President Donald Trump has suffered the ignominy of being the third President of the United States to be impeached by the House of Congress. The vote was along party lines – when the matter is kicked to the Republican controlled Senate the Articles of the Resolution to impeach is anticipated to be rejected.
What cannot be refuted is that Donald J Trump is now recorded in history as the third president of the United States to be impeached.
Donald Trump you are fired!
Redguard December 24, 2019 12:01 PM
I stated that IQ is mainly under genetic control. I did not say that the environment did not exert some influence.. I went to state that nurturing a person with a low IQ would not result in large improvement in IQ.As for the normal distribution curve and IQ: one can use it to determine how many persons have high IQ;s in a population. If you have 10 persons with high IQ, 10 with low IQ and 10 with average IQ and you plot a graph what do you get? I am not interested in esoteric arguments for the sake of arguing.
@ Hal December 24, 2019 5:41 PM
You are positing an example of social engineering that the author of ” A Brave new world” would be proud of. I gave examples to illustrate a couple of points I was making. I never suggested doing what you posted. To go down your form of reasoning, how often do rich folks marry outside their financial grouping?
@Hants: “Interesting.
Indeed.
I don’t understand all the background on this, but I think think it’s impressive that this article was published in a Barbadian newspaper.
Just to share, I (and The Advocate) was threatened with a defamation lawsuit from C&W for daring to tell the truth.
Well, actually, what really pissed them off was I said “Your author tries not to attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Please see http://www.ideas4lease.com/blog/2008/02/29/a-funny-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-the-competition/
It cost me about $5,000 to make that lawsuit go away. And the Advocate would never published another paragraph written by me ever again.
Mission accomplished, as far as C&W was concerned.
Found another source dating Dr. Humby here in 1956, not late 40’s as previously stated.
The source of the 1956 date is more credible.
Journal Article
The Population of Barbados
David Lowenthal
Pretty horrible reading the section.
Still, it confirms malnourishment existed long before Dr. Humby.
@ GP
If the first common entrance examination, the 11+, was first sat in 1962? What was the previous exam called? If there was not, how then were students selected for the First and Second Grade schools?
Happy Xmas.
HAL
YOU WENT AROUND AND TOOK AN EXAM AT SEVERAL SCHOOLS
I TOOK AN EXAM AT THE MODERN HIGH AND AT BFS
GOT IN AT BFS AND HAD AN ENJOYABLE YEAR THERE
the first common entrance examination WAS ADMINISTERED TO MY COHORT AROUND FEBRUARY, IN TWO STAGES-THE FIRST OF WHICH WAS CALLED THE “SCREENING TEST”
@Chris
A funny thing happened on my way here. I ran into your 1:18 a.m post.
I try not to comment on and T… post so as to suppress the count by one (1) but so far you have me contributing at least twice,
Good information. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
oo————————–oo——————————oo
Have a great day Barbados.
If you can, help someone who you know is less fortunate than you are (and really needs help).
Have a great day Barbados
I remember my Screening Test at the Drill Hall in 1966.
Guess that made me and PLT the fourth batch of students to take it.
Neither of us were considered undesirable and in need of being screened out
Guess they wanted to ditch the Screening label as the age of politically correctness emerged and the two merged into the Common Entrance Exam..
Happy Christmas.
@ GP
I took a test for a scholarship at the Modern too. Unfortunately for me Louis Lynch used to get his senior boys to check the tests. The guy he chose for me unfortunately came from the Ivy.
Within hours everybody knew what my answers were to some of the questions. I still remember them now, because I was teased unmercifully. That lad, who came from a poor home but had the right genes, later became a doctor.
On a serious note, I took exams years before you and did not once go to Combermere to sit any exams. We called those exams the 11+.
After the New Year I will do what is not popular on BU, I will go to the British Library and read back issues of the Advocate. Give me a few days and I will also go in to my attic and recover the book I got from J. O Morris for passing my exam. It has an inscription in it. Can’t do it today.
Years ago St Giles used to have plaques on past scholarship winners on display in the school hall, but the hall was renovated a few years ago and the then head never replaced them. The plaques stated the boy’s name, the year, the scholarship and the school he went to.
I suppose someone will Google something or talk to an old groundsman and come up with an alternative answer.
Hal
Here is a site with a few back issues of the Advocate from the early 50’s.
@@ John
Thanks
Wasn’t the Screening test and the 11+ initiated as a consequence of the DLP’s promise in the 1961 General Election of “free” Secondary education to Gov’t aided Secondary schools? The Screening Test did what is was supposed to do i.e. screen out students who weren’t academically ready for the move to another level, if you didn’t “pass” the Screening Test you couldn’t sit the 11+ exam.
@Sargeant
What was the exam called before that? @GP says we had to go round sitting various exams. I cannot remember doing that. We called the exam the 11+. Was that an unofficial name? The screening test sounds familiar. Where was that test taken?
Were there different exams for the First Grade and Second Grade schools? The private schools – Modern, Federal, Barbados Academy, etc, had their own exams. At my school we had scholarship boys (Vestry and Second Grade Exhibitions) and fee paying boys ($8 a term).
Sargeant
December 25, 2019 10:06 AM
Wasn’t the Screening test and the 11+ initiated as a consequence of the DLP’s promise in the 1961 General Election of “free” Secondary education to Gov’t aided Secondary schools?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Perhaps there was no exam before entry into HC or QC prior to 1962.
If your parents could pay, you went.
If not you depended on a bursary from the Vestry.
If not you made alternative arrangements.
There were plenty of good private schools meeting the need.
The screening test and free secondary education did two things.
They removed the fee bar over which few could hop and it screened out the “undesirables”.
@John
There was. I know.
David BU
Looks like you Googled something from UWI’s web-site and came up with an alternative re: The Evolution of Social Policy in Barbados: Levisha Josiah on the Origins of the Common Entrance Exam in Barbados.”
“During this time period, because of a high demand for secondary education children would write several examinations by different secondary schools with hopes of gaining entry to at least one grammar school”……..
………….is basically similar to what GP mentioned in his December 25, 2019 8:08 AM contribution re: “YOU WENT AROUND AND TOOK AN EXAM AT SEVERAL SCHOOLS.”
The article also mentioned: “Prior to 1959 in addition to the entrance examination by individual schools, students had to complete an interview in order to get in.”
I remember during my time at primary school, students sat the exam in class 3 and those who failed had another opportunity to do so again in class 4.
However, as you know, Google or anything coming from UWI may not be as reliable as the old book in the attic. So, it’s either patiently await confirmation from back issues of the Advocate or comments from someone who talked to an old goundsman.
@Artax
Retrieval of historical information in a digital world is not limited to paper based approaches. Many data sources have or are in the process of digitizing. A sensible approach to research must include electronic searching to corroborate and cross reference to ensure robust/best results.
@David
Read the link you provided and it appears that a single Screening Test was administered earlier (1969) and subsequently when subjectivity was removed for entrance to Secondary schools the Screening Test became a true “Screening Test” and that’s the one of which I am familiar.
With regards to “subjectivity”, it didn’t completely disappear after it was supposed to have been eliminated, it was just administered in a different manner, I remember students who “failed” the 11+ being admitted to school a few weeks into the term and students who “passed” being transferred to higher grade schools after settling into the schools to which they were initially assigned. In all these cases the students were well connected to prominent people in the community or they had a “godfather” who could get things done.
1969 s/b 1959
@ Sargeant
The changes came in 1962. Prior to that you sat for the Second Grade Exhibition, and if you passed, had a choice of Combermere, Foundation, Alleyne and Coleridge and Parry and St Michael (the Second Grade schools). There was no interview by the head tomy knowledge. How about for the First Grade schools (Queen’s College, Harrison College and Lodge)?
So interviews must have been for some schools. If that was the case, how did pupils get in the Prep schools? I was not aware of any public exam. Maybe @Robert Lucas can tell us. I know some boys went from Combermere Prep to Harrison and Presentation Colleges.
You are right about connections. Other boys went to Harrison College and Lodge, and girls to Queen’s as if by magic.
Other boys went to Harrison College and Lodge, and girls to Queen’s as if by magic.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Might just have been their families could pay the fees or a student didn’t take up his/her place for a good reason.
I remember a boy dying in first form, a friend of my cousin’s.
Obviously someone took his place.
I do know of an example where strings were pulled to get a boy into HC.
He just wasn’t up to it and ended up at Mapps and then given a year abroad at an agricultural college.
He was about 6 years older then I was so it was probably 1959/60 that he entered HC.
When I got there in 1966 he was at Mapps so he did not last long.
You either belonged at HC or you didn’t.
The work and regimen separated the sheep from the goats quickly.
It happened formally in second form.
There was a 2-4 at HC where boys upwards of 16 and 18 languished.
2-1. 2-2, 2-3 would be the normal second forms with 2-1 being the A stream.
Eventually 2-4 was abolished.
The equivalent existed at Lodge … I was told by a former Lodge boy that one second form “boy” was the father of a child or children if I remember correctly.
He was never going to progress at Lodge.
Recently, I met a guy I grew up with until I was 9.
He did not get into HC but when he was 13 he was sent to a military academy in Florida.
Obviously a place would have become available at whatever school he attended and somebody’s child took it.
To ignorant little children it would have appeared to have happened as if by magic.
@ Hal
GP is correct. Prior to 1962,entrants to Lodge, Harrison College and Queens College had to take exams set by those schools. In addition at some of them there was a follow up interview, I am told. I did not have a follow up interview.
I believe that the same obtained for the then described second grade schools. Hal I believe you had to take an entrance exam for Combermere.
@Vincent: “Prior to 1962, entrants to Lodge, Harrison College and Queens College had to take exams set by those schools.
As someone who was exposed to the Canadian education system, the Barbadian system (I understand based on the UK’s) has always confused me somewhat. Very different nomenclatures, to begin with.
In Canada, there are Grades 1 through 12 (or 13 if in Quebec). “Elementary School” is grades 1 through 6 or 7, “Middle School” is grades 6 or 7 through to 9 or 10, and “High School” is the remaining grades.
Children usually enter Grade 1 at the age of 6, but earlier education is usually done in what’s called “Kindergarten” (and, of course, the home).
This compartmentalization is done to try to not have too much differentiation between the students in both their physical and educational “states”. But beyond this, all students go to the school which they geographically live closest to. And, thus, every school has a very diverse student population.
Because of this policy, parents will actually sometimes strategically purchase their homes to be able to send their children to what they consider to be the “best” schools. This can actually affect property values.
Personally, having gone through this system, I consider it an overall benefit to having a wide range of classmates. You’re going to encounter many different types of people after you get your “paper”, so why not get used to that during school?
Merry Christmas everyone!
Let’s all make 2020 awesome! 😎
John
December 25, 2019 3:31 AM
Found another source dating Dr. Humby here in 1956, not late 40’s as previously stated.
The source of the 1956 date is more credible.
Journal Article
The Population of Barbados
David Lowenthal
Pretty horrible reading the section.
Still, it confirms malnourishment existed long before Dr. Humby.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Barbadians have long realized that lower infant mortality will aggravate their population problem. But no one, according to the Chief Medical Officer in 1934, would “publicly support a policy of letting the children die as a means of handling the problem, even if the rate of mortality was sufficient to be a remedy, which it is not” (14).
Ten years later his successor reiterated this humanitarian point of view. “Statements are frequently made by uninformed persons; wrote Dr. Weatherhead, “that the high infant mortality rate is a safety valve and helps to keep down the population. Apart from the absolute cruelty of such views, no greater misconception could exist. The population is increased by the high birth rate and the high mortality rate is just a wicked waste of human lives that no country can afford” (118).
But we have already seen that the birth rate in Barbados is relatively low. And despite such public statements, many persons, by no means uninformed or irresponsible, express private views that infant mortality is a blessing in disguise. Some of the mothers doubtless share this view. How many mothers feel this way and what they do about it are matters for impassioned argument in Barbados today; for a typical example the reader is referred to a House of Assembly debate after one member quoted a medical officer in St. John parish (where infant mortality is 128) to the effect that “it would take 100 years before the average mother … became aware that early deaths are not absolutely necessary” (22d).
In 1950 the Medical Superintendent of the General Hospital charged in a radio talk that of 267 deaths there of children under 5 years of age, in the previous year, 186 were directly caused by starvation, and that there were 500 unwanted children in the hospital.
“It is immoral to have children if someone else has to support them”, he added; “please, please, think before you create a baby” (27q). While Dr. Humby’s revelations aroused some Barbadians to support birth control, others considered them a scandalous reflection upon Barbadian mothers. The mothers, however, must perforce accept deaths with equanimity. A child under a year is hardly considered a person, and its loss is regarded as less serious than the death of an older person.
If newborn babies are expendable, those not yet born have still less chance. In 1954 “abortion” was the third most common “disease” among patients at the General Hospital, and the 388 cases treated there may have been only a tenth of the total in the island. Despite a law of 1868 against administering drugs “or other noxious thing” to produce a miscarriage, on penalty of penal servitude from three years to life (6, 12), abortions are known to be common. If they were not, the infant mortality rate or the size of the population would even greater than they are.”
@John: “Still, it confirms malnourishment existed long before Dr. Humby.
That was never in dispute. The “argument” was simply that the study had a specific sample set. Yes, extrapolation was (and is) possible, but your sample set is your sample set.
My code nominally models you as a troll (with 98.4% confidence), but what you have quoted here is potentially worth drilling down on.
The past was truly horrible for many people.
The present is still, for far too many.
Perhaps we could change that.
It is amazing that the topic of Trump’s supposed impeachment morphed into a discussion on IQ, malnourishment and other unrelated matters such as sample sets.
How are sample sets related to Donald Trump?
I was having great fun with Trump.
I do recall raising the issue of the correctness of the polls and the size of the sample as it relates to Trump but somehow the discussion got into IQ, Shockley, Silicon Valley, malnourishment and now birth rate and abortion.
@John: “I was having great fun with Trump.
And others, with far deeper depth and wider width, are having fun discussing other things.
It’s BU. Deal with it.
But isn’t that what trolls do, divert the discussion?
@ Vincent,
I did not take an entrance exam and certainly did not have an interview.. As I said, the Second Grade Exhibitioners sat one exam and had a choice of one of four schools (Combermere, Foundation, Alleyne and Coleridge and Parry, the second grade schools) that is why it was called the Second Grade Exhibition.
So it looks obviously as if there was a mixture of exams and admission processes as you yourself admit not having had an interview..
I do not know about the First Grade schools so GP may be right, even if your experience contradicts this.
The Ministry of Education must have files, including internal reports, at the Archives department that the public can access and the schools themselves must have records..
@ John Q
Heheheheh
You said and I quote
“… John December 26, 2019 12:50 AM
But isn’t that what trolls do, divert the discussion?…”
You are getting a little bit of your medicine from Chris Halsall and you complaining?
Heheheheh
I hope Donna is here to see this genuflection AGAIN and permission to Halsall to lead the conversation ALL OVAH DE PLACE!
WITH NO WARNING!
I’ve stuck to Trump which of course is the topic of this blog.
Guess the uncertainty of his impeachment has dawned on peeples hence the need to wander.
Maybe on 6th January, someone will have an Epiphany and get back on topic.
Check this out, VDH is a deep thinker and articulates his case well
“I’ve stuck to Trump which of course is the topic of this blog.”
Yes, of course you’ve stuck to the topic………. because of your fondness of Trump, any discussion about him would obviously hold your attention.
But, now you know how OTHER contributors FEEL when they’re having fun with SPECIFIC TOPICS, which you ALWAYS morph into discussions on the Quakers, Trump, Rush Limbaugh, burial grounds and other unrelated matters such as romanticizing slavery.
It doesn’t bug me, as our friend says, this is BU.
It is all fun.
I am blessed with a wealth a reading and knowledge that can deal with most instances and the ability to acquire more knowledge as required to deal with the instances that challenge me.
Isn’t that how humans are supposed to live?
This is also a good one.
“Guess the uncertainty of his impeachment…”
POTUS has been impeached, POTUS has not been convicted. And given the likely vote will not be convicted. In fact, neither of the two former impeached presidents were convicted.
It is like a winger in football carrying the ball all the way down the field and not centering.
No goal can be scored and the winger eventually runs the ball out of play!!
The keeper retrieves the ball and kicks it back up field.
Some time or another the Senate may declare a mistrial, end of story.
Keeper gets the ball.
Here is another opinion.
In fact, neither of the two former impeached presidents were convicted.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Even though the articles were passed to the Senate no goal was scored.
Same thing except winger never got to centre.
No goal, no attempt no impeachment!!
It may he the winger is being thwarted by the full back but it also may be that the winger is incapable of making the pass and doesn’t even try.
All that happens is the crowd gets vex and roots for the other side.
@ John December 26, 2019 7:49 AM
I am glad you posted the above video. I am acquainted with him. I was laughing when an idiot challenged what I read. I also read Epoch times.
There been a lot of talk on this blog about examinations into secondary schools. I will now share my experiences. I was eight years.( 1955) old when my mother entered me into the exams for higher schools. I bless her for her prescient. As I have outlined else where on this blog, I am one of eighteen children ( half whites, half Indians and black x Amerindian cross). My dad had a preference for those of lighter hue. Anyhow, my mum entered me for the scholarship exam to Harrison College in 1955. I could only enter my name on the exam paper. That exam was meant for students who had a knowledge of Latin and so on. That was the first and last time I sat through an examination and could not answer any questions. I was at St. Mary’s at that time and was supposed to be bright. She also entered me for the entrance exam to Harrison College. I passed the exam and names were in the new-papers and I had to attend an interview .I can remember that exercise as though it was yesterday at Harrison College. Before I left home mum made me ensure that the backs of the exercise books were secured using some flour paste and that there were no dog ears. The first question directed to me by a black man was : is your mother married to your father. I responded in the negative. The second question was how would I describe my mother’s position. I replied that she was a housewife( that was what she was: my father would send money daily to make sure that his children were taken care of; she did not have to work). He then wanted to know about aero-planes . He wanted to know if I knew what the air-screws on an aircraft were called ( the idiot). I was in the library reading all of those Bigglesworth book and this idiot asked that question. I replied air-screws or propellers. I was told that I was very young and that an older person would get the slot. My mum was distressed. I told her that I would pass for Combermere, the following year., which is what I did,. When I was ten my mum entered me against my wishes for College. I passed the exam again with the same results after the interview.
@ Robert
Were you also interviewed at Combermere?
@ Hal
No.
@ Robert
So the interviews took place only at the so-called First Grade schools (or more precisely, Harrison College). I was not interviewed at Combermere. I sat a single exam, the Second Grade Exhibition, and was offered one of four places (Combermere, Foundation, Alleyne or Coleridge and Parry, the four Second Grade schools). I chose one and that was it.
You are right about names published in the paper, which is why I refer to the papers as a primary source of information. The papers also published the names of GCE winners.
One of my neighbours was Briggs Clarke, the art master at College, who was keen that local boys should attend College. Some did, others did not.
@ Hal
I am surprised that my experience seemed to be only experienced by me In those days other factors decided one’s future. It still happens now.
@ Robert
They were different days. Some guys I went to St Giles with got in to Harrison College and they had no distinguishing features about them, apart from parents (usually fathers) who were senior civil servants.
The key point is that we were not all interviewed before gaining a place nor did we go around sitting lots of different exams.
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.