Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

In In­equal­i­ty, Crime & Ed­u­ca­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go: Re­mov­ing the Masks, Ramesh De­osaran brings in­to the light of scruti­ny a sub­ject that's plagued the so­ci­ety for many years, and to which much talk and mon­ey have been di­rect­ed with un­sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sults. That the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is in a state of trau­ma and fail­ure, and des­per­ate­ly needs some kind of in­ter­ven­tion, all agree. What to do, and the spe­cif­ic prob­lems, are not so clear. Re­fresh­ing­ly, Prof De­osaran has at his dis­pos­al sev­er­al years of em­pir­i­cal sur­vey and sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta he mo­bilis­es to il­lus­trate his points as he ex­am­ines the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem in de­tail. He al­so has sug­ges­tions as to how to fix it.

The book is di­vid­ed in­to 16 chap­ters, and be­gins with so­cio-ed­u­ca­tion­al his­to­ry (from the 19th cen­tu­ry), and moves through the post­colo­nial predica­ment, the chasm be­tween "pres­tige" and gov­ern­ment schools, the Con­cor­dat, the SEA and pri­ma­ry schools, and eth­nic and class con­flict in ed­u­ca­tion. The ter­tiary sys­tem is men­tioned, but as an end-point of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary sys­tems.

The abun­dance of da­ta is re­as­sur­ing, since the ti­tle sug­gests an un­com­fort­able re­la­tion­ship among crime, in­equal­i­ty, and a failed ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. This im­pli­cates race, class and ge­og­ra­phy in fa­mil­iar, tox­ic pat­terns, which are dis­cussed in fre­quent­ly hos­tile terms in the pub­lic sphere. The re­al­i­ty is that stu­dents of African de­scent, from the low­er eco­nom­ic class­es, from so­cio-eco­nom­i­cal­ly de­pressed ar­eas tend to fare the worst in the school sys­tem. The da­ta show this clear­ly. What is not so clear is why.

A large part of the rea­son, ac­cord­ing to De­osaran, is the lega­cy of colo­nial­ism, in­den­ture and slav­ery. He writes of the pre-in­de­pen­dence ed­u­ca­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal en­vi­ron­ment that "the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in terms of cur­ricu­lum and en­rol­ment, was rid­dled with so­cial and class dis­tinc­tions and racial mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion". In the post-colo­nial pe­ri­od, ed­u­ca­tion was tout­ed as the great equal­iz­er, but the ac­cess and at­ti­tudes to it were shaped by the is­sues of race and class.

Ac­cord­ing to con­tem­po­rary da­ta, 47 per cent of stu­dents of African ori­gin en­tered uni­ver­si­ty three years af­ter high school, while 72 per cent of In­di­ans, and 49 per cent of the mixed group did. Fur­ther­more, "en­ter­ing uni­ver­si­ty seems to be the pre­ferred route for Form Five grad­u­ates of East In­di­an de­scent". This has as much to do with the cul­ture and so­cial­i­sa­tion of the stu­dents (fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty sup­port) as it does with eth­nic­i­ty. He notes the as­pi­ra­tions of stu­dents (to­day) from the low­er eco­nom­ic class­es are more fan­ci­ful about ed­u­ca­tion, see­ing it as a sym­bol­ic fetish rather than a re­al­is­able goal.

Apart from eth­nic­i­ty, oth­er da­ta col­lect­ed in­clude track­ing sur­veys to de­ter­mine whether stu­dent out­comes are de­pen­dent on schools at­tend­ed. It's no sur­prise that stu­dents from "pres­tige" schools fare bet­ter and ac­cess more ed­u­ca­tion. The da­ta show that "as many as 71 per cent of stu­dents from (pres­tige) schools chose to 'study on­ly' af­ter the fifth form, com­pared with 34 and 28 per cent from gov­ern­ment sec­ondary and oth­er gov­ern­ment schools".

Notwith­stand­ing, there is some good news. The pro­por­tions of those who ac­cessed ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion (by so­cial class) show that there is a sig­nif­i­cant "gate crash­er" class: 41 per cent of those in ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion are from the low­er so­cial eco­nom­ic class­es. This im­plies so­cial mo­bil­i­ty, and not in a small way.

De­osaran specif­i­cal­ly roots the eth­nic and cul­tur­al di­men­sion of the ed­u­ca­tion­al in­equity in the phe­nom­e­non of Plan­ta­tion so­ci­ety. He pro­pos­es that a fun­da­men­tal dis­trust of au­thor­i­ty and mis­trust among com­pet­ing eth­nic groups were trans­mit­ted cul­tur­al­ly through the last cen­tu­ry-and-a-half. He calls the Plan­ta­tion with its un­jus­ti­fi­ably op­pres­sive laws, and its fail­ure to give Africans and In­di­ans a stake in the so­ci­ety, a "crim­ino­genic breed­ing ground" which makes "turn­ing to crime ... a ra­tio­nal ad­ven­ture".

In­deed, he writes, Plan­ta­tion log­ic de­ter­mines the dy­nam­ics of ed­u­ca­tion and the sys­tem–its in­equity in the dis­burse­ment of ed­u­ca­tion, and the promise of so­cial mo­bil­i­ty vs a prax­is of "job prepa­ra­tion", usu­al­ly for repet­i­tive, unimag­i­na­tive, and drea­ry work.

An­oth­er con­se­quence of Plan­ta­tion so­ci­ety and its bour­geois as­pi­ra­tions is a strong, cul­tur­al­ly re­in­forced bias to uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion, and low sta­tus as­cribed to tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion. De­osaran's da­ta re­veal that 80 per cent of First For­m­ers opt­ed for a fu­ture in uni­ver­si­ty, and on­ly five per cent opt­ed for tech­ni­cal vo­ca­tion­al. In the tech-voc pro­grammes the na­tion­al pass rate is around 30 per cent.

Such a sys­tem, with its man­i­fest un­fair­ness in the place­ment of a small mi­nor­i­ty of stu­dents in "pres­tige" places, and the mass in less-than-de­sir­able schools, leads to a "psy­chol­o­gy of fail­ure" which mu­tates in­to oth­er so­cial patholo­gies, like crime. This is ex­pa­ti­at­ed up­on at length in Chap­ter 15, "Strain, Failed Am­bi­tions and Crime", where he iden­ti­fies specif­i­cal­ly the East-West Cor­ri­dor as an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for the in­ver­sion of civic val­ues. That is, the gang­ster cul­ture seems to lead to ac­cep­tance and ap­proval, while con­ven­tion­al as­pi­ra­tions are looked down up­on.

In­equal­i­ty, Crime & Ed­u­ca­tion pro­vides a great deal of valu­able and us­able in­for­ma­tion on the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in T&T. It con­cludes with 14 rec­om­men­da­tions which serve as a start­ing point for re­form of the sys­tem. It al­so pro­vides an ad­mirable state­ment of the goal of ed­u­ca­tion, which is con­tained in the na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion plan. The aim of ed­u­ca­tion should be to cre­ate "a spir­i­tu­al­ly, moral­ly, phys­i­cal­ly, in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly and emo­tion­al­ly sound in­di­vid­ual".

That said, the book does not ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress a few cru­cial is­sues. Some state­ments are made, but ques­tions are not asked. The work eth­ic in de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools is high­er than in gov­ern­ment schools (as mea­sured by teacher at­ten­dance and punc­tu­al­i­ty, in ad­di­tion to stu­dent per­for­mance) (p130). Why is this so? Ex­am­in­ing this would pro­vide a tremen­dous in­sight in­to the prob­lem.

And there­in lies a con­tentious is­sue: De­osaran writes with a de­cid­ed­ly pop­ulist ori­en­ta­tion, which at times pan­ders to strong con­tem­po­rary emo­tion­al views on eth­nic­i­ty and so­cial re­la­tions, and omits rel­e­vant his­tor­i­cal facts. For ex­am­ple in his in­tro­duc­tion, he writes of the emer­gence of a "black, male un­der­class," which is the end­point of the sys­temic dys­func­tion­al­i­ty. He cites an IDB re­port by way of con­fir­ma­tion, which states "im­prov­ing ed­u­ca­tion equal­i­ty is im­plic­it­ly re­lat­ed to eth­nic equal­i­ty."

He writes of "in­equity" as a ze­ro-sum game: as if those who ac­cess and ben­e­fit from the sys­tem take some­thing away from those who ac­cess the same sys­tem at dif­fer­ent points. But in­equity is a more com­pli­cat­ed phe­nom­e­non, ad­dressed in a gush of lit­er­a­ture in books like Thomas Piket­ty's Cap­i­tal in the 21st Cen­tu­ry, and oth­ers like Iden­ti­ty Eco­nom­ics by Ak­erlof and Kran­ton, and Be­hav­iour­al Eco­nom­ics by Richard Thaler. These link in­equal­i­ty to con­tem­po­rary preda­tor cap­i­tal­ism and its re­sul­tant wealth dis­tri­b­u­tion.

De­osaran does men­tion cap­i­tal­ism as a de­ter­mi­nant of the ed­u­ca­tion­al dy­nam­ic, in terms of the type of ed­u­ca­tion re­quired for its ide­al work­force, but does not pur­sue it ad­e­quate­ly. In­deed, De­osaran's main theme sounds like the vic­tim­i­sa­tion ar­gu­ment: that the sys­tem is some­how stacked against the poor African seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion. A Na­tion of Is­lam rep­re­sen­ta­tive is quot­ed, as are ca­lyp­sos by Gyp­sy and Cro Cro. It's all tak­en lit­er­al­ly, not placed in­to a con­text of neo-Gar­vey­ism and its it­er­a­tions post-1970. Nei­ther does propo­si­tion of the vic­tim­i­sa­tion of black chil­dren face the fact that T&T has been gov­erned by black gov­ern­ments (as op­posed to In­do-led gov­ern­ments) for 44 of its 54 years of In­de­pen­dence.

Oth­er cru­cial el­e­ments, like com­mu­ni­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal and parental sta­bil­i­ty are men­tioned, but as seem­ing­ly un­re­lat­ed vari­ables. De­osaran does link ed­u­ca­tion­al out­comes to "what we do else­where in the econ­o­my, poli­ty and so­ci­ety", but does not pur­sue this line of ar­gu­ment. Many ideas are put for­ward, all of them plau­si­ble and da­ta-sup­port­ed, but there is no over­ar­ch­ing the­o­ry or ex­pla­na­tion link­ing the book to­geth­er, ex­plain­ing what has led to the present state of af­fairs.

Two crit­i­cal el­e­ments De­osaran ig­nores are the het­ero­gene­ity of the black pop­u­la­tion, and the high "churn rate" in pop­u­la­tion in the last gen­er­a­tion es­pe­cial­ly. Like most so­cial re­searchers, he ig­nores the fact that al­most a quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion em­i­grat­ed be­tween 1962 and 1990, and were re­placed by im­mi­grants from the oth­er is­lands. These im­mi­grants end­ed up usu­al­ly in squat­ter com­mu­ni­ties or in the most so­cio-eco­nom­i­cal­ly de­pressed ar­eas along the East-West Cor­ri­dor.

It is the chil­dren and grand­chil­dren of these im­mi­grants who con­sti­tute the most dis­ad­van­taged seg­ment of the ed­u­ca­tion­al pop­u­la­tion. While there is a marked hos­til­i­ty to this fact, it is doc­u­ment­ed and some com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivists, like the late George Al­leyne, sought to bring it to na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

In a let­ter to the ed­i­tor pub­lished in the News­day on Sep­tem­ber 3, 2013, Al­leyne, who worked in Beetham Gar­dens for a num­ber of years, wrote: "An un­de­ni­able part of the prob­lem flows from dis­af­fect­ed youths be­ing ei­ther il­le­gal im­mi­grants or the chil­dren of il­le­gal im­mi­grants...par­ents who were il­le­gal im­mi­grants were afraid to seek to have their chil­dren, al­though they (the chil­dren) were born here, reg­is­tered at state and state as­sist­ed schools for fear of their im­mi­gra­tion sta­tus be­ing re­vealed and be­ing de­port­ed. As a re­sult, a siz­able num­ber of chil­dren in Beetham Gar­dens nev­er re­ceived a for­mal ed­u­ca­tion and some can nei­ther read nor write."

Fi­nal­ly, In­equal­i­ty, Crime and Ed­u­ca­tion is an im­por­tant and time­ly work. It pro­vides a start­ing point for dis­cus­sion and fur­ther re­search, and more im­por­tant­ly, ac­tion on fix­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

BOOK IN­FO

In­equal­i­ty, Crime & Ed­u­ca­tion

in Trinidad and To­ba­go:

Re­mov­ing the Masks

By Ramesh De­osaran

Ian Ran­dle Pub­lish­ers, 2016