I am serving on a national platform part-time, which from the inception I could not have determined the acceptance of the intrusion it would have beyond its part-time definition. The subject of this column is the realisation that if we listen and have the imagination to interpret what is said, we can indeed help to fix what is broken.

I cannot place a specific timeline on when our education system was broken, whether it was a square peg in a round hole or the collective cluelessness of an inept political system. This matters for the ‘Historical record’ but must bear upon what needs to be done now. So heed the petitions of the experienced voices of those who have contributed to a past but proven system and expand it to meet the needs of today. Some years ago, I read a book titled ‘Over schooled but Under Educated’ by John Abbott with Heather Taggart’. That book does not define our situation, but it relates to it in many ways. I pray that our educators have read it, its narrative is compelling.

On a recent engagement from a local audience, a woman stood up and described herself as a ‘coordinator’. This woman was once a teacher and from that source of knowledge, she defined her predicament which seems to have been haunting her for several years now. The least but nevertheless important was the fact that school children no longer sang National songs in school, but more important was that though music, art and drama were on the curriculum these were not taught. But English, Mathematics and Science were taught, and that these were crucial to their future livelihoods yet more was required.

She lamented that the rounded development of students demanded stimulation of other faculties which the untaught subjects would provide. I recognised what was being said. We have created a media cult of exam passes, celebrating passes of 17-20 subjects. No investigative analysis has emerged in Guyana on what the whole of education is supposed to achieve in the end much less how to go about maximising a model of education that we can boast morphed into enlightenment.

What is ironic is that we are enthralled by the dramatic models of movie heroes whose reverence comes in a package of ivory league education that permits them to also be astute in music, art and culture collectively, from Mr Bond, Indiana Jones onwards, yet this definition of a human super intellect misses us as to what classroom exposure could have inspired scripting such characters.

I have learnt from observation like most other citizens that pay attention, recognising that there’s a lot of information that can be accessed to interpret from our mundane, grass root utterances that there is a subconscious view that defines how we perceive the metaphysics of ‘he got book education, and he’s a wise man’. Our cultural inheritance has got to be taken into context rather than ignored as just proverbs. The terms like “Brigah Bobby”, “He bright, but he ent right” and others insist that we explore through proverbs the innate expectations that obviously transcend our coming to the new world, with an attitude that expects the fusion of education and enlightenment.

I can recall when Disney entered Russia following the cold war truce, an analogy was made that the Russian child had lost the faculty of humour. What I have mentioned must not be confused as naive, for the reality that both old and new religions have instructed us that from the Trickster Gods, Apep, Ahriman, Chernobog, to the Biblical Devil are all wise but evil aspects of both God and transferred human nature.

The arts are not a hindrance to a science and technology, social science education, but the child that composes colour schemes, verse and becomes a character in stage drama interacts with that universe we call the active imagination, and will encounter a discourse of narratives from the stumbling dawn of the human experience.

The absence of tapping into those areas of the mind might well hinder us from grappling with the social challenges that will test our capacity to interpret ourselves. A few years ago I participated in reading and evaluating some creative work. On completion, I implored two authorities to find help for some participants, who from what they had written alluded to dark places. They indulged me, confessing that some of the participants were indeed troubled and had found through the creative process a mechanism of self-counselling. So far, none of them has stepped over the edge.

Most of the areas that suicides and alcohol abuse occur in are regimented into work and the school systems that the coordinator lamented, void of sports and cultural activities, is there a connection? A good friend of mine, Hubert Edwards, a former operations officer of the Peoples Militia told me of a fascinating experience he had with a conversation with the late President Forbes Burnham. Eddie was astonished that their conversation was not rooted in the politics of the day, but on books, CLR James, Franz Fanon, philosophy and the development of the creative mind.

Burnham was ahead of his time; today most of the old communist world is grounded in seeking to awaken the independent creativity the closed-minded authoritarian state repressed. The coordinator, the retired teacher in that southern region of Guyana understands the need for the rounded school room, as much as this quote from the book I mentioned refers to: ”What the present curriculum is not about is strengthening pupils’ all-around ability [like the wings and legs of the hens] to sustain themselves should our ways of living have to change so much that a priority is put on adaptability, not conformity” the latter section of the sentence, is where we are now.