Respect and acceptance of each other’s culture is critical to National Development

CONGRATULATIONS to Minister Anthony and his staff, as well as the Government and people of Guyana, for staging for successfully staging Mashramani 2015. This article somewhat relates to the broader objectives of Mashramani 2015.
Over the past five years these articles I have on several occasions addressed the issue of Tolerance and will continue in the future. I recently saw a TV documentary addressing this issue. It follows the lives of several people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and explores how they interact with each other. The main message is about the ‘collisions’ the characters have with each other throughout a particular timeline.

Congratulations to Minister Anthony and his staff, as well as the Government and people of Guyana, for staging for successfully staging Mashramani 2015.

Tolerance is broader than the narrow field of racial tolerance or intolerance. Tolerance at its most basic level is more an issue of culture than it is any one thing. The one flaw which was present in all the characters in the storywas not that they possessed any inherent unshakeable prejudice – it was their lack of cultural education.

My perspective on cultural education in Guyana may perhaps be limited to my own personal sphere of experience. That being said, I think that, judging from how our society is, how people in Guyana perceive each other, something else or something more needs to be done on how we educate our children and by extension our society about the various cultures which co-exist here.
One may be quick to envisage an upgraded cultural education component within the current social studies curriculum. The problem with this approach however is that cradling cultural education within the competitive academic environment of our primary and secondary system will very likely take away from the intent of the programme in the first place.
Another problem with the concept of a cultural education system being embedded within the official curriculum is that in Guyana, culture is largely underpinned by religion. Not that a religious-cultural combination is inherently problematic in itself – the great cultures of the world all have a strong and distinct spiritual or theological aspect to them, which incidentally informs the social. Christian culture values inform the Western social values, Hinduism or Sanatan Dharma is the foundation for the one billion people in India, while the Islamic influence is strong within the Middle East value system. In our multicultural society, we have all these religious cultures and while there demographic representation is not equal, representation on each front is very strong.

Mr. Keith Burowes: NAPS Special Recognition Awardee
Mr. Keith Burowes: NAPS Special Recognition Awardee

Therefore, to present information on religion-informed cultures within the official curriculum would leave the system open to allegations of proselytising on all sides. The question would quite reasonably be asked of where exactly would be the dividing line between indoctrination and education.
Cultural education has to take place primarily in the home, with assistance being provided through direct programmes with some institution, perhaps the Ethnic Relations Commission. One other thing parents may be able to do is keep an artifact or two from a religion that isn’t the family faith in their homes. These can act as conversation pieces for growing children and reinforce their understanding of other cultures as adults, without compromising the family faith.
Perhaps the mass media can be involved. For example, recently I’ve started watching African and Indian movies which are broadcast on local television. I would like to commend whoever is undertaking to air them, and it’s clear that the agenda behind the airings goes beyond entertainment, because I have been able to learn so much about African and Indian culture because of these movies. They have served to enhance of my perspective of Africa and India. As a side note if this comes across as a bit of product placement endorsement for the movie industry, it isn’t.
Whatever the methods, there needs to be an ongoing effort in Guyana to have young children in particular understand and appreciate the varying cultures that exist in society.
Not that attempts at cultural education haven’t been tried before and don’t continue up to this day. My point though is that the appreciation of other people’s cultures in Guyana – within the cultural education/appreciation paradigm – has to a great degree evolved into token representation or symbolic reenactment of events.
So, for example, we learn about African culture every August or about Amerindian culture every September. We learn about Diwali and Eid once a year as well. What we are doing is shoving education about cultures that have individually undergone thousands of years of development and evolution into a day or a week or a month of activity.
Additionally, this education is not progressive; the event-based nature of our mode of cultural education causes it to be necessarily limited and repetitive. The end result is that we really are not learning fully from the methods of public cultural education.
I would like to state emphatically that people have to co-exist. You cannot fundamentally change anyone’s culture and you should not seek to. Too often when we engage in cultural discussions, it is within a framework where each side thinks that the other has to accept its view as prerequisite to further engagement. Tolerance is less about accepting, than it is about understanding.
Mashramani is an excellent vehicle to promote unity in Guyana.
(By Keith Burrowes)

 

 

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