In a few days' time we would again be marking the anniversary of our Independence with the usual parade of our armed forces, the bestowing of national awards to hopefully deserving recipients, and of course, a national holiday. When on August 31, 1962 we lowered the Union Jack to replace it with our Red, Black and White, we proudly proclaimed our watchwords, Discipline, Tolerance and Production, and we sang with gusto our National Anthem ".... here every creed and race find an equal place..."
Our populace chanted exuberantly, "Massa Day Done...We Freeeee!" But how do we today respect our National Anthem? By sitting down or walking about when it is being played or sung? By still flying a tattered National Flag?
Yet, after 54 years of Independence, how free are we? What have we done to promulgate and promote our watchwords, to fashion our lives to exhibit them in our relationships with others? How much have parents, the many religious bodies, our schools done? Has our academic-driven education system found time to inculcate positive values, mores and ethics in their charges in the Social Studies component of the curriculum?
Having been involved in the education system for many, many years, I cringe when I hear of private lessons now being offered to children from Standard One in primary schools, sometimes by the very teachers who are being paid to teach them during the day.
It would seem that all children are being taught today is how to regurgitate answers via rote learning to pass exams, be it SEA, CXC, CAPE, and at UTT in a frantic quest to gain certificates, degrees, doctorates in order to acquire the highest paid jobs. Do teachers today know that teaching is only achieved when true learning has taken place? What of functional literacy? Can anyone say what has happened to our watchwords? Where is discipline being encouraged? In the home? In the community? In the schools? When we were growing up, anyone in the village could have corrected us. What happens today? Most likely the corrected one may turn on you, or the parent or relative might certainly do, with sometimes deleterious consequences.
Many of our schools today, especially at the secondary level, are nests of indiscipline and mayhem, with teachers being afraid to go to their classes, much more to correct or reprimand errant students. Indiscipline seem to have infiltrated almost every stratum of our society. And I ask again, how have we displayed tolerance? We only have to look at our criminal courts where someone could not tolerate the action or non action of another, and took matters in his own hands. Almost every day we hear of murders, now more than ever by guns. I say no more of that. How tolerant are we of the elderly, the sick in our hospitals and health centres, our special-needs children, the vagrants, when we spurn them in their needs?
What of production? What are we producing today? With the wealth with which our nation has been blessed over the years, how have we maximised these blessings? Mediocrity has become pervasive in almost in every sector of the public service where customer service is a foreign terminology. Be it In the police service, the health service, customs, same khaki pants.
Our country has been again blessed with rich soil everywhere. Almost everyone long ago grew something in their backyard, no matter how small the space. Plants blossomed in empty KLIM and oil tins. The advent of LID, DEWD, Cepep, URP, food cards and social welfare put paid to all of those activities. We are now dependent.
Everywhere in the countryside one can see abandoned estates where once prolific cocoa, coffee and other produce flourished. What has happened to our agriculture? I have been offering seedlings of dwarf pommecythere, saigan, pommegranate and plantain suckers, pumpkin, and few people show interest. When will we begin to grow much of our food again? Will we ever be able to encourage our young people to become interested in agriculture?
How will we be able to do away with the corruption, nepotism, avarice, selfishness, apathy, jealousy and heartlessness? When did caring for our fellowman, compassion, empathy, consideration, respect for each person and looking out for one another abandon us? Have we become a nation of "I-specialists," thinking only of me, myself and I?
I pray to God that He will, in His Goodness and Mercy, forgive us our many, many sins of commission and omission, that He will touch our hearts, our minds, our souls and return us to obeying the two Commandments of His Son: "To love the Lord with all our hearts, with all our minds, with all our souls and with all our strength, and to Love our neighbours as ourselves."
I pray that our people would come back together to rebuild our beautiful country in every aspect, in love, patriotism and godliness toward a much better place for our children and for posterity.
Eva David-Swain
Coalmine, Sangre Grande