, teachers can tailor their classes to suit the learning rate of their pupils. In an underpoplulated school, each teacher would have to teach two or more grade levels.

New Building at Chetwood Memorial Primary School

    Chetwood was able to increase its capacity with some funding from the Catholic Church, which enabled it to construct a new building with five classrooms, a library, a computer room and an office for the guidance counsellor. The school also boasts a computer based system of teaching reading, and achieved 95% mastery in the 2013 Grade 4 Literacy Test.
    Children are coming to Chetwod from as far away as Mahfoota and Retirement. Why is a student from Retirement not attending Granville All Age? Here is an example of a school that has got a bad name in the past. For whatever the reason was, there is no justifiction for that now. When I did a bookreading there in 2012, I found the children to be well-behaved and attentive. However, as a good reputation takes a long time to build, the school is still underpopulated.

Granville All Age School

 The schools I chose for this discussion represent opposite extremes. Of course there are many rural schools which are not underpopulated and are performing well; and there are urban schools which are not overpopulated and are not doing so well. Attendance and punctuality  also impact schools' performance. All schools also have their quota of malnourished children, and children with undiagnosed and untreated behavioural and learning disorders. When members of the diaspora are deciding how they can give assistance, the problems may appear to be overwhelming. However, I think that their decisions should be based on available data, rather than on common  misconceptions. I hope this post has helped to dispel some of these.
     Last but not least, I would like to recommend support of the Granville Reading and Art Programme, GRAP, spearheaded by Natalie Bennett. It is making a tremendous difference in the community of Granville.