Malcom’s death has come as a shock. The actor that played Theo, Malcolm Jamal Warner passed away on Sun, July 20th due to drowning while out on a solo swim, while vacationing in Costa Rica.
Very few are aware that the role of Theo was somewhat based on Bill Cosby’s, late son Ennis, who like the Theo character was the only boy in the family and also had a learning disability, dyslexia. I started watching the Cosby show in Jamaica on JBC-TV (now TVJ) in the 1980s. Live over air broadcast. After leaving Jamaica for a time, I discovered the wonderful access of syndicated re-runs on cable TV and watched as much as I could. As I watched all the seasons as time allowed, I realized that there was an over-arching narrative that bound the entire life of the show from end to end. As the term goes, the “the snake bit its tail”. In the very first episode, Dr. Huxtable wanders into the horrendously messy room of his son Theo, who earlier that day brought home an awful report card. His mother was furious, and his father would join the party. As the doctor speaks to his under-achieving only son, Theo loses a budget game, designed to let him know that if he does not get a higher-education he will be at the mercy of the world. Because “the tax man comes for the regular people first”.
As the series progresses from season to season, we follow Theo’s journey as he continues to under-achieve. It is then discovered that he is dyslexic. In that episode, everyone is surprisingly happy on the discovery of his achilles heel. From this point on, Theo starts his odyssey in navigating his challenge. Getting into NYU and maturing into an amazing contributor to society as he counseled young teens and their own challenges. The last two episodes of The Cosby Show ended with Theo’s graduation. The message was sent, most would have missed it during its live broadcast from the 80s to the 90s. But it was clear, the creators of the show had something to say about education and achievement, even for those who don’t seem to be able to get there. There is hope for those, especially boys who are constantly left behind by a system that expects them to outperform, or at least match their gender counterparts. This has not been the case, especially in the Caribbean.
Get Yorkali Walters’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
According to the paper, Gender Gaps in the English- speaking Caribbean: Education, Skills, and Wages by Agustina Thailinger Camilo Pecha Diether W. Beuermann Elena Arias Cynthia Hobbs Claudia Piras, there has been a significant reversal in male female academic achievement coming from highs school into tertiary education from 1971 to now.
“The share of women that complete tertiary education in the Caribbean is higher than that for men, this being particularly true for younger generations.”
“This trend is also observed for countries in Latin America, where younger women are also more educated than men. However, while males in Latin America have consistently improved tertiary enrollment rates across generations, older males in the Caribbean show a relative inter-generational stagnation (Figure 3). There seems to be no inter-generational improvement between Caribbean males currently aged 65+ and those aged 45–54, with some improvement among generations younger than 44 years old. By contrast, females in the Caribbean have consistently improved across generations, with more than a quarter of those aged 25–34 having attained tertiary education. This shows an earlier and starker inter-generational reversal of gender gaps in the Caribbean versus Latin America.“
But what could be causing this seismic shift in how our boys are moving through the most critical period of their educational lives. The paper goes on to dissect a very interesting anomaly in how children are currently being taught.
“Differences in terms of educational outcomes achieved by females and males in the Caribbean could be driven by different factors, such as gender roles, socialization processes for both girls and boys, and classroom pedagogy in schools.”
Within the school setting, pedagogy has been characterized as teacher-centered, authoritarian, traditional, and abstract. One study finds that this could be counterproductive for boys, who appear to be more responsive to interactive and experiential classes, including debates and arguments. Moreover, the teaching profession is largely dominated by females. In Jamaica, for example, about 80% of primary and secondary teachers are female. Qualitative observations suggest that boys may be less enthusiastic about academic subjects and participate less in class when they are taught by female teachers, and this may be correlated with poor academic achievement. On the other hand, such gender imbalance in the teaching profession seems to have affected teachers’ vision of students. One study found that teachers’ described boys’ attitudes inside the classroom as “lazy”, “disruptive”, “noisy” and “mediocre”; but they used words such as “attentive”, “applied”, “serious” and “encouraging” to describe girls.
In addition, the paper states:
“When financial resources in the household are scarce, boys are often withdrawn from school to bolster the family income, while girls are kept in school in an effort to delay early pregnancy (Bailey, 2009). 22 . For males, early entry into the job market is thus a principal reason for school dropout (The Institute for Gender and Development Studies, 2014). Caribbean boys are often under immense pressure to be employed and earn money, since notions of masculinity in the region are strongly related to the ability to provide for oneself and one’s family (Clarke, 2009, De Lisle et al., 2010, Jha et al., 2012, Mayers, 2014, Peebles, 2014, UNESCO, 2017, cited in De Lisle, 2022)
If we are to truly answer the nagging question of why our tertiary system is comprised of 60–70% females and very few schools in higher education being able to attract and keep male students. It is clear, deeper research into the reasons why our boys are consistently left behind is critically needed. For example, why do female teachers have such an unfortunate view of our boys? What is at the head of that river of negative perspective. What are we missing, in this wide universe of human behavior. What is the needle and in which haystack does it reside?
There is hope though, even before we get to the bottom of it all, there is a model we can replicate and it is in the very same TV show we began with. In Season 6 of the Cosby Show, Theo is officially diagnosed with dyslexia and he is placed in a special class for students with learning differences. Theo is embarrassed, he feels like the odd one out in his social circle and is very skeptical of what this new experience means for him. This anxiety is poured out on Mrs Westlake and they have a very shaky start. A hispanic lady that didn’t cut corners or make it any easy for Malcolm’s character as he started out on this new aspect of his education. Her empathy though is beautiful counterweight to her strictness. She challenges the teen to take total responsibility for the outcomes expected of him. She gives Theo the tools necessary to navigate the struggles and shows him that success is not only within reach but very possible. And so Theo “tek di tellin’” and starts to thrive. What is most prominent here is that she does not dilute the directive, the high outcomes are not cut down to some limited size. Mrs. Westlake shifts gears on her approach to the young Theo until the required standard is met, just through a different path.
How do we teach a new generation of educators to weave empathy into their pedagogy? How can policy create the framework to address the endemic gender imbalance in our education system? And most importantly, how do we train more Mrs. Westlakes, for the countless Theodore Huxtables who want to rise and better their lives, families and future families. Current male students who have only ever been shown a future built on settling, not soaring. Just as how we encourage our children to go “tek up a book” let us, take up this mantle for the sake of our children, our country, our Jamaica
Thailinger, A., Pecha, C., Beuermann, D., Arias Ortiz, E., Hobbs, C., & Piras, C. (2023). Gender Gaps in the English-speaking Caribbean: Education, Skills, and Wages. https://doi.org/10.18235/0004935
