when there is no national vision the society, including its education, rots and stinks

TWO weeks ago I was invited by the Pan African Movement-Guyana to be part of a panel discussion on the topic, “The crisis in Education in Guyana and its impact on African Guyanese.” The event was organized to mark Africa Civilization day. I intended to do last week’s column on my remarks at that event, but Chris Gayle intervened. In a sense, it turned out not to be a diversion from the theme of education, for the Gayle issue reflects in a real sense the crisis of education in the Caribbean. Here I am talking about education in its broadest sense to include identity, history and culture.
Often the discourse on education in Guyana tends to understandably focus on the education system and practice. As helpful as that discourse is, it invariably ends up as a blame-game—teachers blame parents, parents blame teachers, teachers blame students and teachers and parents blame the Education Ministry. In the end nothing meaningful comes out of those exchanges.
Shortly after taking office, I had, with the blessings of the Minister of Education, volunteered to organize “Education Groundings” in the communities to facilitate frank exchanges between the Minister and parents, teachers and students. My objective was two-fold—fact-finding by the minister and putting in place the building blocks of a broad education conversation going forward. Unfortunately, after three such groundings—in Dartmouth, Buxton, and Stanleytown WBD, they were discontinued. Suffice to say I am still keen on continuing that exercise for I think such interventions represent the essence of a democratic culture.
But back to my comments at the Pan African Forum. My central argument is that what we are referring to as a crisis in education is really the consequence of a crisis in the larger society. We keep trying to solve our problems in education within the narrow confines of the education system. But the problem is that there is no overall direction in our education system. We keep cutting and pasting; digging holes to fill holes. Even when we take forward- looking initiatives, these are not linked to a holistic praxis.
If, for example, you repair the buildings at UG but do nothing to improve the quality of students entering the institutions, upgrade the curriculum, better equip the lecturers with the necessities to effectively do their jobs and have an up-to-date library, then you are back to square one. If you reintroduce music to the public schools but do not twin that with a robust civic education aimed at creating a purposeful enabling environment for effective learning of the so-called academic subjects, then you are back to square one.
My humble view is that we need an overall vision for education going forward. But that vision has to come from a larger vision for the society. Education, like the economics and the politics, has to be grounded in that larger national vision. I am arguing that for the last 30 years of our independence, we have existed without a national vision. We surrendered our Independence vision to the dictates of Structural Adjustment and Globalization, coupled with our narrow internal politics of domination. In the end our society became rudderless. We can trace the root of our decline in education standards and output to the transition in the 1980s away from our Independence vision.
Yes, we did have an independence vision; we had no choice. We were rejecting and overcoming the colonial vision of inequality and inhumanity. Hence the independence vision of a society grounded in equality of opportunity and outcome; a society that privileged our collective humanity. Colonial vision meant that we were not fit to govern ourselves; we could not exist in a state of freedom. The Independence vision, therefore, was grounded in community and nationhood—self-determination. It is out of that vision came the education praxis of the first two decades of independence. Free education from nursery aimed at actualising the larger vision of equality; a Guyanese and Caribbean education grounded in our own history and reality aimed at engendering a sense of national pride.
It is out of that education praxis that came the men who conquered the cricketing world for our Caribbean, the many academics and artists who have gone on to contribute to world civilization. It is that education that made it possible for little boys and girls from poor villages to go to school in those spaces and get the same education as the mostly rich boys and girls at Queens College and Bishops. Free education from nursery to university democratised education in Guyana.
It was education in the service of a larger vision. The teachers were recruited from a nation steeped in a broad consciousness of our Guyanese and Caribbean selves. The students came from homes and communities brimming with the independence logic. Parents knew that education meant escape from poverty and freedom from want.
We surrendered that praxis beginning in the 1980s in the name of the MARKET. The market vision of individualism as a substitute for community and nation took root. Is there any surprise that our teachers became petty money-makers rather than educators? Is there any surprise that our governments, bowing to the dictates of the IMF-World Bank imperatives, no longer invested in education as national development? They invest in buildings and not in children. Is there any surprise that the schoolroom is not seen as a space of upward mobility? Our young people drop out of schools and take up residence in the dance-halls from which they seem to derive their sense of purpose. Is there any surprise that Chris Gayle said what he said?
Is there any surprise that in the last three decades we produced the most obscene government in our independence experience? What is not always said is that the offending PPP government succeeded in getting most of the nation to support or accommodate its obscenity. When there is no national vision the society, including its education, rots and stinks.
I have been calling for an address to the nation by the president on his vision for Guyana. His address to parliament on Thursday came closest to doing that. But his restatement and upgrading of the Independence vision in his address to parliament on Thursday went almost unnoticed. Not surprising—we have become a nation that is impatient with “too much talk.” His address should be mandatory study for all Guyanese, starting with his ministers. It should be discussed in the communities. I suggest that copies of it be put in the hands and heads of each teacher and that the ministry go back to the drawing board and begin to craft an education praxis based on the president’s vision. Is anybody listening?

More of Dr. Hinds’s ‘writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com. Send comments to dhinds6106@aol.com