Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.
by Michael Rudder
I spent the first 21 years of my life living in Green Hill, St. Michael. Most of the time it was considered ‘the country’.
Absolutely not so today.
Warrens was a sugar factory and an estate. During the crop season we, the Rudders and the Hopes, would walk to Warrens some moonlight nights and there, perhaps, be favoured with some raw cane juice, and what was called ‘crack-liquor’ – hot juice from the boiling process.
Another ‘ramble’ was down into ‘the big gully’ for dunks.
The gully was wide enough at a point between Malvern Lodge and Friendship estates for some young men to create a cricket pitch in the bottom. Cricket was the game of choice played on any surface, with objects approximating to a ball and a bat. Yet, out of that cauldron of ‘substitute tools’ came some of the greatest cricketers the world has ever seen.
The gully and the gully hill, where I spent many hours watching the clouds, was also a location from which I cut sour grass for the animals in my teens. The hill and gully are no more, just a quarry.
I attended Buxton Boys School, but left and went on to The Barbados Academy before entering Harrison College in Prep Form. I became one of the initiates of the then Cub Pack and subsequently the first Scout Troop there.
I remained in scouting through to the Seniors where I qualified for the Queen Scout Badge. A cousin, who was older than I, had joined the First Barbados Sea Scout Troop.
He received the King Scout Badge, the similar highest qualification at the time. Neither he, scout leaders nor other awardees gave a thought to changing the descriptor from King to Queen when the British Sovereign changed.
It, therefore, begs the question as to why local attorneys see the need to unilaterally change their award of Queen’s Counsel to King’s Counsel on the death of the Queen. Should males have a bachelor’s degree and females a bachelorette? Fast forward For decades now, Greenhill could no longer be considered ‘the country.’ As I recall, the three-mile mark – distance from Bridgetown in any direction measured from Nelson’s statue – was in the vicinity of Buxton. Yet one has to recognise that three miles from Bridgetown along either South or West coasts would hardly have ever been considered the country.
Had it not been for the absence of a fortune teller in the family, Green Hill might have been linked to the west coast. I was told that my grandfather had been offered Paradise.
He declined to purchase, since as he is reported to have said, “You can’t grow canes there.” And that is still true.
In fact, Paradise is growing bush. What of other potential / possible / announced / delayed / perhaps hotel development sites? Well, the one on Bay Street may be imbued with a ditty from the old Green Hill and elsewhere, ‘Rock stone, rock stone stan yuh ground, jigger foot Hihat come to town.’ If only he would or could come, but I hear ‘maybe he ent got bus fare nuh more.’ Perhaps he is awaiting our plans for water and sewage just to be safe? Greener grass Ever so often there is a convulsion in our education system which reminds all that the grass is greener on the other side, ‘So go to school and learn well, otherwise later on in life you will catch real hell,’ one calypsonian admonishes. The question is, ‘How do we learn?’ As for me, I think it’s more by reverse osmosis with some things passing through the teachers’ ‘membranes’ to my brains; eventually not much.
Not too all-embracing a process. Some will learn from chalk and talk or screen and ream(s) of info. Still others’ forte may be the beat of music, poetry, rhythm and rhyme, or again, things just spoken – so many ways.
We may not recognise that the student also has much to tell or teach the teacher as the teacher has to teach the student.
When the student says that they don’t understand, the teacher may use another example without asking, ‘How do you think you might understand?’ The answer may provide the way or method by which the student learns. This process should start as early as primary school. Of course, this would also entail a different approach from teachers as well.
I, however, have to ask what would happen if 80 per cent of the students taking the Eleven Plus, or its replacement, got a mark of 80 per cent or higher? You may say to yourself, ‘No way!’
Yet isn’t that what we should be aiming for – the greener grass? I have, more than once, suggested that the main focus of our education system has to be at the primary level.
No student should leave that level in any way educationally disadvantaged. Unfortunately, following each Eleven Plus exam, this seems to be what we learn – there are quite a few who are disadvantaged. It’s time to say, ‘No more disadvantaged, please.’ Then the grass shall be greener.
Communicate me “ . . . Effective communication has four parts – something we have known since Plato and Aristotle. Only our businessmen never seem to have heard of it. One has to know what to say; when to say it; to whom to say it; and how to say it. If one of those four elements is missing, there cannot be communication…” Peter Drucker in the Foreword to the Parkinson and Rowe book Communicate.
Imagine if all four of these elements are missing. What do we have? The answer is, as I understand it, ‘most of the nurses from Cuba.’ It can’t be their fault. I can’t believe that they select themselves. I also want to believe that those nurses who are well trained are also frustrated that they are unable to give their best.
When students who are scholarship winners go to Cuba, they have to learn Spanish. Similarly, for those going to China, it’s Mandarin they learn. The question has, therefore, to be asked,
‘Why are the Cuban nurses coming to Barbados without English as their second language?’ Far away country In some country far away, the legal system is choked with simplicity. For instance, a complainant simply reports to the police that an individual has hit them with a rock. The police then arrest the accused who ends up before the court and is asked to plead whether guilty or not guilty. The police do not need to bring any evidence.
The person pleads not guilty, and the case is put back (really forward) to a later date. What can happen at the next appearance – no charge sheet is provided and no additional evidence.
Case postponed. By the next appearance, the police have not provided the rock, evidence from neighbours, any evidence of a bruise, a medical report, the distance from which the rock was allegedly thrown – therefore, could the complainant have avoided being hit? Case postponed. Is this how the lower court system in that country gets choked? If the police had been required to find evidence before any charge was brought so that there could be a trial based on any evidence, in addition to the word of the complainant, then matters might not take years to complete. But that’s in a country far away.We don’t have to worry, especially since the police may also simply warn the accused in the first place.
Michael Rudder is a commentator on social issues. This column was offered as a Letter to the Editor.
