Review by
Kevin Baldeosingh
A decade after its publication, Dr Alleyne's history of secondary education in T&T remains pertinent, if only because so many of the problems still remain unsolved.
Alleyne was the major architect of the government secondary in the 1970s when the oil boom allowed the PNM administration led by Dr Eric Williams to embark on a major school-building project overseen by the World Bank.
He was also brought back in as a consultant in the first years of the 21st century when Hazel Manning, wife of the later former Prime Minister Patrick Manning, was appointed education minister.
Alleyne's book is revealing not only for its insights into educational objectives, but also how politics interfered in the achievement of these objectives. "Dr Eric Williams...had always used education, especially at the secondary school level, as the major vote catcher in election campaigning," he writes.
He notes that in the early 1970s when the construction of secondary schools began, the demand for school places instantly ratcheted up.
"The pressure that the people exerted on the politicians forced decisions to be made in which several of the secondary schools were open and used before they were certified as completed," Alleyne writes.
"The education planners at the Ministry of Education were harshly made to understand their role in the whole governmental process.
"Although they would provide sound technical or professional advice, the political directorate had the prerogative and privilege of making the decisions."
Indeed, it was only because of the World Bank that the schools were completed according to specifications.
But it was politics which led to the creation of the double-shift system at the Junior Secondary level, where one student cohort attended in the morning and another after lunch, hence doubling the school capacity.
But Alleyne admits that this may have sowed the seeds for later social problems.
"The most serious criticism levelled at the double shift was that severe social and family problems were arising from the long unsupervised hours of the children attending either the morning or afternoon sessions," he writes.
Alleyne's book covers the early history of education in T&T, including the indigenous people, and he treats separately with the Africans, Indians and Europeans in the first section. He also has a chapter on early primary education.
And, although he has an entire chapter titled Education and the Development of T&T, Alleyne does not insist that policy in this area necessarily leads to development.
"The role or ability of education to transform a society or culture still remains to be verified," he writes.
He also has the usual ideological bias of people who came to maturity under the British Empire: "The effects of Trinidad and Tobago's emergence from four and half centuries of colonialism were invariably negative...In food, dress, advice, tastes, opinions and speech there has been a tendency to feel that the 'local' is not as good as the 'foreign'," he writes.
The penultimate chapter looks the persisting problems in secondary education, several of which have actually been tackled (de-shifting) or adapted (opening a "community college," which is what Costaatt and UTT were originally intended to be). But Alleyne's book remains relevant, if only to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
BOOK INFO
?Nationhood from the Schoolbag
Michael H McD Alleyne
Organisation of American States, 1996. ISBN 0-8270-3591-8
200 pages.