SOME years ago, RESCU, a group I had initiated and which was aligned with the African Cultural and Development Association (ACDA), paid a few visits to schools to address the drug problem that has become prevalent.

A particular headteacher in South Georgetown asked the group to have a discussion with a difference: to address particularly the ‘young males’ whom this worried ‘educator’ had insisted were in trouble. That teacher’s concern was correct, based on the findings of our engagement. One group of young males had one character that we recognised, which echoed the obvious negative responses to our questions.

During my service on the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC), we visited a location in Essequibo where we observed a library overtaken with dust and obvious lack of use, if any use as the state of things alluded, had ever occurred. Upon enquiring at a community meeting about the closed library not much later, within the same location, an official confidently informed us that theirs was a cattle rearing community, and learning to read was unnecessary.

This was unbelievable, but that was how it was in this person’s consciousness. But in contrast, we did visit the home of the location’s lone poet, which echoed in our minds that perhaps between the elderly writer and this frightening young official, as opposing stations of social methodologies, all may not be lost, depending on who claims victory, subject to the part society plays.

Gone are the days when automaton labour was done without research and the habit of exploring the environment. The very methods of that labour can be described as functional, without curiosity or some aspect of the need to know more. The current deception that everything can be accessed easily on a smartphone is a common error of our day, based on the multiplicity of most items and knowledge-based subject matter that require the awareness of nuances at every level of engagement that can otherwise be taken for granted.

Most of my youthful peers could read and read books. It can be argued that we had no TV or smartphones, but reading was on the timetable of studies, and reading was not the same as reading Literature. Literature was what we explored, understood and executed at examination time towards the collective marks we accessed to move on to a higher class.

Reading constituted class participation, and could be taken from what we called a storybook or from the newspapers, based on the teacher’s priority.
Most people watch an item on TV or on their so-very-smart-phone, but are they any the wiser at the end of the day as to what the extended, not-mentioned chapters of the item are? Not really, because those details can only be clarified by several books by authors from both sides of the opposing conflicts or arguments based on the subject matter.

This includes, for example, matters about the conflict in Africa, specifically the area politically called the Middle East, or the new laws to limit ‘AI’ users from illegal usage of IPR-Artworks.
If you agree with where I’m going, then there should be an agreement with varied Literature becoming a must-be-addressed subject student selected from a table of areas for participation towards a compulsory test for a must-be-passed subject.

Back then, we did compositions to challenge our understanding of the subjects discussed. I think that there even were identified content volumes to be elaborated on, of no less than a specific number of required words to complete identified compositions. That experience pushed us on to explore, as young adults, additional sources for the day’s discussions or just to correct misguided interpretations on limited previously explored and absorbed data.

Reading cannot be taken for granted, nor can the effort to examine what is said before you conclude that you should file it in your library of things known. Some time ago, a member of a group that I was in made a historical comment in the presence of some of our hosts. I got that feeling most of us get when a colleague says something ridiculous that you know and thought that he should have also known. Our hosts looked at him and then at the other two of us in the vehicle.

I immediately corrected him, and this brought an ease of tension. My other colleague transformed the tension into humour by alluding that my colleague here just clarified history that we all should know, while our other colleague who spoke first, always remind us that there is history, then there is ‘His Story’. We have no choice. Reading in a world where ‘The Con’ is out of control can be a redeeming decision-making companion.