#BTColumn – Demystifying education (Part 1)

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by Walter Edey

Education will fuel hopes and aspirations but there must be relentless policy renewal and system restructuring.

Reading, writing, and numeracy skills were once in the precincts of the upper class, the wealthy, and a few whites in Barbados.

However, families from underprivileged backgrounds still held out hope. By working hard and being patient; by collective effort, positive attitudes and dispositions, the sons and daughters of these folks overcame their obstacles.
Today, children from these poor families are publishing their stories of success.

C Trevor Clarke can authentically claim that he was a senior manager and telecommunications engineer, and played a key role in telecommunication liberalisation; he was a Permanent Representative in the United Nations office in Geneva, and diplomat; and he was a senior manager of the World Trade Organisation in Geneva before undertaking his fourth job – writing a memoir.

On the back cover of his 600-page autobiography, “My Fourth Job” – From Barbados To Geneva, Clarke gives hopes to doubters, and affirms achievement.

“Even if you are born poor you can start where you are and rise to the top even if you are not the smartest in the class,” he writes.

In Chapter 1 of the book’s first of three sections titled the Clarine Years and featuring his mother Clarine, grandmother Babe and family members, Clarke states:

(a) “I recall doing my homework under a kerosene oil lamp and I once somehow managed to knock the glass chimney of the lamp and it fell into my lap and left a scar which is still visible after sixty years.

(b) I endured poverty without the slightest knowledge that there was a better life to be had. There was no television, radio, telephone or newspapers. But Babe somehow knew that there was better, and she knew that path was better through education.

(c)  “ In 1946 at the age of four, my grandmother Babe walked me, without shoes, from Brereton to the Ebenezer Boy’s school to commence my formal education.

(d) “At an early age I was very sensitive to the demoralising effect of poverty even though in the absence of radio, television, and newspapers, I knew of no better life. Yet in my inner soul I wanted a better life for my family.

With no father around and a mother not working, I thought that as the oldest son, I had to go to work and supplement the family income. . . So, my Uncle (Winston O’Neale, a foreman at Mitchell Construction) took me on. I started learning to bend steel. I lasted one week on the job before my mother said: No, no, I need the money but you need the education, you must go back to school.”

Clarke dedicated Chapter 5 to Norman Daniel, the eldest son of Fitz Daniel, who operated a shop on freehold land in Brereton; and who Clarke says recalls having an informal class of 30 boys as a seventh-class student. And who on graduation, were sent off into the planation as agricultural labourers.

In the opening paragraph of the chapter Clarke writes: “Norman Daniel was a teacher, a guidance counsellor, a philosopher and a gentleman with a vision and passion for helping young people to prepare themselves for the adult futures. I am a protege of Norman St Clair Daniel…”

And he later stated: “Daniel was aware that teaching was not just about reading and writing. inculcating values and developing character were also important. Clarke’s perspective about the challenges of poverty is repeated in another autobiography.

John Goddard, a retired English teacher, in his autobiography titled In God’s Service – The Boy From College Savannah, among other things, spoke of his entrance exam to Lodge School. On page 30 Goddard writes:

“Academically, I had shone at primary school. In classes 3 and 4 I never got less than ninety in Arithmetic, English or Social Studies. I sat the “screaming test at Princess Margaret School and performed excellently. Entry to Lodge school was a foregone conclusion . . .

“The written tests in English and Mathematics were easy, but I was unable to answer in the affirmative to a number of questions asked in the interview. For example: Are your parents married? Do you have electricity and water borne toilet facilities? Do you have any close relatives at Lodge school?”

Goddard’s disappointment soon faded. According to Goddard Graham Wilkes, the Principal of Mapps College, a private school, with links to Lodge school, on learning of Goddard’s plight, intervened. Perhaps no accident.

Mapps College motto was: “In order that I may be a citizen.” The school lived and expressed this idea by giving students a social, cultural and academic learning experience.

According to Goddard he was offered a scholarship, which his father accepted, and years later on the advice of the said principal, he later transferred to – and completed his education at the Lodge school, which had a sixth form.

Clearly, prosperity is the absence of poverty. It is inspired and fueled by education, which in turn envelops compassion. Education reform must therefore in the very least consider, and embrace the role of family and neighborhood; mentors and coaches; the playground and the culture; and evolution of the public school and the private school.

Given a colonial history and plantation mindset, if education reform does not first answer the question: education reform, for what? Then every act of parliament is wasted, every effort rather than added degrees of freedom.

Walter Edey is a retired math and science educator in Barbados and New York.