WHY COMPREHENSIVE LITERATURE SHOULD BE ON THE PRIMARY TIMETABLE

With the commanding presence of aspects of human weirdness, showcased in entertainment and freely expressed on social media today, as a potent part of what will be witnessed by young and old alike, there must have alternate substances to edit and dismiss mentally. What can be easily digested as a topic when it is not? I’ve seen some things on TIK-TOK that just alert the fact that some people may be trapped in self-created situations or were imposed upon them a long, long time ago. Those things were considered weird, off the limit, to use an old school term, for transgressing accepted norms of decency. While some are pretty cool and humorous, some are like, “Damn, is wuh going on deh?”

However, there can be no censorship when these modernisations rebuke the rules of another tainted memory that echo to other pretentious times. Looking at it square in the face, many of the personal social problems we have or witness are a result of age-old terms like “Yuh can’t hang yuh dutty linen pon lantern post”, so crimes behind closed doors are buried and victims are left to invent their own propositions towards who, or what the normal is, for them.

Sometimes to morph on the downside as ‘private revenge institutions.’ Responsibility was denied and became safe for urban or rural adult gossip. Most readers of this article are aware of some indiscretion that lingers in-house close or in the community that is set free in this age where everything seems to be common to emulate or justify. Where does reading in school come in? Not just following orders into dreary reading, but reading that allows participation, where text, whether in sentences or paragraphs, is distributed to students to express in the mood required to capture and convey a moral or principled construct as a deterrent to the mixed-up moods and attitudes, that will knock at our mental door, proposing and seeking justification, sometimes from a foreign suggestion, with a familiar private trigger.

To clarify the term ‘private revenge institutions.’ Most of the definitions for actions that were defined as social abnormalities were not and still in most cases are not understood as subject to genetic causes, but instead to the term, “duh person does behave suh, because of advantage tek pon dem, when deh was small.” The thing with old school thinking is that it’s not all wrong, as traumatic experiences in early childhood do play a part in moulding deviant attitudes. However, modern areas of behavioural studies cannot be ignored. It must be included. So, the old school belief that “yuh got to train de child to be what it must be” is related in the definition above. But it has to catch up. That’s where the drama of reading can offer parallels, updates and references toward enhanced decision-making. Some time ago our group RESCU (A small anti-Narcotic-unsponsored group) was called by two hands-on headmistresses to talk to students. Because reading is a top priority directive in our programme, we went ahead to the first school. I attempted to explain that the Inca and Aztec civilisations used cocaine and peyote on human sacrifices, when a teacher interrupted me, informing me that History was not taught in the school. Still, the wise mistress went downstairs while the session was conducted and had collected sticks of marijuana thrown through the school windows by students, who possibly thought that we might just order a search, not fully aware of who we really were. Had we completed that historical reference, it would have reinforced the idea that no mind-altering substance has been established to be mentally improving for users or ‘victims’ in the long run. Every plant, vegetable and botanical has two sides to its nature, based on how we use it. The other headmistress insisted that we focus on the males, which we did. It was unbelievable, but real; unfortunately, the footage for that was somehow destroyed. Our conclusion, mentioned before in a previous article, revolved around the culture of reading and the sphere of inquiry that enters the narrative and the habit to explore hyped assertions, and sub-culture dogmas. Literature comes in two forms, present the facts so far… and edutainment (literature and drama based on the accepted ‘So far facts’). Most likely, in the age we live, this can be adopted excluding the suggestive source.

What is important is the implementation of mechanisms to include reading and inquiry in Guyana’s youth culture, as they become the next potential market of exploitation and to halt the disabling retardation towards that aim. Gangster hip-hop videos with false values are pointed to in America as responsible for youth value misguidance. Here was the same when TV hit Guyana in the ‘90s -2000s coupled with a still haunting gangster culture of our own.

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