By Oni­ka Nkrumah-Lakhan

WEST­ERN ED­U­CA­TION teach­es us just enough to earn a pay­cheque, be a con­form­ing cit­i­zen, and to func­tion in a Eu­ro­cen­tric sys­tem. Re­mem­ber your pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion; you learnt all about Colum­bus, the Eu­ro­pean no­bil­i­ty, Great Britain and her colonies, but lit­tle to noth­ing about the his­to­ry of any of the main cul­tures of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We were taught about slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship, as if that were the sum his­to­ry of its peo­ples.

Fast for­ward to 2015, and the cur­ricu­lum these days is lit­tle bet­ter ... at least, that's the con­clu­sion of three ed­u­ca­tors, Safiya Olug­bala, Shinelle Cross and Priya Pad­man­ab­han. Out of the ethos "Ed­u­cate to Lib­er­ate," was found­ed the Lal­i­bela Holis­tic In­sti­tute in 2009. Its mis­sion: to af­ford every child a qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion, re­gard­less of their so­cial stand­ing. The school, as its name sug­gests, looks at the whole in­di­vid­ual, with a heavy em­pha­sis on in­dige­nous his­to­ry, Earth sci­ences, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ism.

These ed­u­ca­tors are re­al­ly think­ing 'out­side of the class­room'; stu­dents don't spend their days cooped up in dingy class­rooms in des­per­ate need of paint and a pow­er wash. At Lal­i­bela Holis­tic, the world is one big ex­is­ten­tial class­room. Phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion can come in the form of a vig­or­ous na­ture walk to the near­by riv­er for a swim­ming ses­sion. As Olug­bala as­serts, "chalk and a black­board is not go­ing to stim­u­late even the bright­est of minds..." Ex­perts agree that the most ef­fec­tive teach­ing oc­curs when stu­dents live and breathe their ed­u­ca­tion, so when an ap­plic­a­ble top­ic on the cur­ricu­lum aris­es, per­haps about Arts or Cul­ture, stu­dents vis­it an art ex­hi­bi­tion or a mu­se­um, so they can get a re­al first-hand ex­pe­ri­ence of what it means to be an artist. This al­lows for "re­al con­nec­tions to be made with oth­er­wise ab­stract con­tent."

The ve­rac­i­ty of this state­ment reg­is­ters when I re­call my own school days, how in­ter­est­ing the school trips were and how an in­no­v­a­tive his­to­ry teacher made us love the sub­ject by re-en­act­ing the sto­ries. At Lal­i­bela, tra­di­tion­al ob­ser­vances, al­though ac­knowl­edged, are not so heav­i­ly em­pha­sized. "We find icons who make sense to us, and fea­ture them promi­nent­ly, so we cel­e­brate Kwame Ture or Mar­cus Gar­vey Day. We are not teach­ing any­thing new, just what was for­got­ten...where the com­mu­ni­ty comes to­geth­er to re­mind a child who they are." This 'it takes a vil­lage to raise a child' ap­proach is pay­ing off. The com­mu­ni­ty "has shown up; our vol­un­teers and par­ents are very gen­er­ous...we have out­grown our cur­rent lo­ca­tion and we're look­ing for a new build­ing," en­thus­es Olug­bala.

WOW – In 2015, African and East In­di­an his­to­ry in our schools are lim­it­ed to the teach­ing of slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship; your thoughts?

Olug­bala – We haven't been search­ing for truth; we have been com­ply­ing...our chil­dren de­serve the truth, we have been so blind­sided by colo­nial­ism...we should al­so be teach­ing In­dige­nous his­to­ry, about the Amerindi­ans that were here be­fore us. Our cur­ricu­lum needs mod­ern­iza­tion. At Lal­i­bela Holis­tic, we are very fu­ture-dri­ven... our em­pha­sis is on in­no­va­tion tech­nol­o­gy. If the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem makes im­prove­ments, it will see a marked dif­fer­ence – both for stu­dents and teach­ers. The sys­tem is de­signed for our stu­dents to fail, be­cause they don't see them­selves. Par­ents are re­mov­ing their chil­dren from the main­stream and opt­ing for home-school­ing be­cause they are dis­sat­is­fied with the qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion.

The ed­u­ca­tors at Lal­i­bela are cur­rent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad & To­ba­go (UTT) to tai­lor a cur­ricu­lum that re­flects their ap­proach to ed­u­ca­tion, while still cov­er­ing the es­sen­tials as man­dat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment. Ac­cord­ing to Olug­bala, who has a Bach­e­lor's de­gree in So­ci­ol­o­gy and Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture and a Mas­ters in Ed­u­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy, the col­lab­o­ra­tion is go­ing "re­al­ly well; we're work­ing on merg­ing our ideas with the ex­ist­ing cur­ricu­lum ... so that our stu­dents can be prop­er­ly ac­cred­it­ed. It's a work in progress. We part­nered with UTT be­cause they are stu­dent-cen­tred...we are a liv­ing mod­el and we hope to share what we have done with the Gov­ern­ment in fu­ture."

On whether the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is re­spon­sive to calls for a re­vised, mod­ernised cur­ricu­lum, Olug­bala is op­ti­mistic, "I see their Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent (CAC) as a step in the right di­rec­tion...the Gov­ern­ment is be­com­ing more sup­ple. I ap­plaud the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's stance in ac­knowl­edg­ing that there are al­ter­na­tive ways of de­liv­er­ing the cur­ricu­lum. I hope we can work to­geth­er to tai­lor an in­clu­sive na­tion­al cur­ricu­lum that is de­signed ex­press­ly for a child to suc­ceed."

WOW – Over six hun­dred teach­ers are un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion for var­i­ous al­le­ga­tions; do you think there has been a shift from past teach­ers, who were more ded­i­cat­ed, to a new type of teacher who is main­ly con­cerned with a pay­cheque?

Olug­bala – Teach­ers are al­so rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the moral de­cay in so­ci­ety all around us.... The teach­ers of old were ded­i­cat­ed to a colo­nial sys­tem which ap­peared to func­tion be­cause it was de­signed to make us loy­al to it. That in it­self is now caus­ing up­heaval.... I am more sat­is­fied with the qual­i­ty of my life now, even though I make less mon­ey than when I was teach­ing in the main­stream sys­tem."

Lo­cat­ed in Diego Mar­tin, Lal­i­bela Holis­tic In­sti­tute– a Na­ture-based School – is a mem­ber of the Green School Al­liance. Vis­it their Face­book page for more in­for­ma­tion.