By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 17, 2024
Just think of the contradictions. One opens the Express of Tuesday, July 9, and is greeted with the blood-splattered headline “Bloody Monday”. Then comes the sub-headline: “Triple murder rocks Tobago” and “Carlsen Field home invasion: son killed, father critical”.
One then ventures to page three and the horror of the crimes: “Hangings must resume in this country. So said a relative of Anslem Douglas, one of the three murder victims shot multiple times on Sunday night. The triple murder, the first of its kind to rock the island, took Tobago’s 2024 murder toll to 15, one more than the whole of 2023.”
On page 13 the Leader of our Grief is dressed immaculately in his academic robes, cap and tassels. In an interesting speech, “Determined Minds, Boundless Futures”, to the graduates of the University of the Southern Caribbean, he speaks glowingly about the quantity of money the Government has poured into higher education in T&T.
Somehow, he never spoke about the quality of the education they receive.
Further questions arise: what does our leader mean when he speaks about “the limitless future of Trinidad and Tobago” inherent in the education our students receive, when five days ago the US State Department warned its citizens against travelling to T&T “due to crime, including kidnapping, in the country”?
This warning was issued in spite of the fact that “more than 100 people were shot—19 fatally—over the long fourth of July holiday weekend in Chicago, according to police” (ABC News, July 8.)
The Leader also claims that “the arrangements for the education of young people in Trinidad and Tobago are second to none in the region, and I dare say the world”.
He does not tell his listeners the results of that education and what values it instilled in our students. Even the colonial authorities who sent missionaries to Africa in the 19th century to “civilise the natives there” realised they needed “a tried and approved method of imparting to them a suitable education” to be successful in their endeavour (John McCannon Trew, African Wasted and Restored by Native Agency, 1843).
While the Leader was filled with gratitude for what the Seventh Day Adventist Church has done for “the education sector in this nation and the region”, it would have been helpful if he looked at the writings of Michael Oliver Fisher, “The Development of Baptist Thought in the Jamaican Context” (MA Thesis, 2010). It examines the Baptists’ contribution to the development of Jamaica, how they “rejected English nationalism and pledged their support to the establishment of churches, educational institutions, and native settlements in Jamaica”.
If the education our young people receive is second to none in the world, how come our country is becoming such a frightening (perhaps an uncivilised) place in which to live? And if it is true that education and crime “have an inverse causal relationship”, how come there is so much crime in T&T after we have poured so many resources into education?
Formal or informal education should enable students to act purposefully and responsibly in their social environment. The explosion of crime in our country suggests an inability of the young to respect the social values that are promoted to be so meaningful.
When a black student is dragged out of his graduation dinner because his hair is cornrowed, one wonders what values we are promoting. Does it mean we are teaching our youths to hate themselves or to adopt values that are antithetical to who they really are?
Prof Verene Shepherd, director of Caricom Centre for Reparation Research, suggested “history should be made compulsory in schools and Haiti must be given immense consideration in any reparatory discussion” (Express, July 9).
Since the late 1990s we have experienced a depreciation of meaningful social values when our Ministry of Education pulled history from the curriculum and replaced it with social studies.
A people who do not know their history cannot know who they are, which is why we have produced a nowhereian generation.
Maybe we should stop defining formal education as being related so closely to how much money we make and the privileges it grants us. Perhaps we should discuss what it means to be an educated person in T&T.
As a young man—not a young professional—I learned more from the public lectures of Eric Williams and CLR James than I did from the texts assigned at school.
Let us also revive the tradition of public education and see how much we can learn from one another in the private and public spaces.
Those who claim to lead should think of the messages they send to those who are expected to follow. There certainly needs to be synchrony in the messages they send.