Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

I've been for­tu­nate in the last few months to have spo­ken at length to sev­er­al ed­u­ca­tion ex­perts who clar­i­fied a few key ques­tions about the Tri­ni ed­u­ca­tion sit­u­a­tion. The ex­perts are in­volved with the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion, AL­TA, in­clud­ing its CEO and founder, Paula Lu­cie-Smith.

First, the num­bers. In 1994 and 1995, UWI and AL­TA did sep­a­rate lit­er­a­cy sur­veys. Be­tween them, they con­clud­ed that about 22 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion was to­tal­ly il­lit­er­ate, and on­ly 45 per cent was lit­er­ate enough to read and in­ter­pret a dai­ly news­pa­per. Sev­er­al gov­ern­ments have re­spond­ed to these sta­tis­tics in the same way: they've ig­nored them and stopped do­ing sur­veys. Of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics (of 98 per cent lit­er­a­cy) are based on en­rol­ment rates in pri­ma­ry schools.

But the lit­er­a­cy prob­lem is more pro­found, be­gin­ning with our very idea of lit­er­a­cy. As ed­u­ca­tion­al con­sul­tant Wal­lis Wyke (and oth­ers) said: lit­er­a­cy doesn't just mean read­ing. It ex­tends to lis­ten­ing, think­ing, rea­son­ing, and speak­ing. There are al­so vi­su­al and cul­tur­al lit­er­a­cy. Our school­room mod­el, of rows of desks of uni­formed in­mates tak­ing notes from the black­board, is out­dat­ed, to put it mild­ly. Many schools in the metro­pole, and a few in Trinidad, are arranged dif­fer­ent­ly, and cul­ti­vate this ex­tend­ed de­f­i­n­i­tion of lit­er­a­cy.

But even be­fore we get to the class­room, sev­er­al crit­i­cal is­sues are not even ac­knowl­edged, like learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. Ac­cord­ing to Cather­ine Kelshall, head of the Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion, a con­ser­v­a­tive es­ti­mate for the per­cent­age of dyslex­i­cs in the Tri­ni pop­u­la­tion is ten per cent. That means 100,000 peo­ple (con­ser­v­a­tive­ly) have a treat­able con­di­tion the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem sim­ply ig­nores.

And that's just one dis­abil­i­ty. There are oth­ers. An­oth­er cru­cial is­sue, ac­cord­ing to Kelshall, is the lan­guage en­vi­ron­ment. The qual­i­ty of the con­ver­sa­tions to which chil­dren (and adults) are ex­posed, and the way they're spo­ken to, af­fect their lit­er­a­cy. If chil­dren are not spo­ken to enough, they do not de­vel­op nec­es­sary lit­er­a­cy skills. If they're spo­ken to ex­clu­sive­ly in talk-ra­dio-speak, it can ac­tu­al­ly wire their brains in a par­tic­u­lar way. The wrong way.

(Big shout-out here to those ra­dio talk shows which have en­ter­tained some, in­doc­tri­nat­ed many, and re­pulsed me, for the last 15 years, and all the par­ents with young chil­dren who have their ra­dios per­ma­nent­ly tuned in, in­stead of ac­tu­al­ly talk­ing to or read­ing to their chil­dren. Is it any won­der there seems to be a gen­er­a­tional cul­ture of de­viance (like "fight clubs" and sex videos in­volv­ing teenagers from schools) that ex­ists far out­side of our un­der­stand­ing?)

Apro­pos of this form of ne­glect, lit­er­a­cy is al­so con­nect­ed to sex­u­al, phys­i­cal, and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse. Mrs Lu­cie-Smith opined that abuse is a sig­nif­i­cant rea­son for chil­dren's in­abil­i­ty to learn. This is an­oth­er of those ar­eas (child abuse) which seems to be bereft of sta­tis­tics, be­cause every­one who gets close to the prob­lem screams and runs away.

Many peo­ple in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem I've spo­ken to over the years have voiced strong sus­pi­cions of hor­ri­fy­ing abuse num­bers in Trinidad. One per­son told me about an in­sti­tu­tion where the chil­dren all seemed to be ca­pa­ble, but per­form­ing poor­ly. A psy­chol­o­gist was brought in to as­sess them and con­clud­ed they were all (20-30 boys and girls) abused or mo­lest­ed, but noth­ing could be done to help.

This is a par­tic­u­lar cause of an­guish for many teach­ers, which de­stroys their morale, and warps the in­sti­tu­tion of ed­u­ca­tion. If you try to help an abused child, you give the child hope, then when the prin­ci­pal, po­lice and State all es­sen­tial­ly tell you they can't, won't and don't want to do any­thing, you have to aban­don the child to his or her abusers.

From this, an­oth­er con­tribut-ing fac­tor to il­lit­er­a­cy is the fact that stu­dents see the school as a hos­tile en­vi­ron­ment. This is es­tab­lished in the hos­tile way teach­ers, ad­min­is­tra­tion, and ed­u­ca- tion­al au­thor­i­ties gen­er­al­ly, treat the stu­dents. The stu­dents then re­act log­i­cal­ly: they treat the en­vi­ron­ment in a hos­tile and vi­o­lent way.

Now, think of how many chil­dren are hit with the mul­ti­ple dis­abil­i­ties of abu­sive homes, hos­tile schools, and gen­er­al­ly hos­tile so­cial en­vi­ron­ments. They are, first of all, emo­tion­al­ly trau­ma­tised. Ac­cord­ing to ed­u­ca­tion­al con­sul­tant Ra­mona Khan, these chil­dren will seek out those who will af­firm them, give them emo­tion­al shel­ter, and not make them feel in­fe­ri­or.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this too of­ten means crim­i­nal gangs, who prey on this kind of child. This leads to an in­trigu­ing di­men­sion of the fail­ure of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem: the vac­u­um it cre­ates, which is filled by a va­ri­ety of soi-dis­ant teach­ers, like talk-ra­dio hosts, and peo­ple like Louis Far­rakhan. A good ex­am­ple was last week, when a high-pro­file Afro­cen­trist hos­tile­ly ob­ject­ed to a ca­lyp­son­ian singing a song meant for "African" women to an "In­di­an" woman.

This per­son then claimed to have worked with young African peo­ple from the de­pressed ar­eas to "give them a sense of self." If, in the ab­sence of a func­tion­ing ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, the "sense of self" these young peo­ple are giv­en is hos­tile, re­sent­ful to every­one, and au­to­mat­i­cal­ly blames any con­ve­nient scape­goat for all trou­bles, this would ex­plain a lot about what is com­ing out of those ar­eas.

As to so­lu­tions, AL­TA has been af­ter suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments to put its pro­grammes in schools. They've got much talk, and lit­tle ac­tion. BP has spon­sored an AL­TA-de­signed lit­er­a­cy course as part of its Ma­yaro com­mu­ni­ty pro­gramme, but the Gov­ern­ment is less de­ci­sive. And in the end, it falls to the Gov­ern­ment. The PP seemed to un­der­stand all these is­sues two years ago. Now all they seem to un­der­stand is how to pro­duce dis­ap­point­ment.

(An in­ter­view with Paula Lu­cie-Smith, and a brief video bi­og­ra­phy of AL­TA, are avail­able on the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence YouTube chan­nel (AN­SCAFE). They can al­so be ac­cessed via AN­SCAFE's Face­book page.)