Once again, the two-faced nature of our society is exposed.

Last week we witnessed celebrations of some young, bright scholarship winners showing a joyful face. Then facing troubling crime and murders, we saw the dark side – televised gunmen wildly running down one another in broad daylight.

This is a bad start to the new year.

It seems as if young people, like our scholarship winners, will have to learn to adapt and share in the dark challenges. Could they resist the temptation to leave us? We can’t continue to lose our youth – so many have already gone either by plane or by bullets. Is it that the institutions to handle crime and education have reached a point of no return?

The media front-page celebrations of this year’s SEA top achievers and scholarship winners tell us one of our society’s core values is educational competition. There is also the feverish but unfulfilled desire to diminish the consequences of educational inequity. We, therefore, cannot ask questions about youth crime without also reflecting on the schools and homes.

One consequence of the competition, whether SEA or CAPE, is one of narrow ecstasy and widespread agony. It’s the ancient problem of supply and demand – many are called to compete but few are chosen for celebration.

And so we continue to endure this dilemma, a dilemma which presses people to argue over whether or not CAPE or SEA results should be published. Which is of greater interest, the joyful public celebration of the few deserving winners or the saddening embarrassment of the many left out?

But why the “embarrassment?" After all, it is an artificially constructed competition where much talent remains submerged or not counted. The media headline stated: “Non-Govt schools take lion’s share of scholarships.”

And so evidence for the “prestige school” phenomenon lives on. (500 bursaries “soon to be advertised.”) Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly congratulated all students “who have worked so assiduously and conscientiously to achieve the highest grades across the ten cognitive groups.”

Remarkably, Presbyterian secondary schools got the highest percentage (41 per cent) of scholarships. Of the 100 scholarships, 60 per cent were females. Only two scholarships went to government secondary schools – Scarborough Government Secondary School and Sangre Grande's North Eastern College. Sangre Grande's SWAHA Hindu College joyfully got two.

So what else is new with the “non-government vs government schools” disparity? Will it help if the ministry examines and properly reports what really happens in these prestige schools to achieve success?

Is part of the answer residing, for example, in the “new” Shiva Boys’ Hindu School where apparently teachers and parents quickly injected the competition spirit into the school's climate? But this will not solve the fundamental challenge – whatever the school distribution, scholarships will still be very limited (100). And further, the competition will become more compressed and severe. There will still be joy and grief.

It is