Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

Lis­ten­ing to the sto­ries of a few Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA) stu­dents two weeks ago sparked what ad­dicts, and saints call a "mo­ment of clar­i­ty" about the Tri­ni con­di­tion. The stu­dents were de­scrib­ing their jour­neys to lit­er­a­cy as part of the launch of AL­TA's 20-year com­mem­o­ra­tive mag­a­zine. One jour­ney be­gan with the stu­dent's be­ing put in­to a garbage bin at birth by her moth­er, be­ing res­cued by a woman who kept her till she was nine, then turned her out to find her way.

She was em­ployed her as a maid be­tween the ages of nine and 14, and over­worked and phys­i­cal­ly abused. An­oth­er sto­ry was more con­ven­tion­al: a man was beat­en in school, and told he was stu­pid be­cause he coloured in his copy­book. His sub­se­quent decade or so of school­ing left him un­able to read. AL­TA's founder, Paula Lu­cie-Smith, said not all stu­dents' sto­ries were as hor­rif­ic as the first (an ex­treme case), but their ex­pe­ri­ences tend­ed to have many of the el­e­ments, if in less­er de­grees.

These (and oth­er) sto­ries sug­gest that il­lit­er­a­cy is mere­ly a vis­i­ble symp­tom of a wider so­cial pathol­o­gy, and that a high de­gree of so­cial dys­func­tion is im­plied by il­lit­er­a­cy. We can gauge the ex­tent of the dys­func­tion through the ex­tent of il­lit­er­a­cy. The last da­ta col­lect­ed on lit­er­a­cy, 16 years ago, by UWI and AL­TA, de­ter­mined that more than half the pop­u­la­tion was func­tion­al­ly il­lit­er­ate. The sys­tem has de­gen­er­at­ed a lot since then.

This is vis­i­ble in the sec­ondary school sys­tem which ser­vices about 80 per cent of the school pop­u­la­tion. The stu­dents have de­sert­ed the three Rs for the three Fs: fight­ing, for­ni­cat­ing, and fete­ing. We know this thanks to the sex videos, fight club videos, and the gen­er­al gangs­ta cul­ture we see and hear via the me­dia. (Lu­cie-Smith start­ed teach­ing at a se­nior comp when she re­alised how per­va­sive il­lit­er­a­cy was, and was moved to form AL­TA.)

There is al­so the fact that poor­er peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence dys­func­tion more, and are more de­bil­i­tat­ed by it. In 2000 (the most re­cent da­ta on the CSO Web site) the num­bers of tech­ni­cal work­ers and pro­fes­sion­als are about a quar­ter of the work­force. Clerks, ser­vice work­ers, and "el­e­men­tary oc­cu­pa­tions" are about two-thirds.

The pro­fes­sion­als live in one Trinidad, the el­e­men­tary work­ers live in an­oth­er. We get in­ti­ma­tions some­times of the na­ture of that oth­er so­ci­ety. A dai­ly news­pa­per on Sep­tem­ber 26 head­lined its ed­i­to­r­i­al about the na­tion­al state of af­fairs "Jun­gle Cul­ture".

For­mer min­is­ter Ver­na St Rose-Greaves, in a com­men­tary in 2011, im­plied that the ex­tent of child abuse was far be­yond what we con­ceived. The Guardian on Oc­to­ber 9, 2011, told of squat­ter set­tle­ments in Arou­ca af­flict­ed with "crime, promis­cu­ity, pover­ty at high lev­els."

Again in the Guardian (Ju­ly 23, 2007), the ex­is­tence of en­tire com­mu­ni­ties where "lives of 'gang' off­spring are chart­ed be­fore birth" was re­port­ed. The con­clu­sion was sup­port­ed by the 2009 (Swiss) Small Arms Sur­vey re­port done by Dorn Townsend, No Oth­er Life: Guns, Gangs and Gov­er­nance in Trinidad.

But this is not the Trinidad pro­ject­ed in pop­u­lar rep­re­sen­ta­tions, which are gen­er­al­ly a mid­dle-class fan­ta­sy of a "vi­brant" coun­try on its way to be­ing a de­vel­oped na­tion, with which the State, artists, aca­d­e­mics, re­li­gious groups and cul­ture vul­tures con­cur.

This means there's no ac­knowl­edge­ment of the cri­sis sit­u­a­tion of much more than half the pop­u­la­tion liv­ing in a trau­ma­tis­ing, dys­func­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment every day, and there­fore no ac­tion to ad­dress it by the mi­nor­i­ty with pow­er and in­flu­ence.

The rea­sons for the de­nial are not clear. I've had stretch­es of months at a time when I didn't have a car, and every time I have to use pub­lic trans­porta­tion, it's a shock-the be­hav­iour of the dri­vers, com­muters, and the state of the trans­porta­tion net­work. The hor­rif­ic state of pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties gen­er­al­ly, and the men­tal state of the pub­lic, are so painful when you ex­pe­ri­ence them, a de­fence mech­a­nism is vol­un­tary am­ne­sia as soon as you get away.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the peo­ple who have to use pub­lic trans­port, ed­u­ca­tion, and the health sys­tem, can't af­ford this am­ne­sia, or to send their kids to pri­vate schools, or to ig­nore the maxi-taxi cul­ture. And those cir­cum­stances turn that whole mass in­to an ap­a­thet­ic and in­vol­un­tar­i­ly cru­el cit­i­zen­ry every­one wants to es­cape from, and of which no one wants to be re­mind­ed.

When I say "no one" I mean many of the peo­ple who will read this, the peo­ple who live in the 20-30 per cent bub­ble. This mi­nor­i­ty has per­pe­trat­ed a quite re­mark­able Or­wellian "dou­ble­think" de­cep­tion on it­self, where the re­al­i­ty lived is not the re­al­i­ty em­bed­ded in the mind. In fact, it's con­sid­ered "pa­tri­ot­ic" (de­pend­ing on who is in pow­er), to be a Pan­gloss, and see every hor­ror as a mere hic­cup, and to feel of­fend­ed when the ac­tu­al re­al­i­ty is even sug­gest­ed as the norm.

On a na­tion­al scale, this amounts to mass delu­sion-a not un­com­mon phe­nom­e­non to any­one who's stud­ied mass me­dia. (Al­though some­one here with a mas­ters de­gree from a met­ro­pol­i­tan uni­ver­si­ty told me they'd nev­er heard of Noam Chom­sky or Ben Bagdikian.)

At any rate, the delu­sion has vi­ral­ly in­fect­ed in­sti­tu­tions and no or lit­tle da­ta, re­search, or even the­o­ries are gen­er­at­ed to ex­plain why crime, cor­rup­tion, and so­cial patholo­gies are not just per­va­sive, they seem to be ac­cel­er­at­ing. And there's no con­scious­ness at all about qua­si and para-crime.

These are the re­venge strate­gies of the trau­ma­tised ma­jor­i­ty which man­i­fest in the work eth­ic of steal­ing from em­ploy­ers and the State, a na­tion­al at­mos­phere of sub­ver­sion and an­ar­chy (as in the dri­ving) and a gen­er­al mis­an­thropy and self­ish­ness-which Naipaul de­scribed as a "pi­ca­roon so­ci­ety". How did this at­ti­tude be­come so per­va­sive?

Con­tin­ued next week