IN the social and economic revolutions that have quietly progressed in Guyana, the programme of renewing and modernising the educational system has been most notable. New subjects such as Computers and Artificial Intelligence are being introduced in schools, and the old subjects are being brought up to date at the primary and secondary levels. A serious effort is being made to extend tertiary and university education to a large part of the population by, for example, the GOAL Scholarship scheme and making attendance at the University of Guyana free.

In the drive to modernise primary and secondary schools, the traditional philosophy which has always informed Guyanese education from the 19th century—Mens Sana in Corpore Sano (A Healthy Mind in a Healthy Body)—was forgotten, and this failure occurred particularly in the Georgetown schools.

In the older Georgetown primary and secondary schools, in keeping with this philosophy, they always had school gardens or a carpentry room, or the students would attend the Ketley Woodwork Centre and play cricket and football in open land near the school. In a few schools like Queen’s College, the school grounds catered to both the playground and garden, as well as a workshop area in the school building. Today, these facilities are a distant memory in Georgetown schools.

In the schools which are being refurbished or newly built in the countryside and interior, there is always enough land available to provide adequate playgrounds and gardens, and every school should have them. The planners should not lose sight of this.

In the past, the school garden was linked to the Nature Study class; today, it will be to the Biology class. The students would be taught about seeds, their germination, and the planting and caring for young plants. They would be taught about making beds and how to use shade houses. They would be taught how to store produce and to make preserves such as jams, pepper sauces, or pickled onions. They would be introduced to the use of various agricultural hand tools, including the mechanical weeders, which have largely replaced cutlasses and grass knives. Fruits and vegetables which have almost disappeared from the markets should be introduced and grown—these would include sugar apples, custard apples, plumrose, sumetoo (as distinct from passion fruit), and vegetables such as nenwa, jhingi, granadillas, chichira (or snake vegetable), and radishes. The produce should be shared out among the children, even in token amounts.

The important spin-offs of the school garden are not only that students would have been introduced to agriculture, to keeping their environment clean, to creating or developing their own home gardens, but also to helping with the food security of their families and ultimately of society as a whole.

Every school should have its own workshop. The students would be introduced to the usual carpentry tools—hammer, chisel, screwdrivers, handsaw and mechanical saw, augers and clamps, etc. They would be introduced to basic joinery and carpentry skills such as jointing, dovetailing, sandpapering, polishing, and varnishing. They should be encouraged to bring their home furniture, which is in need of repair, to be repaired as part of the learning process and to keep the school furniture always in good condition. They would learn to take care of their homes and have an introduction to the trades of joinery and carpentry.

In the playground, the students should be introduced to the rules of cricket, football, hockey, badminton, and squash, and they should be allowed to play them. They should also be introduced to athletics. The elements of how to play each sport should be introduced to the students—for example, how to catch a cricket ball without hurting one’s hands, or how to place the ball in the hand when bowling a leg break or off break, or how to begin one’s hockey match in the most advantageous way. In hockey and football, they should learn how to tackle without fouling, and so on.

The daily newspapers usually carry two or three pages on local and foreign sports, and students should follow these so that the more ambitious and talented may be able to join teams which are nationally recognised. In this regard, one should be reminded that the old Queen’s College was able to field Second Division national teams in cricket, with individual players getting into the First Division.

Very few schools would be able to afford a special Sports Teacher or Agricultural Teacher, but these could come from the regular staff, who would be paid an honorarium for undertaking such added responsibilities. Alternatively, there could be a special Sports or Agricultural Teacher who would work with two or three schools on a schedule.