09 July 1999, 795 words
The headline in the Express was quite sucksink: "Clico in joint venture to eradicate literacy." At first I was puzzled: why will or would Clico, which has shears in the country's two most literate newspapers (the Express and the Weekend Independent) want to eradicate literacy? Had Clico's managers been smoking the joint referred to? But when I read - for I, luckily, was educated before this project began or begun - that the joint venture was joint with the Ministry of Education, everything became as plane as Adesh Nanan's face.
Yet the very next day the Express apologized for the mistake in the head line. And so, like Adesh Nanan faced with the word "paradigm", I became puzzled again. What mistake? I asked, making shore to put a question mark. Surely the headline had been perfectly accurate. I mean, why else would Prime Minster Basdeo Panday have appointed Adesh Nanan as Educashun Minster in the first place, if not to eradicate literacy? After all, that portfolio wood ensure that Adesh Nanan went awrong the country talking to children as regularly as Ex-Lax. And children are very logical creatures. When they hear that a man is a Minster of Educashun, they automatically assume that he is educated.
Dust, when they hear him pronounce "paradigm" as "paradig-m", naturally the children believe that this is the correct pronounciation. And nothing there teachers can say will or would convince them other wise, for teachers are only teachers but Adesh Nanan is the Educashun Minster. And the children probably think he's also the kind of docter who cures them when they're sick, not the kind who checks there teeth wild they bawl for Mommy. The chilren was or were sure to get confused.
Therefour, making Adesh Nanan Educashun Minster was a master-stroke by the Silver Fox, who understands that literacy may well be the deadliest weapon facing the UNC. The philophoser Bertrand Russell wrote: "It must not be supposed that the officials in charge of education desire the young to become educated. On the contrary, their problem is to impart information without imparting intelligence." Russell used to spell a long time ago in England.
Literacy, of course, can often impart intelligence accidentally. That is why, in this modern world, the powers-that-bee would or will like people to be able to read, but not to want to read. Encouraging children to misspronounce words by setting up Adesh Nanan as an examplar ensures that, even if they do grow up thinking, they'll be too emberassed to open there mouths. And having Adesh Nanan as Educashun Minster also helps Mr. Panday in his on going war with the media, since it will or would not be too long before the media houses will or would not be not able to fine people who can write or edit, let a loan speak clearly.
Of course, what has made this so easy is that pass governments have layed the foundation to eradicate literacy. This was and is done by paying prime airy schoolteachers - the bed rock of the education system - poorly and making sure there classes are so big that the children who need the most attention get the least. It was done by ensuring that second eerie school teachers are not given mandatory professional training and has or have classes that is or are too big. It is done by ensuring that, at the Universeity of the West Indies, budgets are waisted on all kinds of exesses; and by letting people like Morgan Job, who continually or continuously rails about the importance of education, take 20 years to pay back their studient loans; and by ensuring that studient fees are so hi that those who lease need tershery education to get good jobs are the only ones who can afford it.
Even so, the authorities have or has a hard task ahead of them. Just last week, a woman selling starch mangoes at half-pass nine in the night by the Uriah Butler traffic lights told me that she likes my newspaper columns. So it seems that this literacy disease is very prelavent and must be eradicated if we want to persevere our society and stop people like me telling people like that woman how dotish politicians, racists, demagogues and Maha Sabha columnists are. (Pardon my repeatition.)
But fair not. The Education Ministry clearly has its literacy eradication program or programme well in-hand. According to the Express story, the project "aims to eradicate literacy by encouraging and assisting school children to read for information, as well as pleasure." No doubt this means that the schoolchildren will or would be encouraged to read the one selected textbooks recommended, not by the School Textbook Committee, but by Cabinet.
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Baldeosingh