Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh

There is of­ten a neg­a­tive por­tray­al of the Cana­di­an mis­sion that ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) and a few oth­er British West In­di­an colonies dur­ing the 19th and 20th cen­turies.

Of­ten, nar­row-mind­ed and fa­nat­i­cal per­sons harsh­ly con­demn these Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies and de­lib­er­ate­ly over­look their worth­while con­tri­bu­tions.

Rev John Mor­ton, a Pres­by­ter­ian min­is­ter from Cana­da, sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly un­der­stood the plight of the In­di­ans and their lack of in­ter­est in colo­nial ed­u­ca­tion at the ward schools in Trinidad.

In Jan­u­ary 1869, Mor­ton en­vi­sioned a large-scale out­reach and for­mu­lat­ed “a scheme for the ed­u­ca­tion of In­di­an chil­dren at the ex­pense of the Gov­ern­ment”, which was pre­sent­ed to the Gov­er­nor, Sir Arthur Gor­don of Trinidad.

Sub­se­quent­ly, fol­low­ing a cor­dial agree­ment with the Gov­ern­ment, the Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Cana­da be­gan fi­nan­cial­ly as­sist­ing the con­struc­tion of pri­ma­ry schools for In­di­ans.

These sim­ple schools and oth­er Pres­by­ter­ian in­sti­tu­tions were not ex­clu­sive. The Cana­di­an mis­sion­ar­ies had an open-door pol­i­cy. This meant there were no re­stric­tions on who could en­rol in their schools or at­tend their church­es and Sun­day Schools.

One of the most out­stand­ing and en­dur­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of the mis­sion was its ed­u­ca­tion­al out­reach. Cana­di­an Mis­sion In­di­an (CMI) schools, lat­er re­ferred to as Cana­di­an Mis­sion and then Pres­by­ter­ian schools, were es­tab­lished in such out­ly­ing vil­lages as Bar­rack­pore, Fyz­abad, Rousil­lac, San­ta Cruz, Cu­mu­to, Biche, Plum Road, Cu­nar­ipo, Cu­mu­to and Lengua. One dis­tinct fea­ture of these mis­sion schools was their emer­gence in rur­al ar­eas.

These sim­ple schools were of­ten one-room wood­en build­ings that humbly served their com­mu­ni­ties. Ini­tial­ly, at­ten­dance was low. It was re­port­ed that, by 1880, on­ly 590 In­di­an chil­dren were en­rolled in es­tate schools. Apart from as­sis­tance from the Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Cana­da, the planters and the Gov­ern­ment in Trinidad sup­ple­ment­ed the re­sources nec­es­sary to con­tin­ue the ed­u­ca­tion­al mis­sion.

On 22 No­vem­ber 1870, Rev Ken­neth Grant (from No­va Sco­tia, Cana­da), his wife, Cather­ine Copeland (of Cana­da), and the Mor­tons ar­rived in San Fer­nan­do. In 1883, Rev Grant held the first school class­es un­der a samaan tree on Carib Street in San Fer­nan­do. Among the chil­dren at­tend­ing the class­es were his son George, Charles Pasea and oth­er chil­dren of the mis­sion. To­day, this site is home to Susamachar Pres­by­ter­ian Church and Grant Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian School.

The ne­glect of ed­u­ca­tion among large seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion was an in­her­ent flaw of the Crown Colony sys­tem in the British West In­di­an colonies. The 1891 cen­sus es­ti­mat­ed that one-half of the West In­di­an pop­u­la­tion over five years of age was deemed il­lit­er­ate.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Or­di­nance of 1899 sought to as­sist the low­er class­es by in­clud­ing a clause that ex­empt­ed fam­i­lies un­able to af­ford the cost of ed­u­ca­tion, as well as chil­dren of in­den­tured im­mi­grants.

Dur­ing the 1890s, Grant spear­head­ed the move­ment for free ed­u­ca­tion. Grant be­lieved that the Gov­ern­ment should as­sist those schools with an at­ten­dance of at least 150 pupils and that ed­u­ca­tion up to the third stan­dard should be free. His con­cerns did not fall on deaf ears be­cause, in 1902, fees were abol­ished. By 1900, there were 60 CMI schools serv­ing 7,557 East In­di­an chil­dren from an East In­di­an pop­u­la­tion of 85,000.

Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, the mis­sion could boast of hav­ing 70 pupil teach­ers, 52 cer­ti­fied teach­ers and 16 grad­u­ates of its train­ing class­es.

One of the sub­tle ob­jec­tives of the ed­u­ca­tion pro­vid­ed by these Cana­di­an mis­sion schools was to es­tab­lish a de­sired sta­bil­i­ty with­in the volatile plan­ta­tion so­ci­ety. In­deed, the con­ver­sion from one re­li­gion to an­oth­er and from one cul­ture to an­oth­er with­in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem made the Pres­by­ter­ian schools ap­pear to be ma­jor agents of decul­tur­al­i­sa­tion, west­ern­i­sa­tion and so­cial­i­sa­tion.

How­ev­er, the pro­vi­sion of an Eng­lish-based ed­u­ca­tion by the mis­sion schools was com­pat­i­ble with the de­sired so­cial ad­vance­ment that some In­di­ans and oth­er eth­nic mi­nori­ties were seek­ing. It can­not be de­nied that the Cana­di­an mis­sion had laid a sol­id foun­da­tion through its pri­ma­ry schools, which would lat­er be suc­cess­ful­ly repli­cat­ed in its sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

The colo­nial era un­leashed so­cio-eco­nom­ic forces that con­tributed to a frac­tured and dys­func­tion­al so­ci­ety. The trau­mat­ic im­mi­gra­tion process and the up­root­ing from their home­land af­fect­ed the In­di­ans. The mis­sion­ar­ies, Bible women, cat­e­chists, mon­i­tors, head teach­ers and pupil teach­ers of­ten in­for­mal­ly served as coun­sel­lors, psy­chol­o­gists, so­cial work­ers, me­di­a­tors and med­ical per­son­nel. They were not pro­fes­sion­al­ly trained in these fields but pro­vid­ed in­sight, ad­vice and wis­dom to those who were de­pressed, hun­gry, poor, sui­ci­dal or vic­tims of abuse.

Dur­ing the in­den­ture­ship and post-in­den­ture­ship eras, ed­u­ca­tion was the main an­ti­dote to the poi­son of colo­nial­ism. In­deed, the ear­ly Pres­by­ter­ian mis­sion shel­tered these vul­ner­a­ble minds and act­ed as a buffer against the harsh so­cio-eco­nom­ic con­di­tions.

The mis­sion pro­vid­ed cru­cial as­sis­tance in a strat­i­fied, cold and un­car­ing so­ci­ety. It is in this con­text that the Pres­by­ter­ian con­tri­bu­tion is valu­able.

The Church’s lega­cy can­not sim­ply be re­strict­ed to con­ver­sion, ac­cul­tur­a­tion and as­sim­i­la­tion. It was one of up­lift­ing and em­pow­er­ing the ne­glect­ed and down­trod­den dur­ing the 19th and 20th cen­turies. To­day, Pres­by­ter­ian pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools in T&T con­tin­ue to play a piv­otal role in the ed­u­ca­tion of many of our cit­i­zens.