“As the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, I be­lieve that ed­u­ca­tion is not sim­ply about pass­ing ex­am­i­na­tions. It is about un­der­stand­ing where we came from, who we are, and what kind of coun­try we have the pow­er to be­come. Our his­to­ry is not some­thing locked away in a text­book.”

Dr Michael Dowlath,

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion

Ear­li­er this week, it was a joy to hear about 300 stu­dents loud­ly pro­claim­ing “For­ward ever, back­ward nev­er”, a slo­gan as­so­ci­at­ed with the labour move­ment, in the au­di­to­ri­um of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do. The event was the in­au­gur­al Sec­ondary School Lec­ture Se­ries or­gan­ised by the Of­fice of the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for San Fer­nan­do West, for form four stu­dents of sec­ondary schools in the Vic­to­ria Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict.

The stu­dents were prompt­ed by Mr Os­wald War­rick, ex­ec­u­tive trustee of the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) at the end of a vi­brant and in­ter­ac­tive speech on the his­to­ry be­hind Labour Day. Pri­or to Mr War­rick’s speech, I had done a pre­sen­ta­tion on Eman­ci­pa­tion and In­di­an Ar­rival Day.

I com­mend the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Michael Dowlath and his team for this ini­tia­tive. I be­lieve that there is an ur­gent need to teach his­to­ry to our na­tion’s stu­dents.

I re­mem­ber hav­ing a dis­cus­sion was a group about this a while ago and the gen­er­al re­sponse was “oh gosh, how much things al­lyuh want stu­dents to learn. Dey done have so much sub­jects.”

But you know what, if it is one sub­ject that can help to re­al­ly cre­ate a stronger sense of pride and na­tion­al­ism in T&T, that sub­ject will be his­to­ry. And we can cer­tain­ly do with a deep­er sense and pride and na­tion­al­ism in our coun­try!

Sad­ly, there are some schools which do not even have his­to­ry as a sub­ject in forms one to three. Some schools in­clude it in So­cial-Stud­ies but I think that takes away from its im­por­tance and don’t al­low for suf­fi­cient time to let stu­dents re­al­ly un­der­stand our his­to­ry.

Al­so, the num­ber of stu­dents choos­ing his­to­ry at the CSEC and CAPE lev­els has de­clined over the years. This is not sur­pris­ing, since his­to­ry is seen as a bor­ing sub­ject as teach­ers strug­gle to bring it alive in the class­room giv­en cur­ricu­lum and time con­straints.

The re­al­i­ty is that his­to­ry has to com­pete with oth­er sub­jects as stu­dents are usu­al­ly giv­en two or three sub­jects grouped to­geth­er and are re­quired to choose one. When in fact his­to­ry should be made com­pul­so­ry. I mean, stu­dents should not have to give up his­to­ry be­cause they want to study sci­ence or busi­ness. Schools need to or­gan­ise sub­ject choic­es so that stu­dents in every stream can study his­to­ry, with­out hav­ing to sac­ri­fice sub­jects need­ed for their ca­reers.

The con­tent-heavy syl­labi at the form five and six lev­els don’t help much ei­ther. Across the Caribbean, en­tries for CSEC Caribbean His­to­ry fell by over 17 per cent be­tween 2013 and 2017, ac­cord­ing to CXC’s His­to­ry Task Force.

The de­cline prompt­ed CXC to in­ves­ti­gate why few­er stu­dents were choos­ing His­to­ry and what could be done to re­verse this trend. What I don’t un­der­stand is why, af­ter CXC in­ves­ti­gat­ed this, it would pro­duce a re­vised syl­labus that is even more con­tent-heavy, es­pe­cial­ly when get­ting stu­dents to read and en­gage with lengthy ma­te­r­i­al is al­ready a chal­lenge.

One on­ly has to read so­cial me­dia com­ments on so­cio-po­lit­i­cal is­sues to un­der­stand why it is so im­por­tant that we teach T&T’s his­to­ry from a very young age. You see such un­in­formed and com­plete­ly in­cor­rect state­ments about our his­to­ry. I can on­ly as­sume it is be­cause these in­di­vid­u­als were nev­er taught the cur­rent, un­bi­ased ver­sion of our his­to­ry. Maybe if they know our his­to­ry the pro­pa­gan­da and at­tempt at brain­wash­ing oth­ers will be less promi­nent.

I feel like his­to­ry is so valu­able and it is so im­por­tant for every­one to know our coun­try’s his­to­ry but yet its im­por­tance is un­der­val­ued. Every so of­ten we hear some­one in high po­si­tion say­ing that the younger gen­er­a­tion needs to learn our coun­try’s his­to­ry but then noth­ing is done about it.

When Dr Kei­th Row­ley came in­to of­fice, he re­peat­ed­ly pub­licly voiced frus­tra­tion that T&T’s his­to­ry was not a manda­to­ry part of the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school cur­ricu­lum. The on­ly tan­gi­ble out­put from these state­ments was the pub­li­ca­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of an edit­ed book but full cur­ricu­lum re­form to make lo­cal his­to­ry com­pul­so­ry across all lev­els did not fol­low.

That is why I com­mend the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion for or­gan­is­ing the Sec­ondary School Lec­ture Se­ries. I re­al­ly hope that oth­er Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment will fol­low. It doesn’t have to be on­ly in a school set­ting you know. We have youth clubs all over, even there we can teach it. The main thing is to make sure that our younger gen­er­a­tions can iden­ti­fy with the things that sur­round them in their every­day lives; that they will ap­pre­ci­ate their coun­try and take pride in what our an­ces­tors have built.

Those stu­dents who at­tend­ed the lec­ture at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege re­mind­ed us that “for­ward ever, back­ward nev­er” still has mean­ing for a younger gen­er­a­tion. If we want them to take our coun­try for­ward, we must make sure they know the his­to­ry that brought us here.