Mar­tin George

The CAPE re­sults are out and it is in­deed a cause for cel­e­bra­tion for those stu­dents and their fam­i­lies who did well. And of course, it is a source of tremen­dous joy for us as a fam­i­ly and for her school Holy Name Con­vent, that my niece Jovelle Lewis got Grade One cer­tifi­cates in all her four CAPE sub­jects. She is all set to em­bark on her Uni­ver­si­ty ca­reer. We will no doubt, soon hear the crow­ing of Sat Ma­haraj and the metic­u­lous and de­tailed analy­sis of Prof Sel­wyn Cud­joe, who is nev­er afraid to ques­tion or chal­lenge re­sults as he did re­cent­ly with the SEA ex­ams. But when the dust set­tles and the decks are cleared be­tween these two, there re­mains a stark re­al­i­ty that there ap­pears to be a lev­el of un­der­per­for­mance among the Afro-Trin­bag­on­ian stu­dents at these ex­ams and that there is des­per­ate need for some sort of Eman­ci­pa­tion ed­u­ca­tion.

I was not here in T&T for the Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions, but up­on a cur­so­ry pe­rusal of the pro­grammes, agen­das and sched­ules of ac­tiv­i­ties, I have not no­ticed any set of cours­es, lec­tures, dis­cus­sions, de­bates, think tanks or fo­cus groups ded­i­cat­ed to fac­ing head on the ques­tion of fail­ing and falling stan­dards of ed­u­ca­tion­al achieve­ment among some sec­tors of the Afro-Trin­bag­on­ian pop­u­la­tion. I have writ­ten about this re­peat­ed­ly and have harped on it try­ing to probe, test and chal­lenge this sit­u­a­tion so that this slump and slide can stop, but at times I feel like a voice cry­ing in the wilder­ness as so many peo­ple see Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions as lim­it­ed to dress­ing up like a pea­cock once a year and strut­ting in fine African garb and re­galia, pos­ing, pos­tur­ing and preen­ing like kings and queens and cel­e­brate for a day un­til same time, same place next year.

Now there is noth­ing wrong with cel­e­brat­ing this way and it is in­deed a heart-warm­ing sight and spec­ta­cle to see the beau­ty, tal­ent and cre­ativ­i­ty dis­played and to feel the over­whelm­ing out­bursts and ex­pres­sions of pride, joy and tri­umph, but there must be more to it than that. We must be able to look at the oth­er as­pects of the Eman­ci­pa­tion spec­trum. The prophet Bob Mar­ley is one of the favourite artistes of our Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and when he sings, "Eman­ci­pate your­selves from men­tal slav­ery, none but our­selves can free our minds," he is speak­ing not on­ly to the is­sues of mind­set and at­ti­tude, but to the raw and di­rect ques­tion of Eman­ci­pa­tion ed­u­ca­tion. Bob was nev­er afraid to con­front and speak about these is­sues and we as a peo­ple must nev­er be afraid to take a long, hard look at our­selves and see where we need im­prove­ment. We must be hon­est about it, face it and deal with it.

Our lo­cal racon­teurs Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters and Singing San­dra tried to stir us out of slum­ber with their po­tent, poignant clas­sics Lit­tle Black Boy and Voic­es in the Ghet­to, but there is need for much more than that. We need more than a song and a prayer; we need a ded­i­cat­ed, metic­u­lous, struc­tured, sci­en­tif­ic ap­proach to deal with the is­sue. We need to cull, col­late, sift, dis­til and analyse the raw da­ta and sta­tis­tics as to the per­for­mance lev­els of Afro-Trin­bag­on­ian stu­dents at all lev­els of our school sys­tem. We need to then do some se­ri­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tion as to the rea­sons for this by way of so­ci­o­log­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and oth­er fac­tors, be­cause we know it is not a ques­tion of abil­i­ty. If one looks back at the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the cream of the crop of the in­tel­li­gentsia-the doc­tors, the lawyers, the ed­u­ca­tors, teach­ers and the ed­u­cat­ed class-was heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed by Afro-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans. Some­where along the line we ap­peared to have lost our way and we need to find out where, and why, and how and deal with it.

This is not an iso­lat­ed prob­lem or a prob­lem for the Afro-Trin­bag­on­ian com­mu­ni­ty alone as I have re­peat­ed­ly said, it is the fer­ment­ing of sit­u­a­tions such as this, where a large sec­tion of the un­der­class fail to be ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to so­ci­ety due to lack of ed­u­ca­tion­al or oth­er suc­cess. This will then fo­ment in­to the seeds of ri­ot, re­bel­lion and un­rest. These are some of the man­i­fes­ta­tions we see in the crime surges in some ar­eas of Trinidad. To some de­gree it is mere­ly an out­burst and vent­ing of rage, anger, frus­tra­tion at be­ing ex­clud­ed from main­stream so­ci­ety.

Our sys­tem is so struc­tured, that if you fall off the wag­on at an ear­ly stage of your ed­u­ca­tion­al ca­reer, you are more of­ten than not, des­tined to a very long time of dodg­ing death and try­ing to avoid be­ing crushed by the wag­on's wheels, un­til you ei­ther haul your­self back up on the wag­on by some means fair or foul, or die try­ing. Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh was on tele­vi­sion on Fri­day morn­ing, giv­ing de­tails and analy­ses of the CAPE and oth­er re­sults but what we need to hear more from him and his min­istry, are the sta­tis­tics on the per­for­mance or un­der­per­for­mance of stu­dents from the schools or ar­eas or seg­ments of the so­ci­ety which have been chron­ic un­der­per­form­ers.

Dr Gopeesingh must not be afraid to con­front this and in­di­cate what plans and pro­grammes he and his Min­istry have put in place or in­tend to im­ple­ment in or­der to rec­ti­fy this. We can't con­tin­ue to play pat­ty-cake or doll house with it any­more and Dr Gopeesingh, as Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, must take a lead role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in this. He must come forth and tell the na­tion what plans he has to specif­i­cal­ly tar­get and seek to im­prove the per­for­mance of Afro-Trin­bag­on­ian stu­dents if the sta­tis­tics show that they are con­stant­ly and con­tin­u­al­ly falling be­hind. He must then im­ple­ment these plans and re­verse these trends and that would then be some­thing worth crow­ing about and strut­ting and preen­ing and parad­ing and cel­e­brat­ing-Eman­ci­pa­tion ed­u­ca­tion.