February 21 2002, 899 words
People generally marry people of the same intellectual level, so it's safe to assume that Education Minister Hazel Manning is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. And, were there any doubt, her level of intelligence has been amply demonstrated by her initial response to the latest round of school violence: getting children to pray every morning.
This strategy will, of course, be even less effective than that of Mrs. Manning's shallow-brained predecessor, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who put "morals and values" on the school curriculum. I wrote at the time that this would have no effect at all, but let me assure this was no great prophecy, just as it is not hard to predict that Mrs. Manning will continue to display even greater idiocies in the coming weeks.
I make no excuses for being so harsh on either of these women. Persad-Bissessar played politics with this country's children, and the devout Mrs. Manning is now doing exactly the same. Both of them helped, and are helping, to perpetuate a culture and an education system which will ensure that the children who most need help will become social deviants and most likely die at an early age, probably from murder or from HIV.
Me harsh? Rest assured that I am, in fact, restraining myself greatly.
My column last week, in which I demonstrated that children are socialised by the adult culture but not by their parents per se, drew quite a number of responses. Somewhat to my surprise, most of these readers agreed with the thesis. One reader also asked me to suggest some possible solutions.
The ultimate solution, which I pointed out last week, is to change the adult culture. But I also wrote that this would not happen, since such change must start with the society's elites. And, in these uncertain times, there are some things we can be reasonably sure about: 1. Basdeo Panday isn't going to become a truthful man. 2. Patrick Manning isn't going to put his country or party before himself and his rent. 3. Ish Galbaransingh and Jack Warner aren't going to give lectures on ethical business practices. 4. Iwer George and Sugar Aloes aren't going to write clever or well-researched lyrics. 5. Pastor Cuffie is not going to start driving a Lada. 6. Sat Maharaj isn't going to praise douglas. 7. Well, space doesn't allow the list to continue - and I mean that in the cosmological sense.
These, I'm afraid, are the adults who define our culture's dominant values: self-aggrandisement, hypocrisy, unethicality, materialism, mediocrity, stupidity, bigotry. The existence of adults like David Rudder and Peter Minshall and Noor Hassanali and Denis Solomon and Lloyd Best and Diana Mahabir-Wyatt - who represent the culture's other values of creativity, intelligence, social conscience, tolerance, integrity - cannot stave off the former group's baleful influence.
This is demonstrated by an examination of the straddling generation. The younger politicians of the UNC and PNM display all the hypocrisy, selfishness, materialism, racism and absence of ethics which have brought our society to its present sorry pass. Prominent young people like Anand Ramlogan and Dwight Yorke amply demonstrate how the younger generation has absorbed and magnified all the shortcomings of the older. The upcoming intellectuals, trapped in the bogus paradigms of post-modernism and feminism and religiosity, display an alarming incapacity for analytical thinking.
So that is the problem. What is the solution? Clearly we need a social and cultural revolution, but the people who speak most glibly about the need for 'revolutionary thinking' are those who have nothing but conventional recommendations, like prayers, propaganda, and punishment.
REALLY revolutionary social measures that would help mitigate certain social problems - e.g. legalising abortion, decriminalising marijuana, banning prayers in school, promoting condom use, legalising prostitution - well, obviously none of these has a hope of getting off the ground in this hypocritical place.
Since the adults and young adults are lost causes, it seems to me that there is only one way our society can transform itself in timely fashion. We have to focus on the children, and that means focusing on the education system.
First off, we must increase spending on it. All developed and successfully developing nations spend at least seven percent of GNP on education. We spend just 4.5 percent. If we increase spending, it mustn't be spent mainly on building new schools, but on teacher training and curriculum development.
As regards the latter, three essential courses would be sex education (at primary school level, because secondary, when the hormones kick in, is too late), science history and philosophy (at secondary and tertiary level) and ethics (at all levels). There should also be more funding of arts course, particularly in music, drama, and in Carnival Arts training.
There must also be a serious effort to increase tertiary enrolment, because as world-renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs pointed out when he visited Trinidad this week, no country can be competitive without higher education in this globalised world. In a related measure, we also have to try to attract our expatriate community, especially the successful Afro-Trinis, to return here to live and work.
These measures could help inculcate modern values which, hopefully, the children would carry into adult life. If that happens, Trinidad and Tobago could truly become the paradise we boast it is, but which boast is merely just another of our many self-deceptions.
Copyright ©2002 Kevin Baldeosingh