We do not have the tens of millions of souls that enable modern first world nations to quietly step ahead, leaving entire stubborn populations to be forgotten in the mould of obsolete traditions, to be referred to as archaeological case studies, living reflections of past times.The seasons of functional time spaces are changing faster than ever before. What was en vogue twenty years ago has to evolve to exist today, or it will definitely disappear. If you are reading this article and are a current teacher or retired, then you are crucial to this process.
I’m suggesting an “Adult Education-Restore Project” to confront the simple fact that we have too many illiterate citizens of a productive age. Recently I had eye-opening discussions with a village chairman [he also indicated that this was affecting other village chairs] concerning this matter and he lamented his predicament at how easily rumours became fact, and his inability to dispatch the same.
Traditional means of doing business relied on scruples. This virtue has long eroded, more so over the last twenty years. The predominant traditional cultural methods of sustenance referred to, entails the following workers: “bush bottom” porknockers, timber grant employees, fishermen, cutlass weeder, shovel men, cane cutters, cash crop farmers and livestock producers. They are all faced with inevitable challenges in the near future, for the on the horizon lies the cloud of GMO influences, which are sure to creep into our safe haven.
Sources have already indicated that this uncertain technology is already here. Who deciphers for our farmers whether GMO crops are beneficial to them and the nation, whether it’s good or dangerous? We already don’t trust much of what appears in our markets, what is sprayed to encourage forced ripening. I can recall discussing with a school mate, Veronica Boyce, mid-90s, about why fishermen at Mahaica were being forced to go further out to sea for fish. The fact is that they were fishing through breeding periods, wiping out young fish crops that were dumped on the foreshore, unsuitable by species for the market. She lamented that 90% of the fishermen could not read and would interpret any oral information implying change with suspicion and disbelief.
It is not impossible to conceive that procedures to test produce will necessarily come on stream locally, and large farms with certified organic produce replacing defaulters. Rather, it should be better that the current farmers evolve to be the organic producers. I had developed a comic book in the late 90s featuring two farmers BAINS& BOODOO for the Pesticides and Toxic Control Board, headed by Basudeo Dwarka.
That was initiated after I had written a letter concerning a citizen who had died after eating a papaya. That book instructed farmers on how to use pesticides etc. I’m not sure of the continued success. Dwarka even wanted to develop animation skits, but that never came through. A sewing course would not produce a seamstress or tailor without that person being able to read catalogues and trade books on preferable cloth types, and to understand techniques for requested styles.
This also applies to all traditional industries, especially those areas that were guided by passed down oral practices not documented, that were developed by trial and error as with the traditional village midwives whose wealth of knowledge, I pray, was recorded some place. The ability to read and record has to be resuscitated; experience learnt need not be ignored, but rather incorporated in the current methodology.
It was not the primitive shovel men with their traditional knowledge of yesteryear that breeched the conservancy in 2005 plunging us into death and misery. Nor are they the traditional pork knockers with the loyalty to their fellow villagers that are now causing so much death in the Gold Bush, through cavalier approaches to mining, singularly fuelled by greed.
This is where the crisis lies. I must commend the police force on their career day recently among the schools, and this is a way to correct the problem that they themselves had. The major hurdle lies in the villages and townships across our nation, especially in the prisons where the development of moral logic based on the transference of positions, responsibility of choice, and the alternative relevance of education can be debated and coerced.
Retired teachers with their faculties intact need not be wasted. Subtle methods can be employed towards evolving the workforce engaged in the mentioned traditional economic activities, and to save the embarrassment of adults not wanting to be taunted for not been able to read and write, who, I have learnt, may belong to a second or third generation in that condition. Each time space of our cultural experience should be recorded for the guidance and enlightenment of the coming generation, who need not guess their way.