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by Walter Edey
Often, people leave education reform to the authorities, but are reformers the only change agents? Reform examines records, memories and everyday experiences and decides on what to keep or renew.
Essentially, it questions and addresses cultural, social and economic disparities; boosts negative attitudes and dispositions. Admittedly, reform is more complex than that.
Education transformation is a dynamic project. It’s the resolution of tensions between opposing forces seeking equilibrium in the same place.
The dominant and a subordinate; the oppressor and the oppressed pushing and pulling at each other.
This process is similar to the new beaches created by the construction of groins, and the reverse erosion of groins that will occur. Just like the reemergence of the white supremacy movement in America that followed the phenomenally successful Presidency of Barrack Obama. And so, with every forward reform step or action, expect and plan for two steps backward.
As reform seeks to humanise, the body politic is prone to keep dehumanisation. Sometimes, as liberation advances, the oppressor offers generosity. The oppressed accept the skins and the oppressors keep potatoes.
So, is the road to freedom limited to, and fueled by the actions of the oppressor, or the oppressed? Is it a dichotomy that is resolved only by third-party intervention? Truth be told, the dehumanisation is a deep-rooted learned behaviour. One that expresses itself in the language of everyday actions and experiences.
Here are some personal examples of the language of perception.
(1) When I was accepted to Harrison College some of my neighbours expressed their excitement in different ways. A health inspector living opposite my home grabbed my hands tightly and with a smile, he said, “Congratulations, young man.”
Then looking at the stand pipe in the neighborhood he said, tersely: “Now don’t ever let me see you at the standpipe.” The male, who I learned many years was in the same Lodge as my father never explained why I should not be seen at the standpipe. Why should getting into Harrison College change my behaviour? Our postman, who spoke fluent Spanish (he was born in Cuba) offered to help me with my Latin. And then, a female two years older than I, and who lived about a quarter-mile away, in a nearby gap, not only congratulated me but brought me a bottle of milk from time to time. Her dad kept cows.
Later, as a teacher at the Boys Foundation school, I experienced the perception of Harrison College and Queen’s College in another way. One of my students was always late for my morning math class. I asked him why.
Quite politely, he explained that his parents wanted him to feed the cows and sheep before coming to school. I commended him for contributing to the family. And then I asked him if he had any brothers or sisters. “Yes, but they go to Harrison and Queen’s College,” he replied. I remember finding time to help him.
Sometimes I wonder if Ministers of Education and Chief Education Officers among others are aware of how their actions reinforce cultural attitudes, habits and dispositions.
It is a truism that actions speak loudly. Yet, every year, when the Common Entrance results are known, Ministers repeatedly begin a press conference by acknowledging the top ten students.
The media takes the story and fills the papers and airwaves with voices and pictures of those students and their parents.
Meanwhile, the students at the bottom of the academic ladder – and the teachers who taught them to await but get little or no compassion or alternative. Reform is a continuous process. So why not speak to alternative testing for skills, arts, and other programs? Would reform not benefit, if after the press conference concerned citizens and teachers pledged to hold annual walks for literacy; form literacy and numeracy circles and book clubs; and church leaders offered church space for afterschool programs? But worse yet, the movie is replayed when national scholarships are awarded. The same top students who were earlier placed in top-performing schools without means of testing, get financial help.
The student who moved ten rungs up the ladder is again ignored. Whether real or imagined, those two annual celebrations of success are also unintended acts of dehumanisation.
Ultimately, real reform speaks to the poor and vulnerable.
Poverty is clearly defined, but it is wrong to assume that vulnerability is solely a product of poverty. Vulnerability often hides in the corridors of power and authority as insecurity. That’s why education reform must evoke curiosity on all distinctions and levels.
The social, economic, cultural, and spiritual. In the process, those who wait on others to liberate them may find that true freedom is self-led. They may also find that it arrives from the exploration of the language and wisdom in everyday experiences. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Walter Edey is a retired math and science educator in Barbados and New York.
