OVER a decade ago a senior teacher, the wife of a business colleague and a woman who had taught my wife at the Campbellville Government School closed down the evening classes that catered for the children of some of the country’s wealthiest parents, her almost sad response to the wordless question I had asked with my readable expression was: “They have no references.” What this elegant lady was referring to was not that they would not pass examinations and get nice, and even important well-paying jobs. But will the mind be able to be trained, whether self-trained or to be sensitive to the worlds beyond self and conspicuous consumption? To be curious enough, to question and investigate the human environment that envelops the very authority that they will, or may house themselves in, as they proceed to set the dangerous stage of a moat around a gated dwelling, where the analytical perception, trained by exploring the imagination to evolve from the inception, into a youthful interpretation of the world that encircled that childhood evolution, would have enabled the skill to ‘empathise and recognise’ that the answer may not rest with the moat and the walls around the gated township, but instead, hearing what is whispered and comprehending the conversations and expectations of the ‘Grounded exchange.’

What this teacher meant by ‘no references’ can be translated as having a void of symbolic and interpretive language which relates largely to the realms of literature, for example, terms in conversation and emphasise on the layers of ideas, like “That was his Achilles heel” or “Common sense born before book” or “Conscience ain’t need loudspeaker”. To put it simply, proverbs, quotes, cultural, religious, or historical references all come from habits of reading or been read to at a younger age. The ancients sustained admirable civilisations through the drama and dance of storytelling, and not so long ago in Guyana there were Anancy stories, Jumbie stories, Pork-Knocker stories and fairy tales (the latter based on European and borrowed folk tales). This is a background taken for granted, but these cultural practices contributed to stimulation of the imagination, which is an essential faculty in applying such metaphors learnt, to every-day re-enactments by current characters high and low, whom we will encounter that will summon reminiscences of a ‘Brigah Bobby’ here and there, in comparison to a solid person, a useful part of the socio-cultural toolkit for sensible assessment and decision- making, provided by grassroots sociology. It was to the absence of the above that the teacher referred to the lack of references.

In primary and secondary school, ‘Reading’ was part of the weekly school timetable during the old school age. Today, with more subjects to grapple with, I’m not sure how this essential area is being guided. With the technology available it needs to be guided because it would be easy for young and not so young to be tied to the over-burden of gossip-based, and opinion information on social media, and worse including mysticism on the net and social media, though surfing is essentially not a bad thing, a survey should be done to enquire of the early teens and pre-teens about ‘who are their favourite authors’ with a direct request of probable hobby and long term reading on career interests, it would be an interesting survey. Recently, a four-year-old relative of mine spent a few weekends at my home, and I was startled at how he would find his way on my phone to Cartoon character animation stuff. I did admire how he comfortably handled the phone — it’s his world. Then that little voice whispered to me to transcend my admiration and chum-up with the little person, so I started with alphabet characters, he knew them. The problem came when I put them together, the way my pre-school teacher did before I started school in ‘little ABC’ to ‘Big ABC’. Then to ‘First Standard’ yep, a couple of hundred years ago. He couldn’t understand common and capital usage for letters, nor could he identify them together as Cat, Dog etc. I had opened a ‘Pandora’s box ‘ on the task me and this little Pickney have. I went down to Austin’s and bought chalk and a blackboard for our next fun encounter. Seriously, I think learning should be fun and must be encouraged, not driven by fear.

We live in a much more complicated world, which requires an in-house coverage of the most basic skill of being able to read, to be transferred to upcoming family members and friends. With COVID’s grip upon the world, economic options are not going to be the same for a long time. A retreat to simpler, but effective methods must be considered, and the culture developed in the formative years will remain an active influence of the young adult and possible leader of the future. In 2011, I purchased a recommended text “Over-schooled, but under-educated” by John Abbot with Heather Mac Taggart. The book is based on an argued crisis in education. It’s not a book that can be discussed in an article, however, I close with an extract from this same text for observation and examination, as locally we hear the blame on the school for the behaviour of children, we should add this extract to the debate: “ And here is the problem that seems to be getting worse; increasing numbers of today’s adolescents suffer from the fact that their parents haven’t grown op [sic] themselves, and so have nothing to say to their children about how to become effective parents themselves.” The reality is both the schools and society are occupied by the humanity identified in the extract, so how do we start to deal with it?

Note: CORRECTION- briefly in last week’s article Saddam Hussein was mentioned as responsible for the 1975 OPEC attack. A literary source related that Ilich Ramirez Sanchez — aka Carlos the Jackal — identified Qathafi as the source of that incident.