By Raffique Shah
September 13, 2021
For the second time in as many months I ask a question that is pertinent to this country’s future path, one that we need to answer because it is critical to everything else we do as we forge a road to recovery in the aftermath of the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic and the near-collapse of the national economy. It is this: are we satisfied with our education system which, give or take a tweak here, a turn there, has remained a hugely expensive relic of colonialism that refuses to die 60 years after independence.
It pains me to appear to be raining on the parade of maybe one cohort of the nineteen thousand under-twelve children who, last Thursday, received their instruments of assignments to the so-called prestige schools, from which they will emerge, their brains crammed with information that is invariably irrelevant to their future lives, their minds polluted with a superiority complex that has no place in an ever-evolving world in which Black Lives Matter more than all the theorems and formulae they learnt, and the girls more than the boys sporting half-baked accents they have acquired that are alien to modern societies which leaders like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have turned upside down, stripping them of their royal-court-cultures.
When I ponder the paths these undoubtedly intelligent children will be bogged down in, I cringe. They are at that stage—and they will understand this only in retrospect, years down the road when it might be too late to change lanes—where their fertile minds could make a huge difference to the messed-up world they have inherited from generations ahead of theirs. Shamefully, I must see my contemporaries as being culpable in this regard. We loftily proclaimed ourselves the children of the Age of Aquarius who will radically remove the seemingly unbreakable umbilical cord that bound us to a past in which relations between the governors and the governed were defined by class, even caste, and the economic order smoothly transitioned from colonialism to imperialism, and we, apostles of Frantz Fanon, Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat, CLR James, failed to smash the old order and usher in a new, equitable world.
Close to sixty years after independence, our students know little or nothing of the genocide of the indigenous people, the ravages of slavery or the wounds of indentureship. They will continue to believe that non-whites invented nothing, that innovations were and are the province of Whites, and worst of all, that their rightful place in modern society is at the feet of God’s chosen tribes.
It is not accidental that their brain-power will be tested, and likely freed of colonial mindsets, at a time when there are seismic geopolitical shifts that will see the epicenters of technological advances, hence economic power, shift from the USA and Europe to China, India and other Asian powerhouses, with Africa and the Americas leveraging their abundance of raw materials to position themselves as principals in the new global economic order.
We must benefit from these changes, and one of the few chips we have is the expansive and expensive education system we have built and operated that has yielded minimal returns on investment. We probably have more classroom capacity than most countries on a per capita basis, more teachers and even more administrators on whom we spend approximately $8Billion a year.
However, except for the few outstanding scholars in whose glow numerous officials bask when they achieve something, they ignore the more than fifty percent of students who emerge from the system functionally illiterate. Their excuses for failure from parents to staff to the ministry are numerous. They complain, for example, of how many thousands of students cannot afford the electronic devices necessary for the classes yet those very parents sport the most expensive smart phones on which they can gossip, watch YouTube videos and live vicariously through social media platforms.
Such wastage which is endorsed by officialdom is a root cause of our stagnation in education and a recipe for failure. We must fix that. Such delinquent parents, teachers who don’t care, and officials who ignore the leakage of allocated funds, are part of our problem. We can start repairing the system with those who begin secondary education in a matter of weeks, by confronting the problems head-on. There is no point in wasting time on students who are uninterested in education and staff and administrators who are likewise culpable.
Only when we weed out these obstacles to progress and seriously set about changing the system to work for those who wish to be educated, can we honestly look at the new ones entering secondary schools and promise them a prized place in the New World.
Good morning, what happens to the 50% of students that are not interested in receiving an education??
Some “journalists” should avoid topics on which they have no expertise.
When they delve into these matters one has to endure the uninformed drivel on education presented by Shah.
The editor of the Express should have presented this article from being unleashed on the population.
Quoting Shah:
Under the colonial project, the whole point of the “education” that was made available to such as CLR James, Eric Williams, Nelson Mandela, and Jawaharlal Nehru, was to conquer the mind of the Negro.
It was a subtle plan. The fish swimming in the sea is too close to the water even to ask what it is. The education-as-conquest project would have occurred to the enslaver contemplating what happened in Haiti under the revolt led by L’ouverture and Dessalines. The subtle idea was therefore to identify the best and brightest of the Negro children, and “educate” them in the same Arnoldesque mould as had been established for the schoolboys of Eton, Harrow and the like, and their French and other colonizer counterparts. In Trinidad, this idea gave us QRC, in Barbados it gave us Combermere, in South Africa it gave us Mandela’s alma mater, Hilltop Academy, in India it gave us Doon. Etc. It was a strategic and pre-emptive embrace calculated to neutralize a potential future enemy.
In the worst case (for the colonizer), you have a Negro (or other colonial) fish grown up accustomed to swimming in the intellectual and cultural waters of the colonizer, and therefore unable to do other than to swim in that sea. Resistance became impossible because the Negro mind so schooled would be like fish in the sea, unable even to conceptualize the water. In the best case, you have formed an actual cultural ally, a subaltern elite ready to join the project of colonial pillage.
That project, in the post-Independence period, is yet fully to run its course, such was its essential strategic soundness. The Negro mind shackled itself! It is an irony that CLR James, arguably the finest Negro mind produced under that scheme, wrote the definitive history — Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution — of the Haitian Revolt, and with it the biography of Toussaint, the Negro that led the army of revolted slaves that defeated the greatest European armies of the day — Spanish, British and French in turn. He had been a slave — “house Negro” at that! — until the age of 50! But he also was of royal blood, it is relevant to note. James was famous for his Marxian dictum, “any cook can govern”, but in the case of Toussaint, he ended up describing this former Negro slave, turned into conquering general, as a “born aristocrat”. T(he same could be said, btw, of Nelson Mandela, who had the manner and grace of the born aristocrat, and with genealogy to prove it too besides.)
History records that the British learned a lesson from the defeats Toussaint inflicted upon them. Not long after Haiti was proclaimed (1804) a free Negro Republic by Toussaint’s successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the British found themselves at war (1812) with the United States. Part of their strategy was to use Negro troops! Haiti was still fresh in their minds. One of my own ancestors heeded Admiral Cochrane’s call to join the Corps of Colonial Marines against a grant of freedom. That ancestor ended up demobilized in Trinidad after the war, having taken part in the Battle of Bladensburg, which became known as the “Bladensburg races”, such was the rout of the American forces inflicted upon them. The Negro troops of the Colonial Marines were instrumental.
We see the idea forming a straight line from Haiti and Toussaint to Colonial Marines and Bladensburg. The end of physical slavery was a sure thing after that. The only question was to be when, … and what structures of (colonial) domination and exploitation would be put in its place. Thus was born the idea of conquering that which is unconquerable, namely the Negro mind. And from that strategic need was born the idea of elite education for the best and brightest, hoping thereby to forestall the emergence of any future Toussaint, Dessalines or worse.
Eric Williams’ double first at Oxford on this view has its origins in Toussaint and the Haitian Revolution. (Btw, there was at least one Williams of the Corps of Colonial Marines — Williamsville is named after one of them — that demobilized in Trinidad after the war of 1812. Eric might have become another Toussaint. But history records that he gave us British parliamentary democracy… and he sought to replicate Arnoldesque QRC-type secondary education across the country.
The question posed by Shah amounts therefore to the question whether the “education” system — originally a colonial project to conquer the Negro mind — ought not better to be reformed in ways more conducive to the vaguely articulated idea instead that “Black Lives Matter”.
It is a good idea.
I have my own thoughts as to that. Prime among them, derived from our Negro forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is that the Negro mind is indeed unconquerable. It is only that our Father the Most High put us asleep for some time, during which all the gentile nations had some hand in our enslavement and exploitation. That time is now up. An army of 144,000 Toussaints has been sealed in the spiritual, and is beginning to manifest in the physical. The question of education system reform will thus be overtaken by events. (This includes the question of manifest indo cheating in the SEA exams and resulting placements, which I note that none addresses, despite the trillion to one odds, absent cheating, in the results we see.)
Of that list of luminaries, I note that Franz Fanon, with Aime Cesaire, and Leopold Sedhar Senghor, notably espoused a Negro liberation project of “negritude”. It was a project shrouded in poetic mysticism. But the essential ideas resonate well with a Negro mind that is not lost to Western certitudes, and errors, of linear thought. As long as we have our music, our poets, and our prophets, the Negro mind will remain happily unconquerable…. and to include scientific discoveries and mathematical accomplishment. We are far from strangers to such accomplishment, and indo cheating notwithstanding, TMH will open ways for His Chosen in that regard.
Here I allude explicitly to the idea that the Negro — sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, most especially through the southern kingdom tribes of Judah, Benjamin and half of Levi — are the true Chosen of TMH. We are the fulfillment of:
Genesis 15:13-14. “And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;
14 And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.“
Our 400 years of affliction and servitude are now up. All the gentile nations that have had a hand in our affliction are now being judged. Indo cheating in the SEA will not go unpunished, neither all the indo schemes calculated to disadvantage the Negro in this and other lands where we share space. In any case, the hand of judgment of TMH is now outstretched, and manifests as Covid, flood, wild-fire, earthquake, hail, tempest, etc.
It is interesting that the Independence consensus of “here ev’ry creed and race finds an equal place…” is not upheld under the arrangements of TMH. Our coming out “with great substance” (Genesis 15:14) will be a decidedly unequal arrangement for the gentiles, notwithstanding the teaching of all gentile religions/-isms to a wished-for contrary. The line of Abraham-Isaac-Jacob shall inherit the earth– in the full legal sense of that term. That is notably and principally the Negro, –the “meek” of Scripture that shall inherit. The Reparations now due and payable will include a component for rent, not only for labor unpaid and compensation for cruelty and suffering.
Here too, note that Williams the socialist, and CLR James the Marxist would have made no such demand. By contrast, Jean-Jacques Dessalines put it in the first Haitian constitution that Haiti belonged to the Negro people — les negres. I expect that Cesaire and Senghor in their poetic aspirations for negritude had the same idea. Come to think of it, so did Idi Amin! What a thought! But that is what Scripture says, indeed plainly.
In sum, Shah may be quite right in that he says that Black Lives Matter in the end more than whatever was taught at Eton and Harrow, whether of the bookbag variety, or whether of the playing-field variety.
Shalom.
Wordsworth, Ode to Toussaint (1802).
“TOUSSAINT, the most unhappy of men!
Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den; –
O miserable Chieftain! where and when
Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.”
It is preposterous and just plain stupid to suggest that Indo Trinis perform better on exams because of cheating since there is no evidence to prove this lame accusation. This is merely an attempt to discredit numerous students who worked hard to achieve. Once again the race issue surfaces in an attempt to rationalize failure and successes.
It does not take a rocket scientist to ascertain that T&T was saddled with a colonial sysyem of education involving a curriculum which conditioned those who absorbed the logic and ideas which were dispensed to paint European culture and achievements in very favorable terms.
The more significant question today is why T&T continues to perpetuate this educational system which was long abandoned by the Europeans themselves.
Successive governments have failed to introduce education reforms to transform the curriculum, the examination driven approach, the system of elite schools, the rote learning methodology, and the neglect of Art, Music and Physical Education in our schools.
There is nothing wrong with the emphasis on the academics but this emphasis does not have to be at the expense of the electives.
The actual curriculum is turning out to be less of a problem compared with the failure of teaching methodology, strategies and catering to the learning styles of individual students, leading to the high failure rates of students, which no one talks about.
Repeated rote learners excell on examinations which require fixed outcomes, more creative thinkers do not. Educational research in some US and Canadian school districts has shown that many students of African origin learn differently as comapred to other students who are more traditional learners.
T&T should explore the learning styles of their students based on ethnicity to improve instructional techniques.
Exam results have nothing to do with cheating!
Raffique should not comment on things he does not know anything about. He obviously was not a good student and had to join the army in order to support himself.
Many graduates of our prestige schools have gone on to illustrious international careers starting with Dr Williams, Dr Capildeo, Vidya Naipaul, Dr Selwyn Cudjoe and many others too numerous to name.
As a former alumni of Presentation College in San Fernando and two top universities in Canada with exposure to numerous top international students, I can truthfully boast that the education we received at high school in Trinidad and the discipline that was instilled in us at an early and impressionable age was far superior to any in the entire world.
I leave you with a quote I recall from my first year in high school:
“Qui studium currit debet et contendere qui Summa ut Vincat.”
Loosely translated it means”
Whoever runs a race should try his utmost best to win.
Trinidad and Tobago is too obsessed with primary and secondary education to the detriment of tertiary education. Students seem to reach the peak of their educational achievements in the SEA and the CSEC and CAPE exams. They are celebrated excessively at these exams so much so that you would think they have solved one of Fermi’s problems or refuted Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. No doubt having reached these pinnacles of educational achievement, 11 year pupils and 16 and 17 year old students have a right to think they are possessed of superior intellectual capabilities and have the right to pronounce on all manner of things, ex cathedra as it were, as Shah puts it, “their minds polluted with a superiority complex”. But by the time they arrive at University, it seems that they have all disappeared. For sure the University produces quality doctors and perhaps lawyers, but where is the lionization and celebration of our students at tertiary institutions? And what entitles them to be celebrated? Because at this point to be honored as an intellectual or a person of intellectual achievement, you can’t be judged solely on your grades, at every University there are students making similar grades, and at that level, you have to be judged in relationship to a global cohort of academics and scholars. It comes down to what scholarly work have you produced that is world class, that can stand up to global scrutiny? And when we are able to do that, to produce academics and scholars who have produced world class intellectual work, then and only then can we celebrate our tertiary education. But have we done that? I think the answer is a resounding no. After the early celebration and lionization of our 11 year olds and 16 to 18 year olds for their outstanding marks in their exams, after that, our promising young scholars seem to disappear and produce very little that is world class and can compete with world class scholarly work. Let’s move from primary and secondary obsession in education to appreciating and celebrating world class scholarly and academic work. Let the movement from primary to secondary to tertiary education be a natural process of educational evolution, a period of preparation for serious scholarly work that can compete with similar work anywhere in the world. Sure we can celebrate the high marks our young students make, but let that not be the high point of their intellectual achievement. Let us evolve from glorifying high marks, even perfect marks, to appreciating and glorifying genius.
Pithy comment as usual, Birdie…
Let me add and suggest that it is far worse than that. In my earlier contribution, I made mention of indo cheating on the SEA exams. The evident idea of such cheating is to secure racial advantage in placement at the prestige schools. The further idea is that that would automatically secure advantage later on in the system, i.e. at CSEC, CAPE and onward to tertiary. Even at tertiary level, these clowns insist that the prize to be won is not education as such, but certification. With such certification comes the caste right to plum position in the society. Tertiary accomplishment in the broader sense you suggest is not their concern.
I do not hypothesize. I may quote from the “Indian Policy”:
Therefore, it should come as no great surprise that tertiary accomplishment should be so thin; their concern is with certification. Do not expect real scholarship, let alone world class. As to genius, forget it. Rather, expect what we see coming from the likes of Kirk Meighoo (see Cudjoe’s recent contributions): prior assumption of hindutva variety dressed up as scholarly conclusion and proven thesis worthy of doctoral degree. Right!
Shalom.
Mr Birdie, you make some good points.
As the Buddha said “there are three things you cannot hide: the sun, the moon and the truth”.
Regarding education, the only true path to escaping poverty is to get a good education. With a good education whether it is in the skilled trades or in some kind of professional job you are able liberate yourself, become self sufficient and enjoy a reasonable standard of living.
It is not accurate to claim that graduates of the primary and secondary education system of T&T do not excell at the tertiary level.
I am personally aware of scores of academics who are products of the education system in T&T who have distinguished themselves in numerous Canadian universities in multiple fields.
The credit goes to Canada since these individuals are now all internationally known Canadian citizens.
Quoting Tman:
Let me therefore restate the evidence, and the meaning of the evidence. Tman is of course free to deny the meaning of the evidence. But the evidence exists and is clear.
First, the evidence is plain that indo performance on the SEA exams — I do not broaden it beyond that — exceeds that of the Negro here in T&T.
The issue is whether that performance is due to CHEATING.
The first evidential hurdle is intent. Intent is clearly evidenced by the “Indian Policy” document. I quote:
This proves intent… to not be ruled by “monkeys”, rather to “make the niggas your slaves”. It proves intent to CHEAT to accomplish these intents… “how to ‘tip the scales'”. It proves their assumption that “education is the key to success”.
It proves a comprehensive cheating strategy for tipping the scale in this regard… to focus on their own and “ignore the rest”. This means that long before the exam, the Negro is to be disadvantaged relative to the indo. Indo teachers are to see to it. It is further claimed and contains the admission that “[THEIR] SEA marking groups” have been doing a good job. This obviously means that the comprehensive cheating strategy includes provision for tipping the scale merely in the way papers are marked! No wonder the disparity in performance, as between indo and Negro should be so great, and consistently so, year to year.
Second, it was not always so. What caused the change?
In the year that I took the then Common Entrance Exam –1962– the top student was NOT indo, rather Negro. That I know. For that to happen nowadays would be a newsworthy event. Then, it did not merit news coverage. Nor was it unusual.
Prior to 1962, that is in the colonial period, there was relative parity between indo and Negro performance. Eric Williams was top performer in his year, CLR James in his, Naipaul in his, Capildeo in his, etc. Obviously, that was before Indian Policy and “THEIR” SEA marking groups coming into existence.
Third, statistical analysis may be and is used to provide evidence of fraud. The same concepts form the underpinning forQuoting Tman:
Let me therefore restate the evidence, and the meaning of the evidence. Tman is of course free to deny the meaning of the evidence. But the evidence exists and is clear.
First, the evidence is plain that indo performance on the SEA exams — I do not broaden it beyond that — exceeds that of the Negro here in T&T.
The issue is whether that performance is due to CHEATING.
The first evidential hurdle is intent. Intent is clearly evidenced by the “Indian Policy” document. I quote:
This proves intent… to not be ruled by “monkeys”, rather to “make the niggas your slaves”. It proves intent to CHEAT to accomplish these intents… “how to ‘tip the scales'”. It proves their assumption that “education is the key to success”.
It proves a comprehensive cheating strategy for tipping the scale in this regard… to focus on their own and “ignore the rest”. This means that long before the exam, the Negro is to be disadvantaged relative to the indo. Indo teachers are to see to it. It is further claimed and contains the admission that “[THEIR] SEA marking groups” have been doing a good job. This obviously means that the comprehensive cheating strategy includes provision for tipping the scale merely in the way papers are marked! No wonder the disparity in performance, as between indo and Negro should be so great, and consistently so, year to year.
Second, it was not always so. What caused the change?
In the year that I took the then Common Entrance Exam –1962– the top student was NOT indo, rather Negro. That I know. For that to happen nowadays would be a newsworthy event. Then, it did not merit news coverage. Nor was it unusual.
Prior to 1962, that is in the colonial period, there was relative parity between indo and Negro performance. Eric Williams was top performer in his year, CLR James in his, Naipaul in his, Capildeo in his, etc. Obviously, that was before Indian Policy and “THEIR” SEA marking groups coming into existence.
Third, statistical analysis may be and is used to provide evidence of fraud. The same concepts form the underpinning forQuoting Tman:
Let me therefore restate the evidence, and the meaning of the evidence. Tman is of course free to deny the meaning of the evidence. But the evidence exists and is clear.
First, the evidence is plain that indo performance on the SEA exams — I do not broaden it beyond that — exceeds that of the Negro here in T&T.
The issue is whether that performance is due to CHEATING.
The first evidential hurdle is intent. Intent is clearly evidenced by the “Indian Policy” document. I quote:
This proves intent… to not be ruled by “monkeys”, rather to “make the niggas your slaves”. It proves intent to CHEAT to accomplish these intents… “how to ‘tip the scales'”. It proves their assumption that “education is the key to success”.
It proves a comprehensive cheating strategy for tipping the scale in this regard… to focus on their own and “ignore the rest”. This means that long before the exam, the Negro is to be disadvantaged relative to the indo. Indo teachers are to see to it. It is further claimed and contains the admission that “[THEIR] SEA marking groups” have been doing a good job. This obviously means that the comprehensive cheating strategy includes provision for tipping the scale merely in the way papers are marked! No wonder the disparity in performance, as between indo and Negro should be so great, and consistently so, year to year.
Second, it was not always so. What caused the change?
In the year that I took the then Common Entrance Exam –1962– the top student was NOT indo, rather Negro. That I know. For that to happen nowadays would be a newsworthy event. Then, it did not merit news coverage. Nor was it unusual.
Prior to 1962, that is in the colonial period, there was relative parity between indo and Negro performance. Eric Williams was top performer in his year, CLR James in his, Naipaul in his, Capildeo in his, etc. Obviously, that was before Indian Policy and “THEIR” SEA marking groups coming into existence.
Third, statistical analysis may be and is used to provide evidence of fraud. The same concepts form the underpinning for that branch of industrial management known as “statistical quality control (SQC)”. In the case of the SEA exams, it has been known that the indo performance observed is statistically improbable — with trillion to one odds in one case that was studied — to the extent that CHEATING would be the likely hypothesis.
Yet we are being treated to these same kinds of unlikely performances, year after year. No one dares to comment. We are supposed, and brainwashed, to take it that the Negro is that dumb, and that the indo is that smart. No they’ re not that smart and neither are we that dumb.
Having said all that, I do not and cannot claim that I know how specifically these improbable results are achieved. Nevertheless, it is not at all hard to imagine. Control of marking groups is one method, already admitted. (The admission implicates SDMS and/or Presbyterian schools.) Another simple method is for favored schools and/or teachers to be given sight of the examination papers ahead of time. This kind of specifity I cannot claim and do not assert.
Even so, it is simply ludicrous to assert that there is no evidence. Certainly there is enough to warrant forensic examination. And there is more than enough probably cause to justify a charge of CHEATING!!
I withhold my peace from Tman and others of his ilk who by word show themselves to be supporters of Indian Policy and Hindutva. But to others I say
Shalom.
May the great and terrible king rain down judgment as He is doing this day!
Psalms 47:1-9. (To the chief Musician, A Psalm for the sons of Korah.)
“O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph.
2 For the LORD most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth.
3 He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet.
4 He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved. Selah.
5 God is gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet.
6 Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King, sing praises.
7 For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding.
8 God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness.
9 The princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the God of Abraham: for the shields of the earth belong unto God: he is greatly exalted.”