Cedri­ann Mar­tin

Trinidad and To­ba­go gets its ed­u­ca­tion news through a gen­dered lens. Girls, we're told, top the boys at the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion. There are vast­ly more women than men teach­ing at pri­ma­ry schools.

Young men far out­num­ber their fe­male coun­ter­parts in the en­gi­neer­ing fac­ul­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. And on and on.

So it isn't lost on the ad­min­is­tra­tors at the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (Al­ta) that more than 90 per cent of their tu­tors are–you guessed it–fe­male. A typ­i­cal Al­ta tu­tor train­ing at­tracts about three dozen women, but on­ly one or two men.

But re­tired school su­per­vi­sor, Darn­ley Git­tens, re­mem­bers a time when teach­ing wasn't strict­ly a woman's work.

"Up­on leav­ing sec­ondary school I went to Mau­si­ca Teach­ers' Col­lege. The in­take an­nu­al­ly was 110 peo­ple. Every year they took in 55 men and 55 women.

"This," he qual­i­fies, "is 1966."

Dur­ing the en­su­ing years, gen­der norms shift­ed.

To­day, many peo­ple think of teach­ing as a stereo­typ­i­cal, car­ing pro­fes­sion. And they've in­creas­ing­ly come to think of teach­ers as women.

Thir­ty-six-year-old Al­ta tu­tor, Andy Romero, ex­plains that his ex­pe­ri­ence in the class­room has chal­lenged his own self-per­cep­tion.

"I didn't know my­self be­fore," he re­flects. "I found out who I was here in Al­ta. So­ci­ety views me as be­ing very dread... very cold... not un­der­stand­ing as a male. In Al­ta it is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent. I am one of the more un­der­stand­ing teach­ers."

There's still a ring of sur­prise in his voice.

In­vest­ment banker Leslie St Louis comes from a long line of ed­u­ca­tors, but he on­ly cap­i­talised on his ge­net­ic gift for teach­ing a cou­ple of years ago. In his mind the short­age of male role mod­els is an is­sue for so­ci­ety at large.

"Men tend to take on the role of provider and not nec­es­sar­i­ly of sup­port­er and care­giv­er. It's an aware­ness is­sue. It re­quires a lev­el of self-con­fi­dence as a man to feel you can help. Many men see their role in a very nar­row way and they nev­er reach the stage of con­scious­ness of get­ting past the provider line," he says.

Re­tired Holy Name Con­vent teacher, Car­lyle Singh, ap­plies the gen­der ques­tion to Al­ta's stu­dents: "In the main, lots of males will not ad­mit that they have this chal­lenge. We do get more men com­ing to the class nowa­days. Mind you, many of these same men might want the fe­male touch once they get in­to the class­room, but ul­ti­mate­ly the tone that is set is that every­body is equal and every­body has come to learn, whether they have a male or a fe­male talk­ing to them."

For the vast ma­jor­i­ty of these men, the de­ci­sion to vol­un­teer with Al­ta arose from their deep de­sire to con­tribute to their com­mu­ni­ties.

"For me the de­ci­sion was tak­en in the con­text of re­tire­ment... not want­i­ng to sit down at home and con­tem­plate the sky, but to get out and do some­thing that al­lows me to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty. In­ter­act­ing with the stu­dents and see­ing them progress af­ter one or two years brings an in­cred­i­ble per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion," re­flects re­tired diplo­mat, Philip Sealy.

Ian Georges is the odd man out. He's mat­ter-of-fact about his less-than-al­tru­is­tic mo­ti­va­tion for start­ing tu­tor­ing at Al­ta. As he neared age 60, he thought about tak­ing on one of those gigs as an Eng­lish lan­guage teacher in some far­away place. Al­ta, he thought, would get his teach­ing shoes wet.

"At first it was dri­ven by self­ish­ness and per­son­al mo­ti­va­tion. I thought: Why not find out if you like it? You might help some­body in need as a by-prod­uct'.

"Now I re­alise that I need Al­ta more than Al­ta needs me. It is un­be­liev­ably re­ward­ing... the best in­vest­ment I've ever made in my life. This is the first time in 30 years that I am ac­tu­al­ly do­ing some­thing I re­al­ly love," georges re­flects.

When asked what they've learned about them­selves through the Al­ta ex­pe­ri­ence, the an­swer is al­most unan­i­mous: they didn't know what pa­tient men they were.

All male teach­ers aren't the same, mind you. They have vary­ing views on T&T's lit­er­a­cy chal­lenge.

For Git­tens, who has had a life­long pas­sion for serv­ing the chil­dren whose spe­cial needs aren't ob­vi­ous, the flaws are to be found in our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

"We have to ask whether there is some­thing wrong with the stu­dents or some­thing wrong with the school­teach­ers. Even if you do not un­der­stand, you should feel as though the teach­ers are on your side. In schools, some of the teach­ers are not as ded­i­cat­ed as they could be. There are peo­ple who are not in it to help... they don't love their jobs and aren't con­cerned with whether or not it's done prop­er­ly," he con­tends.

But for Georges the fault of­ten lies with a so­ci­ety that does not suf­fi­cient­ly val­ue ed­u­ca­tion and sup­port chil­dren's ac­cess. Some of his stu­dents share sto­ries of hav­ing been, quite sim­ply, kept away from school. Oth­ers opt­ed not to go and didn't have adults in­sist.

"We want the smok­ing gun," he says, "but the prob­lem lies with us."

What­ev­er the ori­gins of the prob­lem, Al­ta pro­vides a so­lu­tion to which all these men firm­ly sub­scribe. They're a mot­ley crew in terms of age, pro­fes­sions and de­meanours but there are a few points on which they are unan­i­mous.

First, vol­un­teer­ing for Al­ta isn't just about a cou­ple hours, a cou­ple times each week. It re­quires an in­vest­ment of time, en­er­gy and emo­tion. But it's all worth it. Many of their stu­dents move from strength to strength–some can read the pa­per; oth­ers can fill out their own pass­port forms; oth­ers still suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete School Leav­ing and Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil ex­am­i­na­tions.

There's some­thing about the kind of per­son who would sign up for the Al­ta chal­lenge that com­bines with the phi­los­o­phy and form of the pro­gramme to cre­ate com­mit­ted, com­pas­sion­ate teach­ers... gen­der notwith­stand­ing.

–Cedri­ann Mar­tin is the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Of­fi­cer at the UN­AIDS Caribbean Re­gion­al Sup­port Team

�2 Play your part to build lit­er­a­cy. If you have time, vol­un­teer to be an Al­ta tu­tor, a Read­ing Cir­cle guide or to as­sist stu­dents on the com­put­er. If your time is al­ready booked, spon­sor an Al­ta stu­dent for the year (TT$500). Call 624-AL­TA (2582)or e-mail al­tatt@ya­hoo.com