NOTA BENE
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LIST OF ARTICLES
Introduction (By the Editors)
“Educate Me” (Lenworth Wilson Jr.)
Welcome Speech (By Mrs. Sarah Wescott-Williams, Dutch St. Martin's
Commissioner of Education)
Key to a Brighter Future: A Vision for Higher Education in the New St.
Martin (By Josianne Fleming-Artsen)
Three decades of innovations in
Caribbean education systems: Why some
succeed and others don’t (By Zellynne Jennings-Craig)
Dealing with the Historical Paradoxes
of a Globalized Educationalisation – a way to write the “New” Cultural History
of Education? (By Marc Depaepe)
Keep the heaps together! Diversity, citizenship and education: St.
Martin as a Caribbean immigration metropolis, lessons from Amsterdam and vice
versa (By Iwan Sewandono)
Pedagogy, identity, and politics Educating in an identity (ethnic) crisis
context: A study of the French West Indies case (By Max Bélaise)
The American University of the
Caribbean: Montserrat’s Loss, St.
Marteen’s Gain (By Gracelyn Cassell)
The General Agreement on Trade in
Services and Education in the
Caribbean: Three Case Studies (By Marguerite E. Cummins-Williams)
The Evolution of Science Curricula in
Developing Countries and the Issue of
Relevance (By June George)
Letting the voiceless tell their
stories Using oral sources for Caribbean history writing: yet more biased accounts? (By Milton A. George)
What the Tamarind tree whispers: Notes on a pedagogy of tragedy (By Francio Guadeloupe)
Changing Times — Creating
Inclusive Schools (By Yegin Habtes)
Does Block Scheduling Decrease
Instructional Time? A Look at St.
Croix’s Five Public Secondary Schools
using Four Block Schedule Types (By Jeannette J. Lovern)
The concept of good governance as a practical guide in education for public
administration (By Rob Paulussen)
Social and Emotional Learning: Is it
the missing piece in our schools? (By Marilyn Robb)
Understanding Linguistic Diversity in
Caribbean Classrooms: Ethnographic Methods for Teachers (By Peter Snow)
Decolonizing
the Educational System on St. Martin, or
How to Teach Globalization under the
Flamboyant Tree (By Maria Cijntje-Van Enckevort)
Progressive Education: an alternative
or an illusion? About the implementation of educational innovations in Belgium
and elsewhere (By Marc Depaepe)
Planning and Leading Change: Creating a New Change Model for the
implementation of a Teacher Education Program on St. Maarten (By Josianne Fleming-Artsen)
Getting the Job done! Let the Sisters
speak Historical development of Catholic Education on Sint Maarten (1890-1990):
an oral history account (By Milton A. George)
Doing Theology in a Caribbean
Context: The Caribbean and the
challenges of becoming oneself. (By Milton A. George)
Making sense of the Afro‑Caribbean
concubinage from a canon law perspective (By Milton A. George)
What their modernity can teach us: exploring the linkages between Black Atlantic
identity formations in the Caribbean and consumer capitalism (By Francio Guadeloupe)
How to Define St. Maarten Culture? (By Charlotte Hagenaars)
Educating our teachers in the Caribbean
for the 21st century:
Challenges and prospects (By Zellynne Jennings-Craig)
A Kingdom
identity: mirage, illusion, or vision?
Some allochthonous thoughts on the European and Caribbean Dutch, unequal
equals with an elusive common identity (By Silvio Sergio
Scatolini Apóstolo)
Some
thoughts on Education as Bildung (By Silvio Sergio
Scatolini Apóstolo)
Some
thoughts on the Meaning of Education in the Learning Society (By Silvio Sergio
Scatolini Apóstolo)
Some
thoughts on Jean-Paul Sartre and Education (By Silvio Sergio
Scatolini Apóstolo)
Otto Huiswoud: Political Praxis and Anti-Imperialism* (By Maria Van Enckevort)
Copyright © 2006
University of St. Martin
St. Martin
Studies 2006
1. Conference Proceedings:
Re-Thinking Education in the
Caribbean: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. A local imperative in a global
context
2. Papers on Education and/or the
Caribbean
Editors:
Maria Cijntje—van Enckevort
Milton A. George
Silvio Sergio Scatolini Apóstolo
Published by
University
of St. Martin
1 University Boulevard
P.O.Box 836
Philipsburg
St. Martin
Netherlands Antilles
Website:
www.usmonline.net
A catalogue record of this book is available
from the University of St. Martin.
For general information on our
products and services or to obtain technical and expert support, please visit
our homepage: www.usmonline.net.
To contact the
editors, e-mail them to:
educonsult@caribserve.net (Maria Cijntje—van Enckevort)
consultants2006@gmail.com (Milton A. George & Silvio Sergio Scatolini
Apóstolo)
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Introduction
The colonial powers
engineered a Caribbean fragmented in terms of languages, as well as legal,
political, and educational systems. Even though the emancipatory movement of
the last century began a process of regional exchange of ideas and ideals,
active interaction and profound regional integration still remain a vocation to
which the Caribbean is called. The USM Educational Conference of 2006 was
conceived of as a propitious opportunity to promote the regional exchange of
ideas and experiences, as well as to broaden visions and facilitate the
creation of ever new networks across the Caribbean and beyond.
From the start, each of the
groups that make up our societies has been confronted with the challenge to
reinvent itself within the concrete geographical and historical coordinates
within which it found itself—sometimes by choice, but often by force. Such a
process of self-reinvention was innovatively undertaken: our forerunners
managed to weave influences coming from different corners of the world into a
tapestry of colours, sounds, smells, dances, tastes, languages, stories, songs,
and more.
Today, our different
Caribbean societies are being confronted with the challenges of an increasingly
globalized world. Not only do many of our compatriots travel to foreign shores
to study, work for a while, or settle down there for good, there are also
thousands of newcomers who arrive on our territories with their own needs and
dreams, hoping to “make it” among us. St. Martin has become a true immigration
metropolis. Of all the Dutch island territories, Dutch St. Martin is the one
where the foreign-born population is almost twice the size of the locally born.
In such a context, even words such as “diaspora” need redefining. As always, it
depends on the perspective of the one telling his or her story. Oddly enough,
the stories of disillusionment and discrimination told by many of our
compatriots who emigrated to apparently greener pastures resemble the stories
related by the immigrants who are seeking to find a home among us. We become the
other, for better and for worse.
The mobility characteristic
of our transnational world entails that educators are often no longer educating
their pupils and students just for their country of residence, but for the
world.
Educating the future
generations has always been a tall order. How to prepare our young for a world
which, in a certain sense, does not yet exist; moreover, for a world that in
many ways is not and will not be ours? Educating is about keeping the present
in sight, which is the legacy of our past, while trying to predict and steer
the course that our societies and the world will be taking.
No matter how daunting it
may appear to us, the challenge to educate our young so that they can become
fully-fledged members of our society is an imperative that our societies cannot
neglect. We must all embrace the call to action and realize that our
educational choices and deeds must be grounded on a thought-out and concerted
reflection that surpasses the borders of our classrooms, schools, and even
territories.
With this year’s
Educational Conference, the University of St. Martin wished to contribute to
the discourse on the nature, mission, shape, goals, and tools of the
educational endeavour in our Caribbean region and beyond. Education is an
open-ended reality, so too is the question how to do it in ways that are fair,
efficient, qualitatively of high standards, and visionary.
The editors
consultants2006@gmail.com
“Educate Me”
Educate me, emancipate me,
now hate me cause I’m not what you thought you created me to be...
Education has been the
social tool, seeking to give meaning to our existence. “Boy go get your
education so u can be somebody”.
Such a subtle tool used by
the slave-masters and colonizers as they figured that this way… they wouldn’t
get no resistance.
So they rape our thoughts
and inject their indoctrination of superior relations, triggering an outbreak
of segregation throughout my block, my town and even this wanna-be global
nation.
And yet… We embrace
education
Some of us use our
education just to feed and caress our grand egos
Then sit around an office
desk 18 hours a-day fantasizing about the Ritz Carlton and the Grand Lidos
Never getting a chance to
know nor even peradventure to fulfill our telos
Trying to find the meaning
of life while straying further and further away from our true purpose
And yet… We embrace
education
“Education is the key to a
thriving economy”, that’s what the politicians say
And of course they’re
right… cause the more education you get is the more taxes you pay.
Calculus, Ecology,
Statistics, Psychology, Accounting, Philosophy, History, Biology, Chemistry,
Computer Technology
All this knowledge gained
just to make sure that the society would acknowledge me
Acknowledging a piece of
paper, rather than what truly makes us who we be.
And yet… We embrace
education.
You show me a man liberated
by education and I’ll show you a man enslaved by indoctrination.
Prisoners of philosophical
ideals conjured up by matters of religious damnation.
Brainwashing us to think
that we are being elevated by this brainwashing,
Then they leave us stuck in
unemployment lines and make us redundant by employing machines.
Say they’re cutting cost of
labor while the cost of education is constantly on the increase
And yet… We embrace
education.
Certificates, Associates,
Bachelors, Masters and Doctorates degree
Propelled by self-imposed
ambitions of what they want us to be
So we all wanna go to
college and get into the Ivy League university
Not to be enlightened but
to see what they want us to see.
Now I’m a rebel without a
rebellion ‘cause I’m still paying the fee.
But this poem proves that
in my mind I am free… so now I can say
You educate me, emancipate
me, now hate me cause I’m not what you thought you created me to be...
University of
St. Martin, N.A. (Education
student)
lj_liljr@yahoo.com
Welcome Speech
Dutch St. Martin’s Commissioner
of Education
Dignitaries,
USM President, Mrs.
Josianne Fleming-Artsen
Organizers,
Speakers,
Presenters,
Ladies and Gentleman,
Good evening!
On behalf of the government
of St. Maarten I welcome those of you here, visiting our shores, especially if
it is your first visit.
To all present and those
yet to join you for this conference, I convey my wish for three most exciting
days of deliberations, as you “re-think Caribbean Education.”
Your aim to re-think
education cannot be momentary.
It cannot be a rethinking
only of where we are today. We are where we are today, also educationally
speaking, because of decisions we made, or did not make in the past.
Not only decisions about
education and systems of education, but about our development in general.
Politically, economically, socially as well.
So in my opinion, you
rightfully place your aim to “re-think education” in a historic (yesterday), a
present (today) and a future (tomorrow) context.
St. Maarten is privileged
to host a gathering of so many distinguished scholars of Caribbean experiences
in education and the educational processes of our countries. While we have not
always walked the same road or done so at the same pace, many common historical
issues shape our educational systems.
Our starting position, for
some decades and for others centuries ago, is similar, coming out of a colonial
system.
How we dealt with that
legacy, what we maintained from that legacy is evident in varying degrees today
in our individual educational systems.
So you have a plethora of
issues that you dissect and reform, and which will still be familiar to all of
us.
My own assessment is that
the USM has selected a distinguished assemblage of scholars and educators from
the region and beyond to do the critical examination of educational issues and
matters in the Caribbean in the broadest sense of the word.
And as I stated earlier,
St. Maarten is proud to host such a distinguished panel, and I add, somewhat
vainly, “rightly so.”
In the words of Dr.
Scatolini a few days ago: “This is a chance for the Dutch Caribbean to get on
the map.” Permit me to paraphrase: This is our chance to position
ourselves on the map. Not only geographically, but also educationally.
To position ourselves, we
need to create the environment like USM has done now and on several occasions
in the past. Bringing this calibre of scholars together.
The physical size of the University
of St. Martin, while ever expanding, should never be a deterrent not to
think big. In fact in today’s modern world, especially when it comes to
education, the question of whether “size matters” or not, is a mute one.
As small nations,
constantly seeking to stay on the cutting edge of global educational innovations,
with the constraints we face, we often run the risk of overlooking our own
inherent strengths.
What these are and whether
they are strengths rather than occasional bursts of energy will be become
evident during many of your discourses.
And finally, several of you
will from varying angles be looking at the Caribbean individual, at us.
And hopefully this
inspection or introspection will be the impetus to move beyond the often heard
lamentations of why we are not all that we can be, but rather focus on whom we
have come, despite it all.
Would that, Dr. Bélaise,
from your reference, by any chance be the “new man or woman”?
Ladies and Gentlemen, again
welcome, much success and even more inspiration.
Key
to a Brighter Future:
A Vision
for Higher Education in the New St. Martin
University of
St. Martin, the
Netherlands Antilles
usmdirector@sintmaarten.net
Currently, the Netherlands
Antilles are undergoing a constitutional change, which would separate all five
islands, Curacao, Bonaire, St. Maarten, Saba, and St. Eustatius and allow each
one to have its own relation with the Netherlands.
St. Maarten is looking
forward to achieving this new status and thus is preparing for this new
identity in which the University of St. Martin has its role to play.
The Conference on
Rethinking Education in the Caribbean has inspired me to make a contribution to
the preface of the Country St. Martin status. The theme I will address focuses
on The Key to a Brighter Future: A Vision for Higher Education in the New St
Martin. Some of the challenges facing tertiary and higher education on St.
Martin are pertinent to the constitutional change debate and some guidelines
for a vision for tertiary and higher education for the Country St. Martin are
recommended.
An excelling tertiary and
higher education sector will be key to a progressive, unified, and novel
society in the country St. Martin. Education and training after the high school
levels will be more important in realizing career directions and lifelong
opportunities to achieve a balanced, unified and culturally and socially
vibrant society, in which each and everyone can participate. With more emphasis
on self reliance, the demand for more knowledgeable and research oriented human
resources will also increase. For every St. Martin citizen, the ability of
being able to unlearn and relearn, research and document, change direction or
career paths will be paramount to survival and success. An onus will be put on
tertiary and higher education to fulfil these demands.
In St. Martin, serious work
needs to be done in the tertiary and higher education sectors and there are
considerable challenges. Although the island boasts a post secondary vocational
institute, The St. Maarten Institute for Technology and Hospitality (SMITH), a
hybrid commuter college, The University of St. Martin (USM), and a post
graduate medical institution, The American University of the Caribbean (AUC),
there is a fundamental need for a sound tertiary and higher education policy.
Recognition should be given to the fact that the majority of students at the
AUC are not St. Martin natives or Antilleans, while at USM the ratio is 60%
Antilleans to 40 % non Antilleans (University of St. Martin Annual Report,
2005). The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development states, in its
report entitled Educational Policy Reform in the Netherlands Antilles, that
“Tertiary education is a neglected area of educational provision of the
Netherlands Antilles” (2001:26). On St. Maarten this is no exception and to add
to this as Rowley points out, “Higher education institutions are recognized as
being in the knowledge business and increasingly exposed to pressures in the
market” (2000:1).
Currently, the significant
increase in the number of St. Martin students seeking tertiary and higher
education has put pressure on education officials and subsequently, because of
the lack of proper planning, government is forced to take ad hoc decisions.
These include decisions such as students being allotted scholarships to study
anywhere and for whatever they want, types of assistance offered to tertiary
institutions, and the omission of tertiary institutions and higher education
institutions from round-table or constitutional talks or research projects. For
tertiary or higher education institutions to receive the allotted federal
government grants or subsidies requires surgical precision. Overall, based on
how tertiary institutions are treated, government’s perception of these
institutions may be as sine qua non. This is a blatant disrespect for
local tertiary and higher education institutions and impacts the prosperity of
the island nation as a whole.
According to Badejo (1989)
in his book, Claude a Portrait of Power, “Prosperity…not always means
the mere availability of money. But even by that yardstick, it is doubtful if
St. Maarten can really be classified as a prosperous island” (p.170). Claude as
cited in Badejo (1989) posited, “Only a limited number of people have gained
financially and it is doubtful if those benefits can compensate the loss of
Philipsburg to foreigners. Prosperity should therefore be redefined” (p.170).
This statement still seems true today. In this light the redefinition of
prosperity must include tertiary and higher education for all St. Martiners.
Country St. Martin will require more academic, intellectual and research
prosperity in order to recapture our losses which include the capital.
Functionalism perceives the
society as a living organism with many interrelated parts (Pai & Adler,
2001). These living interrelated organisms show some commonalities and
according to Durkheim (1985), “Members of the society need to have a set of
common beliefs, knowledge, and values for social unity and cohesion”… “for
every society requires that its members have different roles” (21). This
organic unity of society leads functionalists to speculate about needs, which
must be met for a social system to exist, as well as the ways in which social
institutions satisfy those needs. Social systems work together to maintain
equilibrium. It is achieved through the socialization of members of the society
into the basic values and norms of the society so that consensus is reached.
Tertiary and higher education are considered microcosms of the larger society. The
school perpetuates the established social, cultural, economic and political
structures and norms (Pai & Adler, 2001). Universities have traditionally
been seen as cloistered communities for reflection, and have now grown into
open communities, thus giving more access. Policies ensuring access to tertiary
and higher education to the Country St Martin’s tertiary institutions, colleges
and universities must not be overlooked. Simpson and Wendling (2005), noted
that the “sole purpose of colleges and universities is the advancement of
knowledge and research” (p.385). In Country St. Martin, this should be no
exception and tertiary and higher education should facilitate research and
documentation, while enabling the expression of sound arguments based on research
without fear.
Based on the social make-up
of the island, tertiary and higher education in Country St. Martin will no
doubt have an impact on the surrounding islands and region.
According to the United
Nations in its State Party Report (1999) at the International Convention on the
Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination in the Netherlands agued that
St. Maarten has a regular immigration from the “Dominican Republic, Jamaica,
and Haiti” (Article 5(e)(iv), 206). This means a regular inflow of students
that becomes almost uncontrollable. This includes children from both the
(documented and undocumented) foreign residents. These immigrants also proceed
from the French (northern) side, because of our open border policy. Although
this information is primarily focusing on the primary and secondary school
systems, noteworthy is that tertiary and higher education sector is also
impacted. Many migrants from countries such as the Dominican Republic, Jamaica,
Guyana and Dominica irrespective of their documented or undocumented status
tend to seek tertiary or higher education. Thus, it is safe to state that on
St. Martin the phenomenon of internationalization of education has been taking
place in an unstructured and unplanned manner. However, in the Country St. Martin
internationalization should become part of the economic existence and tertiary
and higher education policy.
Considering the
trans-nationalization of education, “the internationalization of tertiary and
higher education, the international exchange of students, scholars, bilateral
and multilateral agreements around knowledge, research, transfer of expertise
and skills and flows of learners and scholars are all vitally important and
must be pursued energetically and extended” (Asmal, 2006:4). With an increased
demand for competent and qualified human resources in country St. Martin this
internationalization of tertiary and higher education will become more
pronounced and the proper policies and laws will have to be drafted and adhered
to.
There is a constant
discrepancy between educational supply and the demand of the possible
educational resources. This issue is evidenced in the Bureau of Educational
Research, Policy, Planning and Innovation report (2006, February), where data
are provided on how many educators are delivered per annum. The USM has
delivered from “2002-2005, 16 teachers” (p.7), and further information from the
“study-financing section at the Insular Department of Education shows that the
majority of teachers who study teaching in the Netherlands do not return to the
island for employment” (p.8). In addition, on the tertiary and higher education
level this is also the case in other sectors since most of the demands cannot
be fulfilled in terms of the types of programs being requested by the students
on the island. Furthermore, there are no economies of scale to support the
offering of a wide variety of courses and programs. Thus, innovation is a
necessity in this sector and in Country St. Martin the need for innovation and
use of technology especially distance learning and e-learning will be greater.
The University of St. Martin has had this experience with Mount Saint Vincent
University and the University of the Virgin Islands and continues to
innovate...
Since the financing of
tertiary and higher education continues to be an issue, the need for greater
returns on investment in this sector will be paramount. In the future,
the role that governments will have to play in regards to tertiary and higher
education will be more pronounced as the appropriation of tax payers’ resources
for this sector will increase. In Country St. Martin the methodologies and laws
governing the allotments of scholarships and grants to pursue tertiary and
higher education will have to be revamped and redesigned. Although the review
of the policies is currently taking place by government, the revamping and
redesigning of these policies are a must. Students should be given access to
scholarships through loans and contractual agreements. Laws defining
tertiary and higher education will have to be drafted specifically for Country
St. Martin recognizing a wide variety of disciplines and degrees. However, it
is at the policy level where differences will ultimately be made. The policy
governing grants and scholarships for tertiary and higher education will have
to be in concert with the changing and diverse needs of the country and its
students; we must take advantage of new technologies, provide higher returns on
investment of tax-payers’ funds and ensure the returns are internationally
competitive in quality. Thus, once these policies are implemented
correctly, Country St. Martin will be in possession of internationally
recognized (accredited) and qualified human resources and human capital.
Vision is the fundamental
force that drives everything else in our lives and for Country St. Martin this
is relevant. It encompasses us “with a sense of unique contribution that is
ours to make. It empowers us to put first things first, compasses ahead of
clocks, people ahead of scheduled things”(Covey, Merrill, and Merrill, 1994,
p.116). A vision can also be described as knowing the results and outcomes and
being aware of the implementation process through conceptual and creative
thinking (Bennis and Nanus, 1985). Envisioning tertiary and higher education in
Country St. Martin and developing vision into reality is a challenge and a work
in progress.
To summarize, due to the
pivotal role that tertiary and higher education will play in the new status for
the island nation, a clear vision and understanding of this sector is
necessary. This understanding should include a proper definition of tertiary
and higher education, the role that tertiary and higher education plays on St.
Maarten and in the region especially in relation to migration and
trans-nationalization, new trends in this sector, sustainability and emphasis
on the research element. In addition, proper laws and policies governing
tertiary and higher education sector are a must since these will provide more
opportunities for participation for all our citizens, create improvement
incentives for quality, research and information dissemination while
encouraging citizens to realize its value. The tertiary and higher
education sectors should not be held solely accountable for bringing about the
necessary changes. The community itself in Country St. Martin will be
instrumental in actualizing the relevant prosperity.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Asmal, K. (2006). Higher
education in a changing world: opportunities for transformation and renewal.
Conference conducted at the meeting of the Association of Commonwealth
Universities, Queen’s Universities, Belfast.
Badejo, F. (1989). Claude,
a portrait of power. St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles: International
Publishing House.
Bennis, W. & Nanus, B.
(1985). Leaders: The strategies for taking charge. New York: Harper and
Row.
Covey, S. R., Merrill, A.
R., & Merrill, R. R. (1994). First things first. New York: Simon
& Schuster.
Bureau of Educational Research,
Policy, Planning and Innovation. (2006,
February). Planning
teacher supply against demand. St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles:
Government Printing Office.
Durkheim, E. (1985).
Definition of education. In J. H. Ballentine (Ed.), Schools and society: A
reader in education and sociology (pp. 19-22). Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield.
Pai, Y. & Adler, S. A.
(2001). Cultural foundations of education. (3rd ed.). New
Jersey: Upper Saddle River.
Rowley, J. (2000). Is
higher education ready for knowledge management? The International Journal
of Educational Management, 14(7), 1-9.
Simpson, E., &
Wendling, K. (2005, Nov.). Equality and Merit: A Merit-based argument for
equity policies in higher education. Educational Theory, 55(4), 385-389.
University of St. Martin. (2005).
Annual report, St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles Ministry of Education.
(2005). Tertiary education policy directions for the 21st century
(White Paper). New Zealand: Government Printing Office.
Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development. (2001, September). Education policy reform in
the Netherlands Antilles. Curacao, Netherlands Antilles: Government
Printing Office.
United Nations High
Commission for Human Rights. (1999, July). The elimination of all forms of
racial discrimination (CERD/C/362/Add.4). Washington, DC: Author.
Three decades of
innovations in Caribbean education systems:
Why some succeed and others don’t
University of
the West Indies, Jamaica
eddevser@cwjamaica.com
Introduction
Why do some innovations
succeed and others don’t? The term “innovation” itself may give us a
clue. An innovation is an idea perceived as new; it
need not be objectively new, but to those using it for the first time it is
new. In other words, what is considered as a new idea in one setting is viewed
as old and worn in another. It is a matter of perception. In a sense,
innovation, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
This reminds me of the
early 1990s when I visited the interior of Guyana, the only English-speaking
country on the South American continent. I was doing workshops with teachers
and principals with a team from the National Centre for Educational Resource
Development (NCERD). The workshops were held in a place called Kato, surrounded
by the Pakaraima mountains, and inhabited largely by Amerindians —the
indigenous population. Here, transport was mainly by foot. One day as we
were walking up a steep hill, I noted that the stones at my feet were rather
unusual. Some were hard, jagged edged and a deep red in colour; others very
dark brown, a deep grey, a white-almost transparent. I was so fascinated by
them that I picked up some small pieces and put them in my bag. By the end of
the journey I had quite a collection. Not only the Amerindians (who apparently
could not stop laughing at me) but also my colleagues thought I was rather
crazy and wanted to know what I was going to do with “those pieces of rock.”
“They’ll make good paper weights,” I said.
On my return to the
capital city, Georgetown, I discovered some time later from a
geologist that these were not ordinary stones, but semi-precious
ones and was advised to take them to the Ministry of Gold and Diamond
Mining which had a lapidary where I could get them cut and
polished. I had most of them cut into different shapes and sizes and
subsequently made into jewellery of red and brown jasper, rose quartz and
granite. What my colleagues had dismissed as useless pieces of rock, I had seen
as value. Indeed, I had seen beauty in them. Innovations are like this, too. It
is often difficult to trace their origins. We see them as jasper, but don’t
know that they began their life as a little piece of jagged red stone which
would have gone unnoticed if someone with a perceptive eye who detected some
value in them had not come by them. And having seen value in it, the innovation
is then taken through a process and, like the stones being cut and polished, it
is invariably adapted and changed sometimes beyond recognition.
Just as the success with the cut and polish of the stone, depends on the
knowledge and skill of the lapidary, so the success of the innovation will
depend on the knowledge and skill of its implementers, as well as on those who
manage the implementation process. But each one of us looking at the finished
stone will judge the success of the cut and polish differently. Some would
prefer a rougher cut; others a smoother finish. We use different standards,
depending on the standpoint from which we are looking at it. The success of
innovations is judged in a similar way.
Stephen Heyneman in
1984 in a discussion of what has been learnt about the impact of
innovations in Third World education systems, asked ”Where is the Entebbe
Mathematics now?” He concluded at the time, that “the result has been new
curricula and new techniques for teaching, but classrooms left unchanged” (ibid.,
p. 296). In 1992, Larry Cuban asked a similar question about the
platoon system, “a Progressive innovation begun in Gary Indiana, schools in
1906 that had elementary school pupils change classes for specialized
instruction in academic, practical arts, and physical education rather than
have them stay the entire day in self-contained classes” (p 169). Cuban
then proceeded to show how the kindergarten , an
innovation which began as an attempt to alter the relationship between schools
and communities was introduced in the United States in 1906
and was still surviving a century later but had been
adapted and altered over time to becoming schools for preparing
five year –olds for first grade.
Standards for judging success
There are many innovations
that have been introduced into Caribbean education systems about which we could
ask the same question as of the Entebbe Mathematics, or the platoon system–
where are they now? Implied in this question is the sense that if we do
not know where they are, then they have not survived and therefore have failed.
Survival over time is an indicator of an innovation’s success. But how much
time? Cuban (1998) identifies ‘longevity’ as the single most
common used indicator of reform success and adds that this is ‘not a mere year
or two, or a decade, but a quarter or half century of survival” (p167). But
what criterion is used to assess the success of an innovation depends on who is
making the judgement. As Cuban (ibid) contends, there are certain innovations
that capture the imagination of the people, spread rapidly, and have strong
popular appeal (e.g. use of desktop computers). Popularity then
becomes another important standard. Policy makers, the media,
administrators and researchers use the effectiveness standard
which is essentially concerned with the extent to which intended goals have
been achieved. The latter is usually determined by students’ test
scores and performance at external examinations. Policy makers and
administrators also use the fidelity standard to
assess the success of an innovation. Success, in their view, is
determined by the extent to which the innovation is implemented just as the
initiators had intended. In other words, that it has remained faithful to the
blueprint. But those who have to implement innovations –teachers and
principals –are invariably told not to use an innovation (e.g. a new curriculum
guide) as a blueprint, but to feel free to adapt it to suit their particular
situation. Thus the more adaptable the innovation, the more the implementers
find it compatible with their needs and the better for them. To implementers of
innovations, therefore, adaptability is the most important measure of an innovation’s
success.
Aims of the Paper
The main aim of this paper
is to examine why certain innovations introduced into Caribbean education
systems have been successful, while others have not. In so doing I will firstly
give a background to the education systems in the Anglophone Caribbean with a
view to showing why these innovations became necessary. The main goals of the
innovations will be highlighted and then I will discuss the extent to which the
innovations conform to the standards of longevity, popularity, effectiveness,
fidelity and adaptability as measures of success. As the fate of an
innovation is in large measure determined by the effectiveness of its
implementation, I will also explore the extent to which planners took into
consideration the main factors that research has identified as affecting
implementation (i.e. the process of putting into practice an idea, programme or
set of activities new to the people attempting or expected to change) (Fullan,
1982:54). Finally, I will discuss some implications of the
analysis.
The innovations selected
for this paper are (i) a mathematics project for the primary level in Guyana
(GMP); (ii) the Project for the Improved Management of Educational Resources
(PRIMER) which was tried out in five rural All-Age schools (i.e. schools with
intake of pupils from 6 to 15 years of age) in Jamaica. This
project was funded by Canada’s International
Development Research Centre (IDRC): (iii) the Primary
Education Project(PEP) funded by the University of the West Indies (UWI)
and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); (iv)
the Grade 10/11 programme in Jamaica; (v) the Resource
and Technology (R&T) curriculum in the Reform of Secondary
Education (ROSE) programme in Jamaica; and (vi) The Caribbean
Examinations Council Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC). They are all
innovative because at the time of their initiation they involved the use of
ideas, or practices, which were perceived as new by their users and which were
designed to bring about desirable changes.
‘Innovation’ is often used interchangeably with ‘change’. Miles (1964)
defines innovation as a deliberate novel, specific change which is thought to
be more efficacious in accomplishing the goals of a system. ‘Reform’ and
‘change’ are also sometimes used interchangeably. For example, Cuban (1992)
refers to fundamental reforms which seek to transform “to alter permanently … a
complete overhaul, not renovations…fundamental changes” (p170). The changes
explored in this paper are those that seek to bring about fundamental changes
including new goals, structures and roles in schools, changes in organization
of curricula, examination systems, etc. The main goals of the projects with
which we are concerned give evidence of such desired changes. These are
set out in Table 1 together with evidence for their success or failure drawn
mostly from published research, evaluation studies and higher degree
dissertation.
Background to the education systems of the
Anglophone Caribbean: Main Goals of the Innovations
The innovations addressed
in this paper have been carried out in some 16 Caribbean countries listed in
Table 1. Most of these have been designated small states (Bray &
Packer 1993), characterized by isolation and economic dependency on the
developed world. Many also suffer from a scarcity of human resources which
necessitates education officials having to perform multiple roles, stretching
some of them beyond their capability. Sometimes specialists with needed
technical skills are not available locally thereby making it necessary to
utilize expatriate expertise which invariably is tied in with
international funding for projects.
The countries in Table 1
all have in common ties with Britain as ex-colonies which have left the mark of
the British on their education systems. For example, they all have primary
schools which offer 6 years of education which culminates in the Common
Entrance or 11+ Examination. This determines who enters the prestigious general
secondary or high schools which are not unlike the British grammar-type
schools, pursuing a predominantly academic curriculum designed for entry into
colleges and universities or into the more prestigious jobs in the society.
Children not selected for these schools go to schools which offer
technical-vocational programmes geared to the world of work, or remain in the
All-Age schools. These institutions are widely regarded as second-rate ‘schools
for failures’.
Of the problems in
education that all these countries have in common, three have particular
relevance for this paper. The first has to do with the fact that the
wealth of most of these countries lies in the land, particularly in
agriculture, and yet in most of these countries, negative attitudes towards
agriculture and rural living persist. Youngsters who have been trained in
agriculture opt for other types of jobs on leaving school (Jennings-Wray, 1982). Few wish to remain in rural
areas and drift towards the towns and cities invariably to join the long queues
of the unemployed. The education system has been partially blamed for this
problem on the grounds that its ‘irrelevant ‘Western style curriculum nurtures
in the youth both negative attitudes towards agricultural work and
unrealistic job expectations. To counteract such irrelevance, many
Caribbean countries in the 1970s diversified the curricula in their secondary
schools by introducing vocational subjects and work experience programmes and
by giving more emphasis to agriculture in schools. The Grade 10/11 Programme in
Jamaica is one such example. This programme generally was designed to achieve
goals of access and equality of opportunity – all central features of the
democratic socialist ideology of the Jamaican government of the day (Manley,
1974). Other major objectives of the latter programme were: introducing
self-instructional materials in Jamaican education, encouraging independence in
learning, and the development of self-reliance on the part of the
learners. Worth noting is the fact that the issue of relevance to the
needs of the Caribbean region particularly with regard to the
external examination system was high on the agenda for action of
governments in the Caribbean in the early 1970s. The Caribbean
Examinations Council (CXC) was established in 1972, to offer its own Secondary
Education Certificate (CSEC) to replace the London and Cambridge General
Certificate of Education (GCE) Ordinary level.
While the Grade 10-11
programme was taking hold in the Jamaican secondary system, an influential
report was published by UNESCO in 1983. It was titled Jamaica:
Development of Secondary Education. The report outlined major
problems in the education system, which included the variety of
types of secondary schools, the differences in the quality of their curricular offering
and their terminal examinations, and the general unpreparedness of the
graduates for the world of work. The All Age Schools, whose curricula
were more aligned to the primary than to the secondary schools, were the most
disadvantaged in every respect (quality of school plant and facilities, teacher
qualification, resources, etc.), even though they represented the largest group
of schools offering secondary education in grades 7-9. In 1993, Jamaica
had 486 All Age Schools, 12 Comprehensive High, 58 New Secondary, and 56
Traditional High Schools. Based on the findings of the UNESCO report and with
funds from the World Bank, the Government of Jamaica launched a major reform
effort to rationalise the secondary education situation. The Reform of Secondary
Education (ROSE) centred around the introduction of a common curriculum
designed to improve access to, equity in, and the quality of educational
offering at the lower secondary level (grades 7-9), as well as to improve the
productivity of the graduates. The new curriculum for ROSE is centred around
five core subjects: mathematics, language arts, social studies, integrated
science, and “resource and technology” (R&T), with career education infused
into all these areas. In this paper, most emphasis will be on the
R&T.
The GMP was also linked
with the achievement of goals for transforming the Guyanese society. Two of the
values considered relevant to the Guyanese society which were used as a basis
for the re-organisation of education in Guyana during the 1970s were:
'collective work and responsibility' and 'cooperative economics'. The
former referred to the thrust of the Guyanese to build and maintain their
communities and their nation 'through collective efforts and to solve common
problems cooperatively' (Baird, 1972:8). In the same paper Baird makes the
important point that the achievement of any national goal "is largely
dependent upon the extent to which outcomes of a particular education
programme supports these goals (my emphasis)' (ibid:3). The ‘working
togetherness’ and the solving of common problems cooperatively were seen as
outcomes of a methodology that continually emphasised the need for pupils to
work together in groups. The belief was that if an independent Guyana was to be
able to solve its own problems, its people needed to become self-reliant and
well endowed with new ways of thinking that would enable them to solve common
problems cooperatively. It is not insignificant that the chief consultant to
the GMP should make this observation about group work: “Pupils would become
more self-reliant, would have opportunities for use of initiative and to show
originality and would work in cooperation –a basic tenet of the Cooperative
republic of Guyana. Thus, the basis for these group methods is both psychological
and ideological” (Broomes, 1975:8).
The theme of 'working
together to solve common problems cooperatively', if not explicit in the PEP,
was certainly implicit. But to appreciate this, one has to see the PEP in the
context of attempts to promote cooperation amongst members of the Caribbean
Community (CARICOM) and ultimately to achieve regional integration. At the
inaugural meeting of the Standing Committee of Ministers Responsible for
Education (SCME) in 1975, the Ministers called for collaborative action at the
regional and sub-regional levels in the promotion of educational development
within CARICOM. The PEP, initiated in 1979, has to be seen as a response to the
call for such collaboration.
The second problem relates
to the fact that most of the countries have fallen short in meeting two
major objectives of primary education: namely, to produce a literate and
numerate population and to provide a sound foundation on which
further education can build. The World Bank country study on the Caribbean
region concluded that the quality of primary education was low throughout the
region,’ particularly in the areas of reading, writing and numeracy’ (World
Bank, 1993:68). At the secondary level, the World Bank report noted the
inadequate amount of time devoted in the timetable to mathematics and English
and the low pass rates in these subjects in the CSEC. But the problem has
its root at the primary level where over the years performance in mathematics
has consistently been weak. Guyana was one of the first countries to make a
concerted effort to improve the teaching of mathematics at the primary level
while at the same time addressing the issue of ‘relevance ‘to the country’s
needs. The cooperative approach to learning, which was a strong feature
of the Mathematics, was considered consistent with the Cooperative Socialism
ideology of Guyana. Worthy of note is the fact that both Project PRIMER and the
UWI/USAID Primary Education Project sought to address the problem of literacy
and numeracy.
The third problem relates
to the content of the lower secondary curriculum. While the CSEC exerts a
strong influence on what is taught at the upper levels of the secondary system,
traditionally schools have been given more leeway in determining the content of
the lower secondary curriculum (grades 7-9). More and more countries, however,
have been introducing a common curriculum at this level. But with the rapid
advance of technology and with the expansion of knowledge which has
accompanied this technological advancement, Caribbean countries have been
anxious not to be left far behind the developed countries. What
should be the content of the lower secondary curriculum has become quite an
issue. How should technical-vocational subjects be treated? How can technology
be incorporated into the curriculum and how can the Arts which have
traditionally been neglected in the secondary curriculum (Tucker, 2002) be made
an integral part of the education of all children? In addition to these
concerns there is also the question of how this content should be
organized. Given that the grades 7-9 curricula should provide a
sound base for the subjects that the students
would choose to take for CSEC, the question has
arisen whether it should be subject-based like the
curriculum in the prestigious high schools or
whether it should be integrated. Brain research which
has underscored how authentic learning is
facilitated when content is presented in a more
holistic way (Caine and Caine) has given integrated
curricula an added significance This paper presents an
example of how one country-Jamaica- has dealt with these
issues through its ROSE and in particular the R&T curriculum.
The evidence in Table 1
suggests that of the innovations at the primary level, the most successful has
been the Mathematics project in Guyana, while Project PRIMER in Jamaica has
been an outright failure. At the secondary level, by far the most successful
innovation has been the CSEC, with both the Grade 10/11 Programme and the
Resource and Technology curriculum being somewhat successful.
How do we account for such
differential outcomes? And by what standards are they being judged?
Factors that affect implementation
Fullan & Stiegelbauer
(1991) categorize factors affecting implementation of an innovation in terms of
characteristics pertaining to: (i) the characteristics of the innovation
itself; (ii) local/school characteristics; and (iii) external factors.
They identify 15 factors which they maintain form a system of
variables that interact over time to determine success or failure; the more
factors support implementation, the more change in practice is likely to
be accomplished while the process becomes less effective if more factors
work against implementation. Research in the Caribbean has identified
additional factors that affect implementation, influenced by the fact that
education systems in the Anglophone Caribbean are, for the most part,
centralised, with ministries of education exercising control over the primary
curriculum in the public schools. As pointed out earlier, the upper
secondary curriculum is largely determined by the syllabuses for the CSEC.
Table 2 identifies 21 factors including those from Fullan. In the discussion
that follows where a particular factor applies at more than one level (e.g.
local and national), both levels will be discussed simultaneously.
Characteristics of the innovation
As can be seen from Table 2
there was clearly a need for the innovations which were also
considered relevant to societal needs. For example, in the
case of the GMP, the methodology of teaching mathematics, in fact, was linked
to the achievement of wider developmental goals of Guyana. The
project was described as being geared to "develop certain personality
traits such as self-reliance" and "to encourage a cooperative
approach to learning in schools” (Ministry of Education, Social Development and
Culture 1977:10). The PEP was introduced in response to the need to
improve the curriculum of primary schools in the Caribbean, and both the G10/11
and CSEC were seen as responding to societal needs. Teachers, principals and
students felt that R&T was essential for developing the skills needed for
living in a technological society, for developing problem-solving skills and
for promoting an holistic and student-centred approach to education (Jennings
1998). Differences in perceptions of need are evident in the case of PRIMER.
From the perspective of educational planners PRIMER was relevant to the needs
of Jamaican primary education as set out in the Five Year Education Plan
(1978-83).For example it was observed in the plan that ‘approximately 53% of
the children aged 11 years are not achieving at acceptable standards in
literacy and numeracy” (Ministry of Education, Jamaica, 1977:32) and so an
innovation like PRIMER was seen as helping to address this problem. However,
from the perspective of the teachers in the PRIMER pilot schools, the project
failed to respond to their personal needs. They were disappointed in not
having received any recognition for the extra work they had done, while the
principals of the schools felt that the project had not ‘put their schools on
the map’, as it should have done (Jennings1993:532).
In terms of compatibility
to their values and needs, the teachers felt that the use of self instructional
materials (SIM) in PRIMER fostered the development of independent study skills
which they valued, but they felt insecure in the new role they were expected to
adopt as facilitators of learning. Some teachers expressed the view that the
SIM were of more use to them as textbooks than to the pupils. The Grade 10 -11
Programme was introduced into the Jamaican Secondary school system in an era
when stated educational goals referred to "the creation of an
egalitarian society based on the twin pillars of social justice and equality of
opportunity" (Ministry of Education, Jamaica 1977:5) but it was
introduced only into one school type. The thinking was that if students
graduating from the New Secondary schools had been exposed to a curriculum
that gave them skills for the world of work and also had work
experience, this would make them more competitive since their peers
from the prestigious high schools would have academic qualifications but
no work experience. But in the eyes of employers, these academic qualifications
still gave the high school graduate the competitive edge. The R&T also
suffered from different perceptions of its value. The newly upgraded high
schools (formerly New Secondary schools) and the Junior High Schools
(formerly All –Age) valued ROSE highly not only because they had
benefited from a change in name and status but also, for the first time,
they were given curriculum guides, textbooks, and curriculum materials,
and received some supervision from the Ministry of Education (Evans
1997). The Traditional High Schools, on the other hand, considered they
had little to gain from the introduction of ROSE, and questioned the value of a
common curriculum for all types of secondary school. For one thing,
the teachers felt it was an erosion of their social status and traditional
academic standards for a common curriculum to put them on par with the former
New Secondary and All Age Schools. Most traditional high schools either ignored
the R&T or relegated its use for the low achievers.
Clarity about goals and means and complexity are
related. Complexity refers to “the difficulty and extent of change required of
the individuals responsible for implementation” (Fullan & Stiegelbauer,
1991:71). Simple changes can be made clear easily while the means
for achieving goals of more complex changes may not be so easily communicated.
The CXC, for example, has over the years organized training for teachers to
ensure that they became clear about how to use the techniques of assessment
related to the CSEC. Indeed, this was a major objective of the Secondary
Curriculum Development Project funded by the USAID (Griffith 1981), but the use
of school based assessment continues to pose difficulties for teachers
particularly in terms of its demand on their time and the clarity of means of
assessment. In the case of PRIMER there was a general lack of clarity as to
what the project was supposed to achieve and how it was supposed to do so.
Teachers perceived the use of SIM as complex largely because they were too
advanced for the pupils for whom they were written on account of their low
reading ability. A serious problem, furthermore, was the fact that
members of the project team were not altogether clear in their own minds about
the use of SIM and they w ere unable to conceptualize the new behaviour
required of the teachers and communicate this to them (Minott, 1988). The
difficulties experienced with the Grade 10/11 Programme stemmed from the
remarkable speed of the change process.
From May throughout the summer of 1974, the curriculum development and
diffusion process proceeded at an unprecedented pace. What had originally
been slated to take place in one year was squashed into a period of less than
six months. Because an individualised instructional format was being used
for the first time with these curricula, it was necessary to initiate both
students and teachers into the skills and techniques involved in using these
materials effectively. Again this was accomplished with remarkable speed,
largely through the use of the media. 'Model' classes were selected to
demonstrate the new methods on television and radio. This was hardly the
ideal way of giving users the on-going support needed during implementation of
an innovation.
Difficulties were
experienced in implementing the methodology of the GMP. The technique involved
the teacher asking each pupil a lot of questions and to explain
their answers or their thinking process. Being questioned was an unusual
experience for most of the pupils. Cumberbatch (1972) also underscored the
inhibition of Guyanese children and pointed out the difficulty that teachers
experienced in drawing out the child, either because of the child's
self-consciousness, feelings of inferiority or “unenlightened teacher reaction
to his indigenous language forms " (ibid., p.5), which make
him passive. Such passivity is not conducive to situations in which “pupils
direct questions not only at the teacher but also at one another". Most
schools experienced difficulty in implementing all five elements of R&T and
invariably they only managed two or three. This was largely due to lack of
adequate physical and material resources as well as the teachers capable of
teaching the areas. The mini-enterprises have also proven very difficult to
implement.
With regard to quality
and practicality, Doyle and Ponder (1977/78) refer to the ‘practicality
ethic’ of teachers, underscoring the fact that teachers are very practical in
their orientation. Consequently, innovations that involve use of curriculum
materials need to ensure that they are practical in the sense that they fit
well with the teachers’ situation and that they are of good quality. CSEC
scores high marks in this regard. The case of integrated science is a good
example. This subject was piloted for 5years in 30 schools in 7 participating
countries and feedback from this project led to substantial revisions (Jennings
1994). CSEC has also triggered a virtual revolution in the writing of textbooks
in the Caribbean, most of which are of a high quality and published by
international publishing houses. The textbooks and other materials written for
the GMP were developed by two leading mathematics educators in the region at
the time and the fact that they have served as models for primary math texts
produced in later years is testimony to their recognized quality. This cannot
be said of the other innovations. While the teachers’ guides for R&T were
of good quality, the teachers expressed reservations over the quality of the
workbooks for the students. The materials developed by the PRIMER writers
were poor in quality and impracticable. This is evident from the fact that some
89% of the fourth form pupils for whom they were intended were found to be
reading below the grade 2 level (Jennings, 1994). The speed with which the
G10/11 was developed militated against the production of materials of good
quality. One researcher described the production of Grade 10 materials in
Language Arts as a ‘high-pressurised operation’. Units were late in
production. Great emphasis was placed on getting materials into the hands of
students since the individualised format was being utilised. Consequently, the
teacher's guides accompanying the students' materials usually went out late,
and would reach the teachers after the students had covered the materials in
their booklets (Miller, 1981). Furthermore, the units had to be sent to
the Ministry before their revision was completed. This meant that
improvements to draft units were sometimes not incorporated into the finished
product, because of the pressure to meet deadlines. Such pressures did not
allow for testing the materials in the schools and writers had to rely on
feedback in the form of odd comments from students and teachers.
Characteristics at the School level
The strategy used for
introducing innovation into school systems can impact positively or negatively
on the implementation process. The power-coercive or ‘top-down’ approach
has been particularly influential in developing countries since the
1960s.A repeated criticism of this approach, however, is that despite massive
investment in centrally developed innovations, invariably the result has
had little, if any impact at all at the classroom level. Since the
970s there has been strong advocacy for a ‘bottom-up’ approach wherein teachers
are accorded greater participation in decision-making processes
(e.g. whether they should participate in the project or not, or be involved in
the curriculum development process) on the grounds that this would not only
generate more realistic and relevant curricula but would enable more effective
implementation of the latter.
As is evident from Table 2,
the ’top-down’ strategy for change was used for all the innovations, but
in some provision was made for teacher participation. In the CSEC,
for example, teacher participation was facilitated through the use of subject
panels. These consist of six members of the education systems of the
participating countries, three of which must be practicing teachers of the
subject at the level of the examination. These panels are appointed by the
School Examination Committee to develop syllabuses, recommend methods of
testing, receive criticisms and suggestions from teachers and consider examiners’
reports. In the case of the PEP the strategy used involved the
commissioning of subject specialists in each of the four core areas of the
primary curriculum. These specialists came from the UWI or the Ministries of
Education in the region. Each subject specialist collected syllabi,
teachers' manuals and pupil materials from the participating territories and,
from an in-depth study of these, drafted revised syllabi. These syllabi were
then reviewed by teachers at workshops held at the regional, territorial and
local levels. Each participating territory selected two subject leaders who
were drawn from among curriculum officers in the Ministry of Education,
lecturers in the Teacher Training Colleges, primary school principals or
teachers. These subject leaders served as participants in regional
workshops and as resource persons and organizers of territorial and local
workshops. The principals and teachers in the PRIMER schools were not
involved in any of the decision-making processes. They felt that the decision
to participate in the project was thrust upon them. Three
principals expressed surprise that their schools were selected for the project,
while another was not at all sure why his school was chosen (Minott,
1988). Teacher participation was not a feature of the G10/11
either. Lecturers from the UWI and officers in the Ministry of Education were
commissioned to develop curricula in Language Arts, Social Studies,
Mathematics, Science and Life Skills.
The leadership role
played by the principal is critical to the success of any innovation and of
particular importance is on-going support necessary for teachers during
implementation. The leadership role that principals play has to be founded on a
sound knowledge of the process of change. They need to be sensitive to the fact
that an innovation deskills teachers in that it makes redundant all the wealth
of knowledge and skills that they have for dealing with problems that may arise
when they are using practices with which they have become comfortable. While principals
were generally supportive in the case of the CSEC and PEP, the PRIMER
team described the principals in the project schools as unsupportive; that
they only paid ‘lip-service’ to the project (Jennings, 1994:317) and that they
failed to give the teachers the help they needed and so the teachers were
unprepared to get to grips with the innovative ideas of the project.
However, the leadership at the project level had its weaknesses, as is evident
from the failure to ensure that the students’ reading levels were ascertained
before the writing of the self-instructional modules began.
This unpreparedness on the
part of the teachers in PRIMER has to be seen in light of their level of
training. Most of them were either untrained or were going through a
process of initial training which was not completed till after the termination
of the project. While all the principals were trained teachers, none had
training in educational administration. The training of both the
projects schools’ staff and the PRIMER team was inadequate both in terms of
duration and content. There is some discrepancy in the record of how much
training was done. McKinley (1981) reported that the teachers were given
five weeks in-service training, while according to Cummings (1986) the teachers
received ten days training in the use of SIM. In any case, it appears that the
training never really gave the teachers the real help they needed. They
reported that they would have liked the PRIMER team to give them demonstrations
in the use of SIM which would have shown them specifically how to take on the
new role required (Minott, 1988).
Training to implement
an innovation really needs to be on-going at the school level in order to be
effective, but as Table 2 indicates provision needs to be made for training at
the national level. This takes the form of training organized by
the Ministry of Education, often becoming an integral part of pre-service
training at the Teachers Colleges. In 1975, in the G10/11, seven
Implementation Officers were selected from amongst classroom teachers who were
judged to have achieved success with the programme during the previous
year. They were used to help classroom teachers with any problems that
they encountered in the programme but they could hardly be considered adequate
support for teachers in over sixty schools. In the G10/11 also the lack of
training of teachers was a major cause of the eventual demise of the Life
Skills curriculum while in the R&T, while the Teachers Colleges have
staff designated for training for the ROSE programme, research has highlighted
weaknesses in the training in the methodology for R&T (Brown et al., 1998).
As mentioned earlier, CXC has put much emphasis on the training of teachers,
but at the same time expects individual countries to undertake initiatives that
would help their teachers to implement innovative ideas. Some territories have
organized training workshop successfully and the Curriculum Development Unit of
the Ministry of Education in Trinidad and Tobago has produced a handbook on
school-based assessment (SBA) in physics, using the expertise of its graduate
teachers. Schools of Education and other departments at the UWI also organize
training workshops for CSEC.
The two consultants and the
Mathematics specialists in the Curriculum Development Centre in Guyana held
Mathematics teaching laboratories across Guyana in an effort to introduce the
teachers to the use of the new methodology in the GMP Between May and
June in 1975, for example, the team held three teaching laboratories in
different educational districts. Apart from giving practice in the use of
the teaching strategies, these laboratories were designed to allow
teachers to practice the skills that were needed to support the materials
developed; for example, use of objectives in teaching, thinking of evaluation
as a way of making decisions about teaching, and for providing teachers with
the necessary mathematical background for teaching the content of the
curriculum guide (Ministry of Education, 1975:4).
The PEP materials
were implemented in schools in the participating territories and the general
practice was for teachers to adapt the materials to suit the particular
circumstances in the territories. Following the close of the project,
subject leaders and teachers in the project schools were expected to visit
schools and give any necessary guidance to teachers in the wider school system
that were using the materials. However, the evaluators of the project reported
that some of the subject leaders were unsuitably qualified and that "most
were inexperienced in curriculum development" (Massanari and Miller,
1985:52) and had to learn by doing. There were even cases where subject
leaders left the project and were never replaced. The evaluators further
describe the rate of turnover of subject leaders, principals and teachers
as "a major constraint on project implementation" (ibid.,
p.53) in some territories. In addition, the level of training of teachers in
the pilot schools was low, as the evaluators observed: "Several countries
had teaching forces of which nearly two-thirds were unqualified. Some
teachers not only lacked professional training but also basic academic
competence-displaying serious gaps in knowledge of content"
(Massanari and Miller, 1985:52).
When teachers attend
training workshops especially during term time, they usually need the support
of other colleagues in overseeing their classes during their
absence. The support received is variable and generally depends on the climate
of support set by the leadership in the schools. In my discussions with
teachers of R&T and those familiar with the G10/11 the ones
who received support from colleagues are those whose principals encourage
supportive relationships amongst their teachers. Invariably,
however, one hears criticisms of teachers who attend workshops in posh hotels
where their main concern is with the menu and on their return to schools are
unwilling to share the knowledge gained with their colleagues. At the same time
there are cases where the climate of the school is of such that the colleagues
are not receptive to the new ideas that the teacher is willing to share from
the workshop. All of this relates back to the nature of the leadership in the
schools. Training workshops for CSEC tend to be organized during week
ends or holiday periods at times when classes are not affected.
For the work of the school
to succeed, whether the school is involved in an innovative effort or not, the
support of the community is very important. More and more schools in the Caribbean
area looking to their communities for support in terms of
providing material resources and equipment which their budgetary
allocation cannot cover, and to assist in fund-raising drives. The
schools also rely on members of their communities with the required skills to
assist the schools from time to time with their labour in improving the school
premises or assisting the teachers in the classrooms. This is the sort of help
that PRIMER had envisaged from the communities in which the project was
located. It did not materialize, however, because after some
initial support in terms of cleaning up and painting school buildings, interest
on the part of the community waned after it became clear that the government
was not making nay effort to construct new buildings or refurbish old ones as
promised. Although it was surrounded with much scepticism in its early
years, the communities in which the schools are located are supportive of CSEC,
and over the years the initial anxieties over the international acceptability
of the examination have been allayed. Most importantly, CSEC has received the
support of governments in the Region.
A final factor to be
considered at the school level is the location of the school. While
there is no research evidence on this with respect to the other innovations, in
the case of PRIMER this proved to be an important factor. The PRIMER schools
were generally inaccessible. Public transport was not available in the area and
they had to be approached on foot over rough and rocky roads. This proved
problematic in the monitoring of the schools by the PRIMER project team.
Distances between the schools exacerbated the problem. The project schools were
some 60 miles from Kingston, the headquarters of the PRIMER team, while each
school was between 5 and 15 miles from the headquarters from which the project
was coordinated in Mandeville, the nearest town.
Characteristics at the national level and
external to national system
The relationship between
the PRIMER team and the teachers in the project schools deteriorated over time.
The teachers perceived the team as highly critical of them, bent on assessing
rather than helping and making them feel inadequate and incompetent. They felt
threatened, pressurized by ‘too many changes coming too quickly’ and they
expressed fear of failure both on their own and their pupils’ part. A member of
the PRIMER team likened the situation to a ‘battle being waged’, with the
teachers employing various strategies to prevent the team from observing them
(Jennings, 1993). In the case of the G10/11 the problematic relationship
was between the Ministry of Education officials and the
Government (i.e. Office of the Prime Minister), Ministry of Education officials were asked by
the Government to design and develop the curricula as quickly as
possible. It appears, however, that these officials resented Government
manipulation in this way and action was very slow. Dissatisfied with this
inertia, the Government intervened. There was a 'shake-up' of top Ministry of
Education officials and, in April 1974, the Grade 10 -11 Programme was made a
'special project' in the Prime Minister's office with its own budget and
specially recruited staff. This enabled the curriculum development
process to proceed at a remarkable pace.
One of the most critical
determinants of thee fate of an innovation is “the continuity and commitment of
those individuals responsible for its development and their immediate
successors” (Cummings, 1986:20). In terms of staff to support the
innovation PRIMER suffered miserably. The team never had its full
complement of staff. During the second year of the project half the writing
staff left. During the lifetime of the project over one-third of the original
teachers left the schools. There was no editor for the materials developed and
use of persons on a part time basis to edit proved counterproductive. Members
of the PRIMER team found themselves ‘doubling up’ and operating in areas beyond
their competence. The Project Director, for example, had to double up as a
curriculum analyst. In the case of CSEC lack of staff in certain subjects has
resulted in a reduction in the number of students taking the examination (e.g.
physics, geography) and there are cases of schools having to cease offering
subjects (e.g. French) on account of the same problem.
The importance of materials
being of good quality and practical has already been discussed. Adequate lead
time is needed for such materials to be developed and it usually
requires a process whereby the draft materials are field-tested and evaluated
and revisions or modifications made on the basis of the feedback from the
evaluation before they are finally produced for system-wide dissemination. The
PRIMER team took about one year to write the self instructional materials
for language arts, but they did this before they had the results of
a diagnostic test of the students’ reading ability .Their time was
wasted as the materials were way above the students’ level of ability. In
their effort to modify the materials in time for the new school year, the
PRIMER team had to work under so much pressure that it never had the time
to do anything well. Interestingly, in Malaysia which had a similar
project to PRIMER called INSPIRE (Integrated System of Programmed
Instruction for Rural Environments) the project staff also had to work
under pressure to meet deadlines but in the end produced materials
of good quality. Apart from excellent editing, time was taken to try out the
materials in laboratory schools and final revisions were made before they were
put into the schools (Cummings, 1986). CXC allots reasonable time for the
development of subject syllabuses. For example, two years (1975-77) were taken
up with the development of subject syllabuses in the five subjects that were
first offered for examination in 1979.
The miraculous speed with
which materials were developed for theG10/11 has already been mentioned.
Although it has long been recognised that there were some serious weaknesses in
the units of certain subject areas, for example, the Social Studies and the
“Life skills” curricula, these remained unmodified for many years. Certain
Social Studies units, for example, were criticised for the 'anti-imperialist'
propaganda projected by the writers, and for their blatant attempt to
indoctrinate students into socialist ideology. There was, at one time, an
outcry from some sections of the public against the images of violence in the
illustrations of the Language Arts materials. The lack of revision, however,
was due in no small measure to the lack of funds triggered by a deepening of
the economic crisis in Jamaica in 1978. Financial constraints also
necessitated the withdrawal of the Implementation Officers, - which in turn
resulted in the breakdown of communication with the classroom teachers.
This also brought to an end the feedback from these teachers, on which the
modification of curricula was based.
Funding cuts or losses is one of the ‘environmental
turbulences’ (Miles, 1983) which threaten the institutionalization of
innovations. The larger the external resource, the less likely the effort will
be continued since governments, already under financial pressure, are unlikely
to be able to add the cost to their regular budgets. PRIMER fell victim to this
threat. Once the IDRC funds had ceased there was no attempt to secure
alternative sources of funding for the innovation. Since 1972 CXC has survived
many changes of government in its participating countries and the examining
body relies on those countries for financial support. Examination fees are an
important source of funds, but CXC has been able to attract funds from donor
agencies for special training or curriculum development projects. Financial constraints were also at the
root of the demise of the PEP. While advising against each territory producing
its own set of materials, Massanari and Miller (1985) foresaw the costliness of
commercial publishing. Although there was much discussion about it at one
time, the commercial publishing of the PEP materials was never realised. A
major reason for this was the fact that the materials produced were not
camera-ready and needed extensive editing in order to serve all territories in
common. Neither the individual territories nor the proposed publisher was
prepared to bear the cost of this exercise. As long as the G10/11 remained as a
special project in the Office of the Prime Minister, it was assured of adequate
funds. However these halcyon days lasted for only two years. After that the
programme was relocated into the Core Curriculum Unit of the Ministry of
Education where it vied for its share of whatever funds were available. Once
funding for the first phase of the ROSE programme had ended, there were no
special funds from the Government for the R&T. The fate of R&T rested
squarely on the shoulders of the principals and teachers in the schools.
Then there is the matter of
foreign technical assistance. As table 2 shows, of the
innovations studied, only one tried to ‘go it alone’. The team that negotiated
for PRIMER with the IDRC convinced the funding agency that Jamaica had a cadre
of well-qualified educators who were capable of managing the project without
any outside help. And yet experience elsewhere has underscored the importance
of such help. PRIMER was modelled on ideas in Project IMPACT in the Philippines
And apart from PRIMER there were four other IMPACT-related projects in
Indonesia, Malaysia Bangladesh and Liberia. All of these benefited from foreign
technical assistance and all achieved varying degrees of success. That such
assistance can be beneficial to recipients, is further underscored by McGinn et
al. (1979) who argue that a major reason for the success of educational reform
efforts in Chile and El Salvador in the 1960s was the fact that these countries
“had more than ordinary amounts of fiscal and human resources available
through international technical assistance” (McGinn et al., 1979:222).
Provision for research
and evaluation in the innovations was variable. Workshops
conducted in the GMP were evaluated, but there was no summative evaluation of
the GMP as a project. The PEP, however, had summative evaluators. In its
design, PRIMER attached a great deal of importance to both research and
evaluation. Five All- Age schools with similar characteristics to the project
schools and which were located in the same geographical area were designated
control schools. A pre-post test experimental design was envisaged and there
were plans to conduct formative evaluations to provide information on the
outcomes of the instructional strategies used. These, however, did not
materialize because after the evaluator appointed at the commencement of the
project resigned, there was no replacement. Evaluation of CSEC is provided for
through a system of annual reports on the performance of students in each
subject in each participating country and regular meetings to assess the
conduct of the examinations, using foreign technical assistance when necessary.
Some Implications
In the preceding section I
examined the extent to which those responsible for managing the implementation
of the innovations planned for implementation by taking into consideration the
factors that affect the process. Of the 21 factors, 19 were present in
CSEC, the most successful (see Table 2) while only 2 were present in PRIMER
which has to be deemed a failure. This suggests that while the implementation
of the former was well planned, PRIMER was poorly planned. The other
innovations studied succeeded to some extent. But by what standards are
they being judged? There are three main points that I would wish to make in
addressing this question?
(i) The success of an innovation has to be
judged by more than one standard
Firstly, as Table 1 shows,
the success of an innovation cannot be judged by one standard alone. Of the
innovations studied, the most successful has been the CSEC. It is the only one
whose success can be judged by the standard of longevity based on
the quarter century criterion of Cuban mentioned earlier. The CXC itself was
established in 1972, but its initiation can be traced as far back as 1948 in
Eric Williams’ book -The Making of the British West Indies which was published
in 1948 - in which he called for the setting up of the University of the West
Indies and an examination system relevant to the Caribbean. Eric Williams was
the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago at the time that the CXC was
established. Indeed CSEC could not have been introduced without the support of
most of the Governments in the English-speaking Caribbean. While many may
be critical of the top-down strategy for change, CSEC is clearly one where it
worked because with the support from the governments, there were numerous
platforms from which to persuade the general public of the need, relevance
and value of the Caribbean’s own examination system. It is by such
advocacy that popular appeal is won. But it is not only by the longevity and
popularity standard that CSEC can be judged successful but also by the standard
of adaptability. It was pointed out earlier that secondary schools have for
years exercised the freedom to determine their lower secondary curriculum. What
most of these schools actually did was to adapt the CXC syllabuses to suit the
needs of their grades 7-9. The CSEC is also strong on the fidelity standard.
Core features of CSEC have remained faithful to what the originators intended;
for example, how syllabuses are developed, the operation of Subject Panels,
etc. So, few schools have been able to implement all five elements of R&T
that it fails miserably on the fidelity standard.
(ii) Performance on the effectiveness standard
Secondly what is evident
from the discussion in this paper is that if the effectiveness standard is
applied, most of the innovations would fail miserably. This applies even to the
CSEC which fares so well when judged by the other standards.
While the CXC has been successful in introducing exams to replace
the GCE ‘O’ Level and in developing syllabuses relevant to the region, it
is widely recognized that the CSEC does not test a wide ability range,
even though this was the original intention
in offering the examination at two levels :the general proficiency
(GP) level for those students who were
preparing for further study at college or university and the
basic proficiency (BP) level for the less academically able
who did not want to go on to further study. The BP proved
unattractive to students as well as to prospective employers who
tended to opt for applicants with qualifications at the GP level. The latter
were largely those from the traditional high schools. CSEC in fact tests
between 20% to 45% of the relevant age cohort at the secondary level in
countries like Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad, with the larger percentages being
in the latter two countries. In Jamaica ‘mock exams’ are
used in some schools as a selection device to weed out those
students likely to reduce their pass rate and jeopardize their
ranking on the league table for CSEC passes.
Some of the innovations
fare badly on the effectiveness standard because the goals they set
out to achieve were far too grandiose and unrealistic to achieve within
the life of a project and educational planners have been remiss in
not thinking through how specially funded projects become
integrated into the normal operations of Ministries of
Education so as to contribute towards the achievement of
national educational goals. The G10/11 is a case to point. By the mid-1980s the self instructional materials
had either disappeared completely from the classrooms of a number of New
Secondary schools or, where they were available in small quantities, the
students had to share them or the teachers used them as textbooks
(Jennings-Wray et al., 1985). By then the rationale for their use
appeared to have been forgotten because the dominance of the teachers in the
classrooms was much in evidence as the UNESCO Report (1983) noted that most of
them dictated or had students copy notes. Not only did the use of the
self-instructional materials not result in the development of self-reliance and
the independent approach to learning that the government had hoped, but the
objective of tackling the unemployment problem was not realised either.
Research has consistently shown that New Secondary School graduates experience
difficulty in finding jobs after leaving school. In their investigation
of the first graduates of the Grade 10 -11 programme, Lowe and Mahy (1978)
found that those who specialised in Business Education and Industrial Arts were
likely to find jobs, but those who did Agriculture tended to opt for jobs in
areas outside their field of specialisation. Later research has shown
that while some students got jobs in the places where they did their work
experience, many of them were unemployed (Jennings-Wray and Teape 1982).
In the case of
the ROSE programme, the study by Evans (1998) showed that the
teachers varied in their ability to implement student-centred teaching.
Some showed little understanding of group work and while they placed students
in groups they used the group activity for individual reading. Others
made little attempt to alter their teaching method; and they relied on
expository teaching or lecturing, and written work on the chalkboard for
students to copy in their notebooks Rainford (1998) conducted research on the
science curriculum in the ROSE programme, which included an examination of the
knowledge of science content and the acquisition of process skills according to
school type. Her findings showed that students from the Traditional High
Schools outperformed the Junior High Schools on their knowledge of science
content. Rainford concluded that students exposed to the science curriculum in
the ROSE programme were not learning as much as they should in science, and
that “although all types of schools have access to the same curriculum, it
seems that the quality of education is not the same among them” (Ibid., p.
87). The Junior High school students remain just as much at a disadvantage as
before, on account of teacher quality, school facilities and the ability of
their students. Thus, ROSE’s attempt to change pedagogy as a means of improving
educational quality and equity had floundered.
Research on
R&T raises questions as to whether it is in fact maintaining its focus on
using technology to provide solutions to problems. The physical and
material resources (including relevant textbooks) and equipment needed by the
schools are not adequately provided for. In fact, a survey by Brown (et
al., 1998) revealed that, of the schools in the survey, none had all the
recommended items for teaching all the elements, and for those elements being
offered, some schools had none of the equipment. There is also clear
evidence that teachers and students from the Traditional High Schools are not
taking to R&T in the same way as their counterparts in the Junior High and
Comprehensive High Schools. Their attitude to R&T is negative (Jennings,
1998). Furthermore, while many teachers thought the integrated approach
to teaching R&T was appropriate, as it enabled the students to see the
linkage between subjects, many were not effectively using the thematic approach
to teaching, and so the integration of the elements of R&T was not taking
place. Training for integration as well as time in school for team
planning to effect integration, difficulty in addressing themes and in covering
the content of the syllabus adequately, the low proficiency and literacy levels
of students were other difficulties apparent in the schools. Evidence
suggests that affective goals relating to the achievement of cooperation, peer
appreciation and tolerance through group work are also not being achieved; and
many teachers were of the view that instruction in the different elements in
R&T was inadequate in laying the foundation for the CSEC syllabus which the
students need to cover in the upper grades (Brown et al., 1998).
If the ideas in the GMP
were implemented effectively, one would expect to see this reflected in
performance at the Secondary School Entrance Examination (SSEE) which is taken
by children of age 11 + for entry to secondary
schools. From an examination of the SSEE Mathematics results for the
whole of Guyana over a ten year period (1981-1991), Goolsarran (1992) reported
that, where the maximum score was 60, the mean score in this examination ranged
from as low as 13.16 in 1984 to 19.70 in 1988. The more visionary goals of the
project such as developing self reliance, a cooperative approach
to problem –solving were not achieved, one reason being certain
cultural characteristics rooted in the society such as the inhibition of
Guyanese discussed earlier. And so in classrooms where we should have
been seeing problem –solving through cooperative learning, recall of information
remained the dominant way of learning.
In discussing the impact of
the PEP, Massanari and Miller described it as "a watershed in Caribbean
Education" (ibid., p153, and as an "outstanding success"
(ibid., p. 206). The Social Studies curriculum, they claimed, revolutionised
the teaching of Social studies in the participating territories, while the
Primary Science curriculum succeeded in demystifying Science as the preserve of
the academically brilliant. But the true measure of the impact of a curriculum
project, however, lies in the use of the products in classrooms in ways that
make a real difference to teaching and learning. Massanari and Miller's
evaluation of the PEP did not provide any evidence of this. That the PEP
succeeded in getting some CARICOM Member States to develop supplementary
materials for use in their own schools, underscores the positive outgrowth of
collaborative action in the region. On the other hand, the fact that the
project did not achieve the desired goal of commercial publication was not just
a matter of cost. It can also be seen as the persistence of individual
territories to guard their own identities by ensuring that whatever goes into
their education systems bears their own stamp. The absence of a strong
regional identity and the concern of individual territories to forge their own
national identities, bolster national sentiments, instead of a regional
consciousness which would have supported the use of common curricula in the
primary systems of the region.
From the preceding, it is
evident that although Cuban (1998) maintains that the effectiveness standard is
the primary one used by most policy makers, media editors, etc, in judging the
success of an innovation it is not an easy standard to measure. This is not
only because the use of test results is inadequate but also because innovations
usually have more than one goal and not all can be measured quantifiably. The
results of the SSEE for the GMP tell us nothing about the achievement of the
more affective goals.
(iii) Forgotten but not gone: infusion of core
ideas
The third observation
brings me back to where I started in this paper. When I look at my red jasper
pendant, what I see is a beautiful semi-precious stone. And yet I always
remember that once it was a jagged piece of red rock that I picked up at my
feet in the Kato area of Guyana. But who will remember these years from now
when my pendant survives me and ends up at an antique auction perhaps?
The fate of some
innovations is not far different from this. We don’t hear about the G10/11
today. In its heyday, it had the most potent advocate of all-Prime
Minister Michael Manley, one of the most popular and charismatic leaders that
Jamaica has had since its independence. The G10/11 benefited from his
popularity. The Budget Debate Speech in
1973 when the decision to initiate the Grade 10 -11 Programme was announced was
the first one of Manley’s Democratic Socialist Government that had been elected
to office the previous year. The G10/11 was like a keeping of a promise
to faithful voters who had brought the party to power. But with its
removal from the Prime Minister’s office, the programme lost its popular
appeal. Much of what was associated with it, for example the Life Skills
Curriculum (which in later years was dubbed ‘the Dead Skills’ curriculum)
we would prefer not to remember and yet there are certain core elements
of the G10/11, like ‘life skills’ itself and the work
experience programme which have become mainstream features of secondary
education. Ideas from the Guyana Maths Project were infused into the Skills
Reinforcement Guides developed by the National Centre for Educational Resource
Development in Guyana in the early 1990s (Jennings 1993) and the cooperative
approach to learning and the development of problem solving skills are core
elements in the teaching of mathematics and numeracy in the primary curriculum
in most if not all Caribbean countries today. The PEP has long since been
washed out to sea by unrelenting currents, but it too has left its mark in
that it served as a stimulus to the reform of existing syllabuses
in some participating territories. For example, with financial assistance
from the Organisation for Cooperation in Overseas Development (OCOD),
Mathematics resource teachers in St. Kitts and Nevis, under the guidance of
Mathematics tutors from the Teachers College, prepared a curriculum guide to
supplement the PEP materials developed for Mathematics. This guide
provided, inter alia, an outline of the scope and sequence of the Primary Mathematics
curriculum for St. Kitts/Nevis (Jennings, 2002).It can therefore be said that
the G10/11, the GMP, the PEP are like the red jagged pieces of rock which were
shaped into semi-precious stones, because something of them have survived in
the new initiatives that followed them. Cuban (1998) made a similar observation
about the Platoon schools. They are largely forgotten today , he says,
“yet the core notions of using buildings fully; offering a diversified
curriculum combining academic subjects, practical tasks, and play… have become
mainstream features of elementary schooling” (p 454).
(iv) Adaptability is common to all successful
innovations
The fourth observation
evident from table 1 is that adaptability is common to all the innovations that
succeeded, even to some extent. Indeed, their adaptability was highlighted
explicitly by their developers. For example, to ensure that cultural concerns
unique to a particular territory were addressed, the developers of the PEP
materials advised teachers to adapt the materials, as is evident from this
statement from the Social Studies team: “Although this programme is structured,
there is flexibility in both content and activities to permit a teacher to
adapt to local and pupils' needs and to the availability of instructional materials
(PEP Social Studies Curriculum Outline, 1985:2).
Usually innovations go
through a process of mutual adaptation (Mclaughlin, 1976) wherein the
innovation is adapted and the user adapts his /her situation to accommodate the
innovation. Based on his experience with a literacy project designed to
promote leisure reading among reluctant readers in secondary schools in a
Caribbean country, Warrican (2006) wrote: ‘if teachers can see that they can
adapt a solution to fit their circumstances….. they are more likely to
adopt a change and see it as their own” (p12).
The R&T is implemented
differently in each school, depending on the resources available. Very few
schools are able to implement the Visual Arts element due to a
shortage of teachers trained in that area. All involved in R&T have
had to adapt in some way or other. Because the schools do not have
the resources, the onus has been put on students to provide materials needed
for making products. Teachers of R&T have had to become accustomed to doing
many things differently. For example, they have had to adapt themselves
to a team approach to planning and doing this planning during school
time. This same cooperative endeavour they have also had to encourage in
the students, particularly through group work. The teachers have also had
to adopt a more student-centred and integrated approach to teaching, new
assessment procedures, improved record keeping and they have had to learn to be
resourceful. For example, one teacher commented on ‘having to teach
keyboarding skills to a group of 51 with only 10 typewriters’ (Jennings,
1998:42).
There is an absence of
local research on how teachers adapt curricula and how mutual adaptation
actually takes place. The research by Drake et al (2006) in the UK which
found that teachers had different ‘models of curriculum use’ as they adapted a
mathematics reform –based curriculum is illuminating in this regard. In the
Caribbean there is a tendency to think that although teachers are encouraged to
adapt curricula, they often use the curriculum guide as a blueprint since the
curriculum is presented to them as a package. In
the PEP Social Studies curriculum, for example, each lesson outline
begins with a statement of the theme, the topic based on the theme, organising
concepts and generalizations, main ideas and the skills to be developed.
This is followed by a statement of behavioural objectives, content outline and
suggested activities. In some cases, there are even suggestions on
'Teacher Preparation', i.e. what the teacher should do to ensure adequate
preparation for the lesson. Sample questions are also given together with
background information on the topic and some evaluation exercises. While the
teachers are advised to modify the outlines to suit their individual
situations, the outlines are so detailed as to leave little to the imagination
and inventiveness of the teachers. Many are indeed reduced to 'passive
consumers' (Jennings 2002).
Conclusion
To judge an educational
innovation or change as either a success or a failure is to
misrepresent reality. They succeed to varying degrees and, rather like rocks
which the relentless currents wear away over the years and shape into stones of
different hue and form, these innovations are also worn away over time
but something of them endures in initiatives that come after them.
Change and durability are to rocks and stones as they are to educational
innovations. It is the rare one, however, that seemingly vanishes without a
trace, like the stone worn away by the currents over the years until it
disintegrates to grains in a white-sanded Caribbean beach. This paper has
provided one example. PRIMER was closed down following the original experiment
(and half a million Canadian dollars added to Jamaica’s national debt) and not
surprisingly, since an IDRC official on a visit to the project schools observed
‘one has to look very hard to detect the innovation in use within Project
PRIMER’ (Stromquist, 1982:7). But Table 2 shows how relentless the
currents wore away the fabric needed to sustain the innovation. The
supports that were needed for it to be implemented successfully
were just not there: the users being convinced of its need
and relevance, provision of good quality materials, participation
in decision-making on the part of those responsible for implementing the
ideas, lead time for materials development, provision for evaluation,
principals’ support for the teachers, support from the community. CSEC had all
of these stacked in its favour.
But there are some
educational innovations which seem born to die. Educational planners in
developing countries can do much to rescue their countries from some
indebtedness, if they only heed the signs. For PRIMER there were two signs
early in its life which showed the writing on the wall. Firstly, soon after the
proposal for PRIMER was accepted, the IDRC changed its priorities from
involvement in high-cost development projects such as PRIMER to research
(Cummings, 1986).Because the funding agency lost interest in PRIMER it did
nothing to intervene when there were clear signs even in the early days of the
project that things were not going well. Its lack of intervention has been
attributed to the funding agency’s policy of not being overly directive but
simply getting its officers to visit project sites and to “share their
reflections with project staff and generally avoid.. …offering unsolicited
advice” (Cummings, 1986, p.13). Secondly, the government that negotiated
the funding of PRIMER by the IDRC was defeated in the General Elections of
October 1980.This was just about one year after the project was
initiated. Every one of influence who could have served as an advocate
for PRIMER was removed from office. The new government, while giving verbal
support to PRIMER, watched as it drowned when funding from the donor agency
ceased. PRIMER failed to achieve its objectives and so was ineffective.
It was never implemented as originally conceived. It left nothing to be
adapted, and its life was nipped in the bud.
So what have we learnt from
all of this? I would hope that we have a better understanding of how
critical effective implementation is to the success of an innovation and that
judgments about the success of an innovation should take these factors into consideration.
Using particular criteria to evaluate success is a complex undertaking because
innovations have multiple goals the achievement of which has to be judged by
different standards. Some goals are achieved, others are not. We have
also learnt that most innovations do not die as their core ideas are taken up
by initiatives that succeed them; that adaptability is a characteristic common
to all the innovations that succeed.
That all of this
gives a sense of continuity and durability in the change
process may serve as some solace to those of us who are concerned
about the project –driven nature of our education systems in the
Caribbean: a new project replaces the old in five year cycles
and we seemingly continue to step in the same river twice. But I would
hope that it has also struck pangs of conscience in the hearts of initiators of
projects such as PRIMER. The fact that evaluation and research tend not to be
built into such projects has the effect of absolving such persons from
accountability. Yet no project leaves the schools in which it is implemented
unscathed. What happened to the teachers and principals in the PRIMER schools
during and after its termination? Were their relationships affected? Most
importantly how did the project’s failure impact on the children in those
schools? Did we stand by and watch as they too drowned with the project? We
should have answers to these questions. We should be more accountable for what
happens in all our schools, but even more so in schools where innovations fail.
Tables
Factors affecting the
implementation of selected educational innovations in the Caribbean
Key √ =present X =absent #
=present to some extent
A. Characteristics of the innovation
G10/11 R&T CSEC
PMR PEP
GMP
|
(1) Need and Relevance
Innovation is perceived as relevant to community/societal needs |
√ |
√ |
√ |
# |
√ |
√ |
|
(2) Compatibility Innovation is
perceived as compatible to values, existing practices, etc. |
# |
# |
√ |
# |
√ |
√ |
|
(3) Complexity Innovation
is perceived as difficult to understand and use |
√ |
√ |
# |
√ |
√ |
√ |
|
(4) Clarity Innovation
goals are clear to users and means of implementation made explicit |
X |
# |
√ |
X |
# |
√ |
|
(5) Quality and Practicality Programme
materials are of good quality and practicable |
X |
# |
√ |
X |
X |
√ |
B. Characteristics at the school
level
G10/11 R&T
CSEC PMR
PEP GMP
|
(6) Participation Change
strategy involves participation by teachers and principals |
X |
X |
√ |
X |
√ |
X |
|
(7)Leadership Principals
offer good leadership |
# |
# |
√ |
X |
√ |
NE |
|
(8) Training Adequate and appropriate training
of teachers and principals |
X |
X |
√ |
X |
√ |
√ |
|
(9) Relationships Staff
relationships are healthy and supportive |
# |
# |
√ |
X |
NE |
NE |
|
(10)Community support The
community is involved and supportive |
# |
# |
√ |
X |
NE |
NE |
|
(11)School location Accessible and
allows easy communication with /by project team |
NE |
NE |
NE |
X |
NE |
NE |
C. Characteristics at the national
level
G10/11 R&T
CSEC PMR
PEP GMP
|
(12) Model of Change
Change strategy power coercive/top-down |
√ |
√ |
√ |
√ |
√ |
√ |
|
(13) Relationships good
relations between school /Ministry of Education staff and project
team /Government |
# |
NE |
√ |
X |
NE |
NE |
|
(14) Leadership Sound leadership
by project director |
√ |
√ |
√ |
X |
√ |
√ |
|
(15) Staffing Adequate
supply of staff in project team |
√ |
√ |
√ |
X |
√ |
√ |
|
(16) Evaluation & Research Provision
for continuous monitoring and evaluation |
X |
X |
√ |
X |
√ |
# |
|
(17) Government Support Continuing
government support |
√ |
X |
√ |
X |
X |
√ |
|
(18) Training Provision for ongoing
teacher training /staff development |
# |
X |
√ |
X |
X |
√ |
|
(19) Lead Time for materials
development Realistic time span for materials
development |
X |
√ |
√ |
X |
√ |
√ |
D. Characteristics external to the national
system
G10/11 R&T
CSEC PMR
PEP GMP
|
(20) Funding by donor agency
Realistic time span for funding |
X |
X |
√ |
X |
X |
NE |
|
(21) Technical assistance provision
of international /local technical assistance |
√ |
√ |
√ |
X |
√ |
√ |
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Dealing with the Historical
Paradoxes of a Globalized Educationalisation
– a way to write the “New” Cultural
History of Education?
Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven-Kortrijk,
Belgium
Marc.Depaepe@kuleuven-kortrijk.be
“I
am convinced that if we are not able to appreciate the relativity of the categories
we use, we run the risk of not gaining anything, and of losing everything”
(Eco, 1990, p. 111).
Every scientific discipline is continuously
subject to change. This truism applies both to the knowledge generated within a
particular field of research and to its educational translation into a teaching
subject. When the subject of “history of pedagogy” (conceived as a
history of educational thought) entered the curriculum of European universities
in the 19th century, the legislators had completely different
objectives and content in mind than the ones so-called “new cultural historians
of education” proclaim today (see, e.g., Compère 1995). That we ourselves
prefer to speak of “educational historiography” manifests this and illustrates
the historicity (and also relativity) of the developments in the history of the
“history of education” as a specific field of knowledge. Not only because such
an outcome is partly itself the result of historical processes, but also and in
particular because the process of knowing as such always takes place in a
perspectivist (and, therefore, to a certain degree also in a “presentistic”,
e.g. a time-bound) manner. Our observation of “reality” is made literally on
the basis of a particular (biological, historical, social, cultural,
ideological) “point of view” in time and space, while knowledge of (and
therefore thinking, speaking and writing about) this “reality” is always shaped
via the reductionist incision of the concrete word. Knowledge – and certainly
knowledge of the past - comes about via time-bound linguistic concepts, the
significance of which is predominantly dependent on the specificity of cultures
in which such concepts are used and therefore continuously varies in relation
to the present.
Epistemological step-up to a “new cultural
history of education”
In general historiography,
L. von Ranke is regarded as one of the founders of historicism. In the context
of this intellectual movement, attention was already being drawn to the
necessary historical content of phenomena. History had to be seen in relation
to the norms each age brought with it. They were thought of as being an
immanent part of the historical reality. They were active principles that gave
the past itself shape. The intervention of the historian was regarded as that
of a passive, photographic plate. His language was, as it were, a mirror of the
historical reality, without autonomy.
During the course of the 20th
century, however, it was realised that things are not as straightforward as
they appeared in the perspective of 19th-century historicism. The
historical reality is, to paraphrase the Dutch historian F.R. Ankersmit (1990,
1996), not a reality specified a priori but a reality that is only
created in the interpretation, thus, a posteriori. The historian
constructs the past within the contours of the applicable historiographic
tradition. By means of an historical story, a context in the past is created
that the past itself did not know. Every historical researcher inevitably
starts out from an artificially created collection of data that are grouped
(and regrouped) into a text, and this text, in the view of M. de Certeau
(1978), through its own structure and construction carries within it an unité
de sens. Language is thus not an autonomous mirror or a photographic plate.
It is, in fact, not a mirror at all; it represents the expression of ourselves
and of what structures our thoughts. Only in historical discussion, in
conversation with other researchers, does it articulate historical knowledge.
The forming of historical knowledge is, therefore, not to be sought in the past
itself but in the interpretative traditions of the “historiographic operation”,
which is related to the way in which the historical “evidence” is produced by
historians. It assumes a distance in time, which makes possible the projection,
the subjective historicity with which the researcher discovers and constructs
the “different” in and the “being different” of the past. Such historical
intervention, although it is never entirely “certain” of itself, is, however,
not necessarily pure fiction. To the extent that the manufacturing of the past,
in consultation with the usual practices of the present-day “historiographic
operation” is able to distinguish the false from the falsifiable, it can
undoubtedly lay claim to being scientific. The exercise of history – and here
de Certeau follows P. Ricoeur (2004, p.180), who sees the past as something
that is not but that has been – operates as critical hermeneutics. It arises
from the break with the myth and rhetoric that previous historiographers have
left behind and consequently results in something midway between “fiction” and
“science”.
The thought that all our
knowledge must be viewed as a conversation (and not as a correspondence between
knowledge and reality) has been developed in particular by the American
philosopher R. Rorty, who has also pointed to the significance of hermeneutics
in the debate on the theory of knowledge (Boomkens, 1992). According to Rorty
there is no neutral language of observation to which all scientific theories
(and more particularly what T.S. Kuhn has referred to as “paradigms”) can be
reduced, so that they can be compared with one another on the basis of their
relative plausibility. Knowledge presupposes the language in which it is
formulated, hence the epistemological need for interpretation and
interpretative skills. Within the scheme of contemporary time a bygone culture
can only be understood by engaging in a conversation with it, that it to say by
acquiring experience of it (through texts) and developing new concepts. Only in
such dialogue will we gradually be able to “seize” the past, which necessarily
presupposes a change in our own categories and standpoints. Meanwhile, this
blurred the distinction between philosophical argument and literary
story-telling (or narrative) and the distinction between the purity and
certainty of the avowed “objectivity” and the impurity and uncertainty of the
ubiquitous “subjectivity”. Rorty (1982) emerged as a supporter of a pluralistic
society, in which the novel, the literary story-telling, formed the core.
This “linguistic turn” led
in historiography to the strict division between historical science and
language also being overturned. For some, the blurring is so great that that
there is virtually no longer any difference between the historiographic novels
of historians and the novelised history of literary producers. However that may
be, the history business, as a result of the linguistic turn, has gained more
and more attention for the role of language, discursive practices, and the
narrative structures in historical story. “If the linguistic turn teaches us
anything, it teaches us to read differently, we must begin to write
differently. There is no single correct approach to reading a historical text;
there are only ways of reading. Different reading strategies will constitute a
historical text in different ways. The linguistic turn forces us to reconsider
what kind of act the writing of history is, what our forms of emplotment
permits or constraints, what kind of story we want to tell, and what kind of
story we actually do tell”, Cohen (1999, p. 81 f.) argues. The grand theory of
post-structuralists plays a decisive role in this new cultural history of
education, of which S. Cohen is only one exponent. There is
agreement with Foucault that it is not the unique human individual who is the
author of the text and the intentions contained in it, but the desubjectified
“exposition”: the principle of the grouping of words, as a unit and origin of
the meanings contained in it, and as a collecting point for the relationship
that exists between them (Ankersmit, 1996, p. 122 f.). Instead of dealing with
texts naively (as transparent windows onto the past), the new cultural
historians of education draw attention to “textual silences” and “blind spots”.
Such signals betray, as it were, the unconscious aspect of a text. Texts do not
refer unproblematically to what exists outside the text, but are, as has been
said, the material externalisation of structures and processes that have made
the production possible. The new cultural educational historian therefore tries
to understand how language and culture give intentionality to our deeds through
their own logic. He tries to grasp the sphere of discursive orders, symbolic
practices and media techniques that structure the involvement of the individual
in society. “Our interest is in a historical imagination in the study of
schooling that focuses on knowledge as a field of cultural practice and cultural
production. It is to historicize what previously was subservient to a
philosophical ‘unconsciousness,’ that is, the objects that stood as the
monuments that projected its moral imperatives and salvation stories. This
historicizing does not reject commitments but considers how commitments are
interned and enclosed through the making of objects of interpretation,
reflection, and possibility” (Popkewitz et al., 2001, p. 15).
Focusing on the history of
education, the linguistic turn therefore implies the re-orientation of a number
of basic assumptions of modernism, which are related to the Enlightenment
Project. First, the generalised progress thought was brought down. More
specifically, a purely linear and teleological view of history was dismissed.
In such a view, it is not only assumed that the “makeable” person and society
can become “better” through development, but that this aim is at the same time
revealed in the inherent dynamics of history. Second, the role of the subject
as actor in history is rendered greatly problematical. Rather than on the
impulses to educational innovation and improvement that would have been based
on the individual, the focus now is on the discursive space which structures
the educational field. One examined how the discursive space comes about, how
it develops, how it constructs subjects and social activities (such as
upbringing, training and education) and what forms of power and suppression are
consequently produced and organised. In this way, the new cultural history aims
to distance itself clearly from the paradigms that preceded it. Ultimately
these are, according to T. Popkewitz et al. (2001, p. 13 ff.), still rooted too
much in historicism. This historical tradition finds it difficult to live with
the thought of an absent subject in history. The philosophy of awareness of the
Enlightenment brought forth the idea of a self-aware actor, a creative and a
priori subject that could be emancipated via universal knowledge and could
consequently steer history in the direction of more humanity. Linked to the
conceptions of liberalism and the modern state (which was thought of as the
emancipation of a collective will), this provided stories of progress on the
blessings of upbringing and education and the good life of children, educators
and society. The irony of this historicism was, however, that, by positing a
supra-historical idea of progress, it wiped out history – history was, as it
were, made blind to the way in which historical conditions determined the
finality and direction of stories on history. This “irony” of historicism has
been described by W. Benjamin as the emptying of history by history.
In order to puncture the
“false” historical awareness to which historicism has given rise, use can be
made of the techniques of “deconstruction” (a concept taken from Derrida). This
means that the “track” of the linguistic “drive” that such an historical
awareness has brought forth must be exposed, or formulated differently, that
the foundations of the linguistic code that structure and construct this
exposition must be made visible. Following Foucault, it is assumed that history
of human knowledge and science comes down to the unravelling of the hidden
regime and the general policy of “truth” that is active in it. On the basis of
the awareness of this Sisyphean task, we have, in the context of educational
historiography, repeatedly argued for a demythologising perspective (Depaepe,
1997). Demythologising is – in the sense that Rorty has attributed to it – a
“cartographic” activity: mapping the field of discussion. In view of doing
this, it is far from unnecessary to consider here what have been the dominant
“paradigms” among historians of education, and to look for the “narratives”
these more or less generally accepted approaches to the educational past have
given rise.
Paradigmatic developments towards the “new
cultural history of education”
Kuhn (1979) used the term
paradigm in the sense of a model approach, a “disciplinary matrix” of coherent
entities of laws, theories, applications and instruments that belong to the
consensus of a particular group of scientists. Paradigms are pivots around
which the “revolutions” in the physical sciences turn. Kuhn emphasises in
particular in these revolutions the discontinuity with what preceded them. The
transition from one paradigm to another, he argues, ushers in a crisis state
from which a new form of “normal” science can flourish. This transition in his
view is not a cumulative process. It is more an “envelope” in which the points
of departure for the redefinition of the specialist field become visible. With
regard to writing history of education, the argument of successive paradigms to
some extent holds true, but in relation to the context of radical breaks in
which that would happen we have considerable reservation. We conceive the
development in the history of science of the discipline of history of education
far more as a continuum (see, e.g., Depaepe, 2004). This continuum presents
itself as richly chequered process of intersecting outcomes. The break lines,
to which Kuhn has alluded in the context of his analysis of the natural
sciences, are, with regard to educational historiography, principally breaks in
“self-discourse”. The aim was to demonstrate via methodological, theoretical or
historiographical reflections on research how revolutionarily different the
“new” approach was, so the category of “discontinuity” was obviously needed
more for this than was “continuity”.
It is easy on the basis of
self-discourse in an international perspective to distinguish three to four
phases in the post-war development of the history of education as a field of
research. The preference for the new cultural history of education, which
gained ground particularly during the course of the 1990s, was preceded by the
(new) social history of education. This “paradigm shift” in the direction of a
more socially or sociologically substantiated educational historiography is
said to have taken place chiefly in the 1960s and 1970s. The new social history
of education, according to the internal conceptualisation in the field,
replaced the “outdated” history of ideas of the great educational thinkers,
which is said to have taken root particularly in the 1950s, partly in the
context of teacher training. Following the 19th-century tradition, a
“canonising” encounter with one’s own past, directed towards opening up the
educationally valuable in the heritage of the history of ideas, offered a good
platform for legitimising contemporary educational action. From the point of
view of the history of the history of education, such an approach based on the
history of ideas in turn contrasted with the antiquarian and chronologically
constructed acts-and-facts history, which was often encountered in the
context of institutional educational history. Such “school history”, although
it was not devoid of the modernist belief in progress, had, all things
considered, turned out to be less functional in the context of teacher
training.
However, anyone who on the
basis of actual publications of educational history wishes to investigate the
specific evolutions and revolutions in the specialist field will soon come to
the conclusion that the development of the research reality has been far more
complex than these broad generalisations of the self-image of the discipline
suggest. To begin with, the paradigms cited here intersect far more than is
usually assumed. Social and cultural historiography on education is certainly
not an invention of the late 20th century. In the wake of German historicism, attention
was already paid to the study of the organic growth that could be established
in the relatively autonomous cultural field of education. This study naturally
had a different appearance than the present-day profiles of social and cultural
educational historiography, but this does not deny that outpourings have
continued to occur to the present to give the discipline a professional and
educationally relevant appearance. To an extent, sedimentations of previous
paradigmatic layers are still active. In addition, the heterogeneity of “new”
impulses for both social and cultural historiography on education cannot be
ignored. Far from having been a monolithic paradigm, the preference for social
educational history was (and is) borne by a sturdy methodological debate on the
role of history in theory-forming, in which diametrically opposed positions are
often adopted: from empirical source description of social ties to
education through the integration of sociological models and theories – an
anything but flat contours of schools and directions of research, which we
cannot examine in detail here owing a lack of space.
With a view to a better
understanding of contemporary educational historiography, we merely point out
that complicated sociological models are at the basis in part of what is known
as the world system analysis, which is currently much in vogue in the framework
of comparative approaches. Studies of the “neo-institutionalist school” – which
argues for a more sophisticated form of the traditional functionalism in
sociology and with which the names of J.W. Meyer, F.O. Ramirez, and J. Boli are
associated – demonstrate that the educational institutions and the education
system as such have been of decisive significance for the consolidation of the
“modern” nation state and the positioning of the individual in it. In “modern”
times, the “nation state” has gradually taken over the task of intermediate
bodies, such as classes and guilds, as well as of cosmo-politically-oriented
churches of traditional society. Education became the secularised version of
the ecclesiastical message of salvation: as an outstanding rite of initiation,
the school promised progress and deliverance for individual and nation (Caruso
& Roldán Vera, 2005). Despite
the political and social characteristics of various states, the build-up of
education for the masses in the western world followed a similar route. There
is discussion in this context of a “symptomatic isomorphism”. National and
cultural unity, to a significant degree, was acquired through the school. It
propagated and incarnated as an institution values such as the manipulability
of the individual and society, the associated belief in progress, as well as
the scientific rationality of this modernistic dream which gradually took on a
transnational, universal and universalistic appearance - certainly after the
Second World War, when the school and the associated ideology of redemption had
gained worldwide support (Schriewer, 2004). According to neo-institutionalist
thinking, the school as an institute for the masses first integrated various
population groups in dominant “nationalities”. This process took place
principally in the 19th century, although the impetus for it had clearly been
given in the 18th century (see Pereira de Sousa, et al., 2005). The core of
this process was based on the formation of the notion of “citizenship”– the
ethically constructive attitude that was expected of every individual as a
member of the society with respect to the state. The idea of citizenship gradually
developed to that of “world citizenship”- the ethical loyalty with respect to
the imaginary culture of the global community, to which people were bound as a
result of the transnational modernisation processes that were taking place.
As a result of globalisation
thinking, great social movements such as secularisation, the rise of industrial
capitalism, the intensification of international contacts through trade and
industry can be relatively easily described and understood, including for parts
of the world that do not belong to the centre of western society. But it is
obvious that the practical details of such vastly conceived paradigms can vary
widely depending on the historical contexts to which it is de facto directed.
Mutatis mutandis, the same applies to the disciplinisation thinking that
without doubt occupies the most significant place as a grand theory within the
new cultural history of education.
Narratives of civilisation, disciplinisation,
normalisation, globalisation, colonisation, educationalisation and
feminisation: traces of paradoxes of “post-modern” educational historiography?
As is well known, the
western process of civilisation is in essence traced back by Elias (1969R)
to making people ever “neater” and “tamer” by means of complex forms of social
and mental influence. Imitation of social reference groups plays a great role
in this. One imposes on oneself the pattern of others, which gives rise, as it
were, to a spiral of civilising work. As lower groupings try to take over the
more refined forms of social intercourse and the living and behaviour standards
of the upper social layers, these upper layers themselves, desiring to be
distinct, then impose on themselves even stricter behaviour control, which then
evokes an urge to imitate among these others, and so on. Insofar as the process
of civilisation is disciplinisation and/or drill, Elias's theory can easily be
linked to the normalisation thinking of Foucault, who focussed just as much on
history for the development of his ideas. Both made use of the “genealogical”
method, aimed at understanding the social changes on the basis of themselves.
Both studied long-term social processes; they examined the rules whereby these
processes are structured, what is inherited from the past, and what is
manifested as innovation. They both arrived at an internal dynamic, based on
relations of power and dominance, that is constitutive for the occurrence of a
particular (modern or western) form of society, just as much as for the
occurrence of particular types of knowledge as for the process of
subjectivisation (Varela, 2001). Foucault searched for knowledge incorporated
into the complex institutional system and arrived at the discursive practice of
power. This power permeates the whole of society and is manifestly present at
all its levels. It cannot be localised but is expressed as a chain of events in
which supervising, punishing and controlling are permanently present as a
common motif (Foucault, 2004R, p. 215). The ultimate aim of this
disciplinary strategy (which was manifested from the 16th and 17th
centuries on through the “great interment” of the poor, the mentally ill, the
prostitutes, and so on) is to “normalise” people, that is to say to transform
their bodies into obedient machines with good health, a “correct” mentality,
and an appropriate (that is to say, socially desirable) needs structure. What
is normal is ultimately determined by the production of the knowledge and
science itself, which, principally from the Enlightenment on, has come to play
an essential role as part of a more perfected technology of power. As
disciplinary exercise of power becomes invisible, the subject has come more to
the fore as the object of science. As power comes to function more anonymously,
individualisation over those on whom the power is exercised arises: each
individual is articulated as an object of science and control.
The integration of
normalisation thinking à la Foucault has without doubt enriched
educational historiography. Examples are legion, certainly in the field of
“special” education, which has made itself available as an excellent field of
application for a cultural offensive with all kinds of normalising effects –
albeit that this cultural compulsion often takes a unilaterally negative
colouring, in the sense that little attention has been paid to the emancipating
effects that this cultural compulsion could possibly have had (Dekker, 2001).
From this point of view, the question remains to what extent normalisation
thinking, despite its instructive value for the direction that
educationalisation has taken as a process, is capable of spanning the entire
set of effects relating to the promotion of personal, social and cultural
welfare. Such effects cannot be viewed in isolation from the perception of individual
people, and – insofar as educational historiography has given a definite answer
– it appears that this cannot be pushed without qualification into the
straitjacket of one or other disciplinary “master plan”.
Indeed, Foucault he himself
has not exclusively nor primarily defined disciplinisation negatively. Thus,
possibly “person-promoting” outcomes of this process certainly need not be
regarded as unintentional side-effects (whether or not thought of as resistance
from the lower classes). Like Elias, Foucault appreciated just as much the
productive aspects of the exercise of power (Varela, 2001). It is precisely
social compulsion, which through inner normalisation becomes self-compulsion
that, according to him, produces the person, the individual. Only that
individual does not exist as a being in which unity or a free will can be
detected. People are merely combinations of positions in diverging structures,
which function according to their regularities, and the ideology of the free
and creative unit subject – itself a product of discipline – entails a
limitation of human capabilities. Foucault, therefore, refused to accept in
history a kind of centre or subject from which a network of causal relations
might originate. It was not without irony that he pointed out that freedom
could not be equated with the overthrow or denial of the existing order.
Freedom was not the opposite of power or compulsion, but was, like the lack of
freedom, associated with it in a complex manner. The educational task of humanity
was therefore not “liberation” – the great dream of Enlightenment and modernity
– but “living in freedom” – a notion also expressed before him by A. Gramsci
(Boomkens, 2004). Gramsci, who wrote many of his works in prison under the
Mussolini regime, pointed out before the Second World War that the idea of
“revolution”, a single battle against a bastion of corrupted power, had been
overtaken by such things by the democratisation of politics, the increased
influence of economic power with ramifications around the world, and the
growing significance of public opinion in Europe as well as in the United
States. In highly developed, complex and sharply differentiated societies,
“the” authority and “the” power had many kinds of faces and effects. In
connection with the generalisation of public education imposed from above, for
example, Gramsci stated that this could remove the lower classes from
ignorance. The school enabled them to rise above the folklore, superstition,
fear, and magic of the traditional view of the world (Simon, 1987).
Therefore, there are
difficulties with the image of unilateral control of the individual to which,
rather than the normalisation thinking of Foucault himself, the derivations
from it – including in the educational history – have given rise. In the view
of de Certeau, what is more applicable here is the conclusion that people,
despite the existence of tenacious and compulsive structures in society, try
constantly to escape this imposed compulsion and eventually also succeed. Instead
of an ordered whole, “the” society emerges as a well-nigh ungovernable swarm of
individuals who are moved by individual emotions, insights and experiences, on
which the controlling interventions of planners, sociologists, psychologists,
educationalists, and the like, all things considered, have only modest
influence. It is difficult to think of processes such as “normalisation” and
“civilising” as linear, modernistic stories of progress. Rather than as single
and simple narratives, they point to the complexity and multiplicity of the
final result of the “civilisation” – a theme that resonates all the more
strongly in the present-day “stories of globalisation”: “For the first time in
its long linear and cumulative history, civilisation is not described just in
terms of increased transparency, increased freedom or increased diversity but
principally in terms of increased chaos, indefiniteness, ambiguity, doubt. That
this is possible – and not just possible but also fruitful – can become
apparent only if we are prepared not so much to drop the concept of
civilisation, or the whole idea of the Enlightenment or modernisation, as to
show how such processes are the result of more than one source or authority”
(Boomkens, 2004, p. 6).
The outcome of
globalisation cannot be interpreted univocally any more than the result of
disciplinisation can. Some call them “hybridisation”, “creolisation” and such
things (attention being invariably drawn to the occurrence of new differences
within globalisation that is thought of all too homogeneously); others speak of
“glocalisation”, by which is meant that globalisation at the same time also
signifies localisation and delocalisation. Civilisation does not emerge from
one centre but is the complex result of multiple influences and practices,
which, despite the general tendencies present in it, can produce differentiated
results in the short and long term. No internationalisation without
indigenisation, as J. Schriewer (2004) recently wrote. But this does not alter
the fact that the generalised dependency on the global economy, bringing in its
wake accelerated despatialisation via the Internet, “assaults” us as a fate
hardly to be averted. Just as in civilisation and normalisation processes, the
paradoxical nature of globalisation appears to consist in creating “freedom in
dependence” or perhaps better still “freedom as dependence”. In the same way
that advancing institutionalisation, structuring, and isolation of the world in
which children and young people live in the name of “emancipation” through
upbringing, training, and education appears to encourage increasing
patronisation, it is a paradoxical observation that the “liberal”, “democratic”
market society, in the name of free circulation of people and goods, is not
just increasingly regulating itself but is also ruling out any alternative for
society – which easily continues to arouse fears among “different-globalists”
and “anti-globalists” of standardisation, “coca-colonisation”, “McDonalisation”
and all manner of other ironic terms.
To the extent that such a
“progressive” heritage keeps open other paths for society, it probably also has
a historic mission. Not to harness history before the cart of its ideology, but
to demonstrate that the slogan of those, who considered it necessary to
proclaim the end of history on the basis of globalisation, ultimately holds
little water. As the Gramsci-inspired educational historian B. Simon once
remarked, history (and that of education in particular) leads to the
“liberating” insight that things have not always been the way they are now and
therefore neither do they need to remain the way they are now. Or, to put it in
the more contemporary terms of the sociologists and educationalists who, on the
basis of the world-system theory described above, propagate a symbolic “world
culture” of universal human rights: “There was nothing inevitable about Western
ascendancy nor is there any reason to believe that this is a permanent world
condition” (Ramirez, 2003, p. 10). The generalisation of education by the
systematic institutionalisation of the school may well be responsible for
homogenisation and universalisation of society in the direction of the
neo-capitalist and neo-liberal model; the isomorphic educational regime of
globalising society also lies at the basis of the broadening of the awareness
of the individual: “schooling has too many amphetamine-like effects to serve as
opiate for the masses” (Ramirez, 2003, p. 11). This once again leads to
another, albeit intriguing paradox, namely that the universalistic aspirations
(aroused by education) for finding of identity, like the need (also aroused by
education) to substantiate this rationally will perhaps lead to a
“dewesternisation” rather than a “westernisation” of world culture...
Indeed, as far as our
research on the history of education in the former Belgian Congo has indicated
(e.g. Depaepe & Van Rompaey, 1995), the study of the colonial educational
past, more even than that of the Western history in general, revealed the
systemic faults and the pedagogical paradoxes of the 'modern' educational
project. One of them certainly encompasses the discrepancy between the
educational objectives and the educational effects. The colonization of the
area, which was accompanied largely by the destruction of the existing culture,
set off educational processes in the autochthons that, in the long term, turned
out to be incompatible with the points of departure of the colonization, casu
quo, evangelization. Far from adopting the stereotypical,
leftist-revisionist coloured discourse of the missionary as the stooge of a
lobby lusting for economic gain ─ the thesis of an ambitiously orchestrated
educational plot against the blacks does not hold true as such ─ it still cannot be denied that the colonial
education did not give directly evidence of much emancipatory power. In our
opinion, there is enough evidence to argue that the Belgian civilizers,
including the missionaries, played the tutelage card for too long. It is true
that the Church in the second half of the 1950s increasingly lined up behind
the Congolese people, but the heritage of the past weighed heavily. At the time
of independence in 1960, the Congo did not have the necessary functionaries and
know-how to govern the country effectively. Instead of striving to broaden
awareness, the missionaries as well as the colonists tried as best they could
to socialize the pupils entrusted to them to become docile helpers of the
colonial system. Insofar as critical thinking was still promoted, it appeared
all in all to be little more than an undesired side effect. In any case, one
was aware ─ and this was the fundamental paradox the
educational agents saw themselves confronted with ─ that the success of the colonial adventure required
a certain introduction to “modern” (Western?) critical thought and cultural
pattern, particularly for the 'elite', but one also knew all too clearly that
too much education could lead to the destabilization of the autochthon life.
The question of 'how far can/must we go' thus hovered constantly in the
background of the quasi-exponential expansion of primary education for the
masses.
The fact that resistance
regularly arose against the all too stringent disciplining from above
illustrated, however, as did the relatively high dropout rate, that the Western
educational machine ran anything but smoothly (see also Depaepe, 1998). The
dysfunctioning of agricultural education, which was intended to halt the flight
from the land and the accompanying loss of control over the masses, constituted
perhaps the best example of this. But also the increasing dissatisfaction of
the évolués, who had been able to push through to the scarce forms of
continued and higher education, points, all in all, in the same direction.
According to the educational dream of the Belgian policy makers in the Congo,
the autochthons should be prepared for independence slowly but surely. This was
done by paternalistically preaching the development of a harmonious cooperation
model so that the Belgian interests in the area could be assured. It is true
that the African identity had to be strengthened by means of education, but the
Western civilization model continued to be directive. The internal dynamics of
the Western civilizing process produced among the autochthons a repugnance for
manual labour and caused social disintegration by emigration to the city and
the penchant for a job in governmental administration. In the countryside,
elementary education after Independence headed for catastrophe, and in the
urban centres, too, the double-tracked nature of education manifested itself
ever more painfully. In addition to an increasing group of excluded people,
education delivered an elite, who were saddled with inferiority complexes who
could give vent to their frustrations on subordinates with impunity.
Without wanting to ascribe
the bankruptcy of present education in Congo completely to a failing colonial
system, we must admit that some of the present problems go back to the Belgian educational
past. Together with the educational structures from the colonial era, the
authoritarian-hierarchical viewpoint of the whites was “appropriated” by
several Congolese leaders with little if any hesitation. Belgian education in
the Congo resembled not a successful enterprise but a runaway locomotive that,
in spite of all the good intentions, inevitably raced to its own destruction.
Probably, an interesting
parallelism is still to be discovered here (see, in this respect, Depaepe, Briffaerts, Kita Kyankenge Masandi
& Vinck, 2003) between the postcolonial “appropriation” of modern
(i.c. western, neo-liberal) educational standards in developing countries at
the one hand and the neo-liberal “transformation” of the progressive
educational heritage in the “modern” world at the other hand. In “old” Europe
as well as in “new” world of North America, the reception of “progressive”
educational thought did not occur according to a linear logic of one or another
idea-historical chain but according to the dynamic and capricious principles of
imputation and appropriation. If the leading educational philosophers and great
thinkers (see De Coster, Depaepe, Simon & Van Gorp, 2005; Popkewitz, 2005)
were read at all by educators, they projected into their writings what they
ultimately wanted to read or see or what they simply felt. The so often cheered
pedagogical reception history must, in our opinion, then at least be
complemented by a pedagogical “perception history” in which instinctive,
psychological processes such as perception, empathy – Be-eindrücking, as
is said so well in German – are considered at least as important as the
receptive rational. The romantic, theological-pastoral discourse of the
elevation of the people of God (formulated by Pestalozzi among others) was, for
example, adapted, in our opinion, not so much in function of one’s own
pedagogical, political, and social considerations and implications as in
function of its servitude to various political, pedagogical, social, and
economic agendas of the “consumers” – agendas of the moment that, possibly, can
be embraced in larger-scale modernisation processes, such as nation formation,
secularisation, pedagogisation or educationalisation, professionalisation, and
so on. Such ideologisations, rationalisations, and legitimations, which are
generally the result of historical filtering processes, transformations, and
appropriations of pedagogical concepts constitute in any event, as “working
history”, an essential component of the modern historiography of education.
They bring the story of the history of educational thought within a
culture-historical line that Michel Foucault and others have drawn by
conceiving history as a discourse about discourses (see also Depaepe 1992 &
2006).
However, the discursive
story line of pedagogical ideas does not stand alone within the “new” cultural
history of education. It is constantly brought into relation with what the
concrete pedagogical practice yields as its own exposition structures. In
contrast to what the classic history of ideas paradigm accepts in line with
philosophical idealism, the relation between “theory” and “practice”, or, if
you will, between “idea” and “action”, is conceived here not as a one-way
street from the one to the other. The historical dynamic (dialectic?) that
occurs between the two poles (sometimes conceived as a somewhat more complex
tension curve across a broad middle field of “mentalities”) is, in my opinion,
much more complex than what a simple “top-to-bottom” relation of theory and
practice would lead one to assume. As has emerged from our own research, this
dynamic must be conceived rather circularly: pedagogical practice does not
simply endure the terror of theory; it itself also transforms theory in
function of the legitimation of its own actions. What remained in the concrete
practice of the progressive-pedagogical, also within the most progressive
educational circles, was, considered from this perspective, often little more
than slogan language, separated from and even opposed to the original
intentions. In relation to the implementation of educational innovations, the
dynamic between what we have elsewhere called higher and lower pedagogy
(Depaepe et al 2000) exposes precisely one of the fundamental causes of why
pedagogical-didactic reforms proceed so slowly. Paraphrasing Larry Cuban
(1993), we can state that educational reform movements – including their
theoretical backgrounds and starting points – change not so much the school and
education themselves than, inversely, are controlled by the “grammar of
schooling” active in it.
We shall return to this
“grammar” immediately, but let us first point out that this does not, however,
alter the fact that the idea of globalisation of the educational space,
including in the Foucauldian sense, can be critically questioned at its
discursive level. It forms part of a continued liberal administrative regime in
which the social democratic ideology and strategy of the active welfare state
is no longer experienced as a problem of social inequality but as one of
inclusion and exclusion. For Popkewitz (2004), the criterion of this exclusion
forms the manufactured concept of “lifelong learner”, which at the same time
serves as the impetus for a new type of cosmopolitanism, by which the spirit is
“made” and the self is “managed”. Masschelein and Simons (2003, p. 76 ff.) see
the emergence of this new globalism as an economisation of the social. On the
one hand, it fits in which the propaganda for the usable, “managing self” and
on the other it gives the “experts” (therapists, psychologists, educationalists
etc.) the opportunity to “sell” their expertise, which in our view presupposes
educationalisation in a dual manner. However that may be, the invitation to
conceive social relations as the enterprising choice of an autonomous,
independent subject with individual motives meanwhile provides the ironic
paradox with discursive anonymity itself.
Quite apart from this
critique of the contemporary orientation of the trend towards globalisation,
with and without a cultural history colouring, there is obviously also the
question to what extent the story of globalisation in itself offers an adequate
impetus for the construction of educational historiography. With regard to the
neo-institutionalist research tradition, in any event, this large-scale
approach risks surveying educational development too hastily, too superficially
and too linearly (Caruso & Roldán Vera, 2005). In addition, there is a
danger that this “school” of research, which situates the educational “isomorphism”
of globalisation principally at the macro- and meso-level of educational action
(Schriewer 2004) also merely gazes at those levels (de Sousa et al, 2005),
while the quasi-uniform patterns of action at the micro-level have presumably
worked just as strongly in a “homogenising” and “globalising” way. The latter
meanwhile appears to be the outcome of studies on the grammar of schooling,
first undertaken by American educational historians like L. Cuban, D. Tyack and
W. Tobin (Cuban, 1993²). The archetype of this grammar of schooling can be
easily found in museums of “education”, all over the world. That these
education museums breathe the same spirit almost everywhere proves how
universal the “text” of this school grammar is – even though the social and
cultural “context” over the various periods has brought with it important
differences of nuance. And it proves just as much how deeply the grammar of the
school is interwoven with the process of modernisation, globalisation and
educationalisation. In various languages and against the background of
different cultures, the same “educational regime” became established almost
everywhere in the “civilised” world: a similar complex of actions with the aim
of training the students (for later) by disciplining them. This is evidenced
not just by the educational behaviour and how children are dealt with
didactically but also by the determinants of the school culture.
School culture, which to a
great degree structures the content and outlook of the disciplinary
“educational regime”, was studied in particular by the French school of
history, educational and otherwise. School culture can be defined in this
tradition as the entire set of norms that determines the directions of
education and determines the practices to obtain the desired knowledge contents
and social behaviour from the students (Nóvoa, 2001). Significant research in
this connection is also being done in the Spanish-speaking world. Educational
historians are searching for what is known as the Arqueología de la escuela
(Viñao, 2001). The “archaeology” of teaching and the associated rituals of
school life cannot be seen, however, in isolation from the “educational”
significance of running a school. It is only on the basis of the “basic
semantics” of educational theory (e.g. Oelkers, 1991) that the American concept
of grammar of schooling can be fully interpreted. In our view, the “grammar of
educationalisation” (or “educationalising”) is therefore an unavoidable
complement to the “grammar of schooling” (Depaepe et al., 2000).
The polarity between
schooling and educationalising, alongside the irony of educational innovation,
reveals the more fundamental educational paradox from which the process of
educationalisation can best be interpreted. Better education, according to the
“enlightened” ideal of the late 18th century, was to result in more mature
people, but this did not prevent this “emancipative” objective invariably
presupposing an asymmetric educational relationship as a means. Training was
dependent on the subjection and obedience of apprentices to the authority of
the “master”. The latter was in charge of an educational adventure that
increasingly made use of a specified curriculum. He knew the path that had to
be followed and the techniques that could be employed for this purpose. The
proclaimed ideal of self-development could be founded on unbridled freedom as
little as it could on blind obedience. The school, as the prediction and at the
same time reduction of real life, required a compromise between freedom and
bondage. Children had to be able to develop under the invisible – as far as
possible because the ideal of punitive sobriety applied with regard to
punishment – yet firm hand of the leader. More pedagogy and pedagogics,
therefore, did not necessarily result in more autonomy for the child but could,
conversely, also culminate in prolonged dependence (infantilisation). It was
essential to this, however, that the brutalising elements of physical violence
through the “sweet smile” and a “forced atmosphere of harmony and contentment”
were “professionally” altered to mental threats and emotional blackmail.
Such educational flair came
ever close to the vicinity of the ideal, considered to be female, of
gentleness, which in turn touches on another educational paradox, that of
“feminisation” versus “feminism”– a movement that as such aims for emancipation
of women (and not stereotyping of women in function of one or another
occupational group). Our hypothesis is that it is difficult to view the
feminisation of the teaching profession in isolation from the
professionalisation of the sector. Women are, as it were, trained in
sensitivity for the educational outlook. The educationally correct “outlook” as
it were became the trademark of the purported “femininity” of women and
consequently legitimised the traditional division of roles between men and
women (hard sector versus soft sector). Hence, as the influence of education
increased, the feminisation of the teaching profession and of training also
increased – a phenomenon not even brought to a halt by the undeniable
“emancipation of women” in recent decades. It is notable, however, that this
paradox until now has received little attention in the feminist-inspired
historical writing on education. This historiography, nevertheless, has brought
about significant adjustments in the usually “male short-sightedness” of
traditional educational historiography (cf. Lowe, 2000). J. Herbst (1999) even
welcomed it as the most significant innovation in a field in which he otherwise
saw little evolution since the heyday of American revisionism in the 1970s: one
more reason to see, in the unravelling of the subtle paradoxes to which the
process narratives of disciplinisation, normalisation, globalisation,
educationalisation, feminisation and so on have given rise, one of the great
challenges of “contemporary” educational historiography. By way of conclusion,
therefore, the question arises of the extent to which the study of these
paradoxes is compatible with the conceptualisation of the new cultural history
of education. In other words:
Is this truly “new cultural” educational
historiography?
Ultimately, the answer to
this probably adds little. To the extent that the educational paradoxes relate
to the epistemological condition of perspectivism (with which people as
cultural and biological beings necessary look at the past), they are also
applicable to the labels people have wanted to attach to the history of
education. As C. Barros (2004), among others, has noted with respect to the methodological
debate in general history writing, it is mostly a matter of overcoming the
dichotomies prompted by characterisations as “old” and “new” by striving for
new syntheses through a mixing of historical genres and lines of research. And
this has consequences not only for the theoretical positioning in the
historiographical debate but also for of the concrete research “design” (the
elaboration of research questions, the selection of source materials, the
collection of data, the construction of the text as the “result” of the
research, and so on). The study of educational paradoxes does not in any way
exclude a fuite en arrière (although the great return to the traditional
empirical and/or “modern” social history, referred to by Barros, 2004, as the positivist
turn, in our view must be radicalised and made absolute as little as the linguistic
turn, which is said to have ushered in post-modernism). In the context of
feminisation research, for example, a rigid statistical substructure – a kind
of quantitative prosopography – is a conditio sine qua non that must
precede any new-fashioned interpretation. Figures are, therefore, by no means a
bad thing; on the contrary, they can help to prick “educational” myths.
What is needed, all
things considered, is a “mix” of approaches, of “ways of seeing” – a plurality
of insights. As a result of being able to change perspective, we become better
armed to deal with the heterogeneity of linguistic games and expositions from
the educational past – as well as with the ensuing irony. Educational life,
like political life (see Ankersmit, 1990, who points out that the serious,
radical French revolutionaries who strove for a society free of injustice and
brute force achieved the precise opposite – a society in which anyone suspected
could end up on the guillotine) is not intrinsically ironic, but it only
becomes so through historical insight. This irony takes place through the
realisation that the results of education and training can differ dramatically
from what the educational activity had initially intended, just as the outcomes
of politics can differ greatly from the objectives on which it is based. In
this sense, we plead with Barros et al. (2004, p. 43) neither for purely
objectivistic historiography in the manner of von Ranke nor for the purely
subjectivist approach of post-modernism: “We
propose a Science with a human subject that discovers the past as people
construct it” – which at
the same time contains an awareness of one’s own relativity (and the associated
modesty). Indeed, if we are not able to appreciate the relativity of the
categories we use, we run the danger of not gaining anything and of losing
everything...
References and/or complementary bibliography
Ankersmit, F.R. (1990). De
navel van de geschiedenis. Over interpretatie, representatie en historische
realiteit. Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij.
Ankersmit, F.R. (1996). De
spiegel van het verleden. Exploraties I: geschiedtheorie. Kampen/Kapellen:
Kok Agora/Pelckmans.
Barros, C. & .McCranck,
L.J. (eds.), History Under Debate. International Reflection on the
Discipline. New York, etc.: The Haworth Press.
Boomkens, R. (red.) (1992).
De asceet, de tolk en de verteller. Richard Rorty en het denken van het Westen.
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Keep the heaps
together!
Diversity,
citizenship and education: St. Martin as a Caribbean immigration metropolis,
lessons from Amsterdam and vice versa
Open University
of the Netherlands, the
Netherlands
iwan@sewandono.com
1. Introduction: a conceptual framework
In this paper I develop a
conceptual framework for integrated debate and deliberation on policymaking
that goes beyond economic bipartitions and controversies between state and
market, demand and supply, or individualism and collectivism. For effective
policymaking these antagonist approaches produce mainly sterile and fruitless
visions.
I was triggered directly by
one of the proposed themes for this conference: diversity, citizenship and
education. My work includes advising the Amsterdam government on diversity and
integration. Some reflections lead me to perspectives and theses that I shall
elaborate on in this lecture.
Of course the scale of government
in Amsterdam and St. Martin is different. This will not be an academic exercise
in making a comparison between apples and pears. I shall stick to issues and
questions relevant to policy. The lessons we produce maybe more about omissions
(what is not done) than about existing policy (what do we do). I claim that
both governments have some important traits in common and can probably learn
from each others experiences.
Like St. Martin, Amsterdam
is a global metropolis to which people from other areas migrate. Metropolis
refers to a geographic centre that attracts people from more peripheral
regions. This results in an immigration surplus. In Amsterdam, the last
decades, new migrants originate mainly from Morocco, Turkey, Surinam, and the
Dutch Antilles. Together, they constitute the greater part of youth, which
means that the demographic future of Amsterdam is coloured and diverse.
Effective and inclusive policymaking for all Amsterdam people, with or without
a personal history in the city, can be considered as the hardcore of good
governance in the Dutch capital.
This is far from easy; the
citizens experience a great many discomforting events again and again,
especially regarding safety. Not everybody feels safe in the Amsterdam
metropolis. Therefore, the Mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, made this his
personal and administrative mission: No matter how difficult, we are keeping
the heaps together!
In St. Martin, the
demographic situation is not fully clear. Figures are non-existing or
unreliable. Essentially, here we meet three broad groups: 1) people born on the
island, 2) people who came from overseas and have a formal status on the
island, and 3) migrants without formal status and therefore nearly invisible
for the government. As a result, members of the third demographic group stay
outside the direct reach of medical care, education, and security. As a matter
of fact, these undocumented inhabitants have no full human rights. Even rough
estimations of their number are hard to get. It appears very much a political
question. I noticed that those who are actually working with undocumented
migrants tend to give much higher rates than those who prefer to ignore them.
The percentages which I have heard range from 10 to 30, which makes quite a
difference!
It appears to me that
neither of the island’s governments [i.e. the French and Dutch Antillean] can
allow itself the luxury to leave immigrants, with or without formal status,
outside the reach of their policy making.
This group may not be
ignored, not only for the sake of human rights, but also for the future
economic growth of the island. These people are part of the workforce, and you
may need them badly when economy booms. Also for the sake of security and
safety since this part of the Caribbean has a great strategic importance.
The foregoing
considerations bring me to three theses that have relevance for this conference
and will be supported in the following reasoning, concerning both St. Martin
and Amsterdam:
-
Diversity is a fact and
-
Citizenship is a challenge.
-
In policymaking on greater issues, education on itself is an insufficient
solitary tool and needs to be supported with well directed flanking approaches.
2. Diversity: a fact
The concept of diversity
refers to the existence within a metropolis of a variety of ethnical and
cultural backgrounds among the inhabitants. There are two possible visions: one
in terms of vicious circles and another in terms of positive circles.
In terms of negative or
vicious circles, diversity is an exclusive concept. The
characteristics of a negative view on diversity are threefold and,
unfortunately, ubiquitous. First, there exists a great and inconsolable grief
that traditional bonds between integrated groups (in-groups) are
breaking up, which results in the crumbling of the social texture. Many people
do no longer participate in the Civil Society. Secondly, there is a great deal
of sad complaining about the steadily growing segmentation in
society. The existing social groups do not fit together anymore: they become
inward-looking, turn their backs on each other, and hold on to their own
disconnected lifestyles.
Thirdly, there is fear of
unbridled growth (proliferation) of intractable new out-groups.
They might create new lifestyles, unknown so far, outside the existing order.
They may also have an inclination to alien and unsocial values and norms.
Therefore, they are considered as a threat for the political, economic, and
social system as a whole.
This easily leads to
foolish governance —with politics like raising war on terror and other
intangible evils. That means mopping the floor while the tap is left open. It
would be much wiser to direct policy towards the causes of the problems than to
their outward symptoms. I do not reject a strong security policy by any means,
but good governance requires that this be flanked and supported by more
structural policy approaches —right into the heart and causes of the problems!
Contrary to this negative
vision, there is an inclusive view. This is embedded in positive
circles. Its characteristics are twofold. Firstly, a positive and inclusive
policy considers diversity as a broad base for new innovative creativity and
inspiration in society. Secondly, an inclusive view is directed to the
formation of new social capital. Later in this paper, I shall go such an
inclusive view based on positive circles in more detail.
3. Citizenship: a challenge
I would now like to change
the subject to citizenship. Citizenship refers to the political and structural
integration within the framework of the nation state. Citizens take a crucial
position in a democratic nation state. They certainly do belong. They count.
And they live up to their rights and obligations. They are the integrative
power base of the nation state, the basic social bond.
Citizenship does not come
into existence by decree. All of you are citizens of St. Martin by next Monday!
That does not work! Citizenship must first be generated. Where it already
exists, it must be herded, watched and guarded carefully since it is a great
good for society. Let me be very clear: the formation of citizenship is a basic
assignment for government or, even more, a challenge.
The shrinking of
citizenship is commonly seen as an intractable problem for the
administration. However, for the sake of good governance it would be an
agonizing idea that people in diversified societies like Amsterdam and St.
Martin no longer are interconnected. Three intangible developments are now
challenging government in Amsterdam and may also do so in St. Martin.
First, there is the notion
that some well-established voluntary associations and other traditional bonds
in the civil society which legitimate and back the nation states are breaking
down. The research presented in Robert Putnam’s book entitled “Bowling alone”
is a good foundation for this challenge. Secondly, many leading politicians
fear that new emerging out-groups are easily mobilized by political one-issue
parties that disintegrate the traditional concept of parliamentary democracy.
Thirdly, good citizenship implies rights and obligations. But who is going to
take civic responsibilities in a consumer society of calculating citizens who
consider themselves only as clients of the government?
My view on the concept of
citizenship fits in with my vision of diversity: for the sake of good
governance, I prefer to consider citizenship as a resource for
future-oriented policymaking. Therefore, I coin two approaches at the same
time. First, focus on newly emerging citizen initiatives. Secondly, scout,
recognize, support and facilitate these new citizen initiatives and provide
them with empowerment by all means.
In St. Martin, the design
of a new constitutional structure provides a window of opportunity for explicit
new roles of the civil servants in strengthening citizenship. The challenge
will be not to start this top down, in the sense that the department designs
the goals, targets, and approaches for an integrated cultural policy. It will
be more feasible to scout new hallmarks and stepping-stones for strengthening
the civic culture of the island. This requires participatory methods in
policymaking that must be learnt and trained. New interactive forms of
governance may be learnt and carried out. Civil servants need to learn to
listen and watch, to recognize and respect what citizens already do and what
they can do.
4. Education needs flanking approaches
It is not my aim to produce
here an academic exercise on education. I shall stick to my profession as a
scholar of policymaking. Moreover, education is only partly a goal in itself. I
see education as an indispensable vehicle for reaching goals and targets in
general policymaking on important societal questions.
However, in practice, both
in Amsterdam and St. Martin, education is too much of an autonomous field of
policymaking. I see education as a complex but solitary tool, steered and
managed by politicians, civil servants, and school boards who act autonomously,
with few regards to other policy fields like economics, fine arts, health, and
security/safety. This relative independence of the activities in education
easily leads to a sterile policy that can never reach societal goals on its own
and for its own sake. Education therefore must keep track with the great
challenges of our time.
Scholars of education in
the Caribbean, please follow our economists in their call for a stronger
workforce in the young generation, both at high and lower levels. And, follow
me in my urgent call to strengthen the social bond in St. Martin. As lecturer
in Public Administration on the island, I try to contribute to the professional
strengthening of a few leading officials in your civil service. We work on
extending their expertise and sharpening their feeling for ethics, and we
tickle their professional attitudes. You will need very good bureaucrats to
challenge your politicians. Meek civil servants make weak politicians. And that
goes at the cost of good citizenship.
We also need civil servants
with adequate education in lower brackets of bureaucracy. Examples are reliable
policemen in the streets, friendly servicemen behind the public office
counters, and capable garbage collectors, as well as welcoming and hospitable
personnel in the hotels.
Do realize that education
must also provide skilled labourers for the near future. Think about
bricklaying, roof thatching, bench fitting. And who will drive buses and do our
bookkeeping?
We must distinguish between
education in the sense of schooling and education in the sense of upbringing at
home. About the lifestyles at home: Who sets examples as a significant role
model for children, who stimulates and supports children in fatherless
families, and who prepares healthy family meals? However important family life
and the upbringing at home may be, I shall focus on the politics of schooling.
A challenge for education
both in Amsterdam and St. Martin is that too many people have an insufficient
education and do not fully develop their talents. This becomes a
trans-generational problem as it often will be transferred from mother to
daughter. This results in unfavourable effects on the economy, workforce,
security/safety, and on the citizenship in our societies. That is too bad for
these youngsters themselves, and also for Amsterdam that needs skilled youth
for the workforce, and for St. Martin suffering a great lack of skilled
labourers for the booming building projects all over the island. One observes
clearly a considerable drain of skilled labourers from one Caribbean island to
another. Is this a temporary phenomenon or are they really migrating with or
without their families?
Three facts about the
position of the Amsterdam youth:
-
The greater part of Amsterdam youth has its family roots in Morocco, Turkey,
Surinam, the Dutch Antilles and Aruba.
-
Most migrant youth live in ghetto-like city parts of Amsterdam New-West and
South-East. In many cases, they hardly ever leave their neighbourhood; they do
not even know other parts of their city!
-
Most young migrants attend the lowest level of education, which unfortunately
does not prepare people for the minimal job qualifications needed in Dutch
society.
The debate on education
appears to have lost track! There is so much debate on structural, organizational,
and specialized educational issues, as seen in the educational practice of the
last decades, that the origins of the discussions on education are blurred or
even out of sight. I select two prominent themes from a stance on diversity,
citizenship, and survival of the metropolis:
- How to promote ethnic desegregation
through education?
- How to give apt attention for the
formation of a basic skills qualification at the lowest level of
education?
I shall leave the formation
of basic skills to economists and others.[1] I shall finish this lecture by throwing some
light on a few issues in policymaking that may have a constructive meaning in
the field of education in St. Martin. The first issue concerns how education
may serve the metropolis as a centre and breeding ground for creativity and
creative industries. The second refers to the contribution of education to the
formation of social capital. Finally, I shall treat the shortcomings of an
exclusive and one-line historical view on creolization as cultural matrix for
education on St. Martin.
5. The metropolis as centre and breeding ground
for creativity: an issue in education
How important is culture,
especially how important are fine arts for the social bond in the metropolis?
Let me start with but a few observations.
In the eight wars that in
the nineties destroyed the Yugoslavian state, the Serbs deliberately destroyed
the cultural heritage of Croats, Albanians, and Kosovars. Why? What was the
deeper meaning of this targeting the cultural heritage? Why was the
centuries-old heart of the Croat city of Dubrovnik destroyed by the Serbs?
In Afghanistan, the
Taliban-regime destroyed centuries-old Buddha sculptures. Why?
The famous Buddhist temple
Borobudur near Yogyakarta on Java, in Indonesia, is one of the seven world
wonders. It has been target of a few Muslim onslaughts. Why does the Indonesian
government keep this secret? What would happen if this had been made public?
The old country Sri Lanka is governed by Buddhist Singhalese, who are
challenged by the Hindu Tamil Tigers. The story goes that government keeps
secret that the oldest findings of archaeologists are no Buddhist artefacts,
but Hindu temples. Why keep that secret?
Why all this destruction of
historical artefacts and why keeping it a secret? The answer is that culture
and local and regional fine arts probably have great meaning for policymaking
in international metropolises. They are effective vehicles for social binding,
for connecting, even for bridging contrasts and controversies among the
citizens.
I shall not defend blind
chauvinism. But a mild form of metropolitan chauvinism provides a strong
binding factor. Identification with one’s own metropolis appears to be even
stronger than with one’s country as a whole. In Amsterdam, this counts for the
older inhabitants as well as for the newer citizens. During World War II, white
labourers in Amsterdam went on strike against the German occupation under the
slogan: The bloody Germans must keep their bloody hands off our bloody own
Jews.[2] As long as the enemy is situated outside, they
feel as one. Amsterdam will always back the football club Ajax.
In St. Martin, a still
unpublished discussion paper on culture policy reads:
“A cultural policy is the
catalyst of creativity and the means to preserve the national heritage, which
consists of both the tangible and intangible heritage. A cultural policy must
create conditions, conducive to the production and dissemination of diversified
cultural goods and services through cultural industries, organizations,
institutions and individuals that have the means to assert themselves at the
local and global level.”
These are complicated
formulations. I agree with the committee concerned only if they implement this
stance in such a way that the culture policy on the island will not impede
further development of folk culture and both lowbrow and highbrow expressions
of any artistic value. Production and consumption of culture and artefacts take
place in practice, far from any government intervention. There can be no direct
governance lead in culture politics. Culture policy should work with the energy
of the grassroots and the professional arts alike. Here the task of civil
servants is to scout, recognize and facilitate authentic cultural expressions
from grassroots breeding grounds to elite levels.
How important is a generous
culture policy for a metropolis? To set an example, Amsterdam considers itself
an important international marketplace for creative services, museums,
orchestras, entertainment, ICT, and New Multi Media arts. More than 25 percent
of all creative jobs in the country are situated in Amsterdam City, where this
makes for about 7 percents of all worksites. If we also reckon the much greater
volume of directly connected worksites in the fields of hospitality, transport,
commercial services, etc., we may even come to 20 percent! The international
melting pot of young high tech professionals makes the city very lively and
attractive for other knowledge professionals. Their free and open lifestyle is
an important economic asset for Amsterdam.
The city government
develops an ambitious so-called Program Creative Industry 2007-2010.
This aims at bringing together people, ideas, and money for realizing a series
of concrete projects: the connection of education and creative industry, making
use of the cultural diversity (e.g. the hip hop scene), stimulation and
empowerment of creative entrepreneurs, enhancing joint enterprises where culture
media and ICT meet, recognizing and supporting existing and newly emerging
accommodations for creative industry, and the promotion of Amsterdam as
breeding ground and marketplace for joint creative industries.
A second campaign of the
city government is Amsterdam Topstad [Top City]. The new city government
sees great opportunities for Amsterdam as internationally attractive centre for
the development of new creative industries and invests 70 million Euros in
extremely ambitious new plans, concepts, and ideas. These activities keep pace
with a few private campaigns started by employers’ organizations aiming at a
deliberate Human Relations policy targeting young migrants.
Culture politics of
mobilization and vitalization may become a success formula for any metropolis
as international centre and breeding ground for creativity. I raise the
question: what can education contribute with here?
6. Social capital, an issue in education
Recently serious warnings
were presented to the city government of Amsterdam. The film director and
publicist Theo van Gogh, icon of absolute freedom of public speech, was
brutally murdered by a frustrated radical Islamist in Amsterdam. In the banlieue
of Paris young migrants without prospects for the future took over the nightly
power in the streets.
Researchers collected
appalling figures about the lack of communication between different ethnic
groups in the city.[3] Not only the inter group are interactions
feeble, the reciprocal images are also negative. Only some weeks ago Amsterdam
citizens of Moroccan and Surinamese origin engaged in a street fight after some
tragic murder incident resulted from a conflict about a parking lot.
This became the upbeat for
a continuous campaign to strengthen the reciprocal trust among the various
ethnic and cultural groups in the metropolis. This triggered, as said before,
the Mayor of Amsterdam for his mission statement: Keep the heaps together.
The city government now
seeks both categorical and integrative solutions for migrant groups of
youngsters, women, the elderly, those who are in and out of work, etc.
In the formation of social
capital, the city government sees substantial communication in co-productions
as a possibly effective way to break through negative conflict dynamics. But
before they participate in public affairs, even for their own sake, people must
feel safe, trusted, and respected in their own circles. The establishment or
revitalization of social bonds inside groups may be primary conditions for the
establishment of social bonds outside these groups. This refers especially to
groups that differ ethnically and culturally.
Various initiatives,
activities, and neighbourhood campaigns have been started and endorsed by the
city government of Amsterdam. It is now policy to strengthen the identification
of young migrants with the city of Amsterdam and to stimulate them in following
the behaviour of the few young migrants who play significant roles in Amsterdam
and Dutch society. We find these role models in football, entertainment and in
professional life.
One step further is that
the city district governments (since sixteen years government in Amsterdam has
been decentralized) enable and stimulate co-production as a supreme act in
citizens’ initiatives. This demands the development and apt implementation of
adequate strategies for empowerment. That means scouting, recognition,
facilitation, and support for initiatives and activities that rise and develop
bottom up.
Now, co-production means
long time cooperation. A Dutch saying goes that bureaucratic mills work slowly.
Co-production with mobilized and activated groups in society may work even more
slowly! But there is no quick fix for empowerment either. Fortunately
there are plenty of opportunities in Amsterdam. For a few years I researched
the citizens’ self-organizations in Amsterdam-West and New-West. Especially
around the big scale renovation projects, there are new opportunities and a
widely felt sense of urgency among people of different classes and origins.
Here we find already organized clusters of people who have a record of
cooperation and reciprocal trust (be it often experienced in cooperation
against the government!). The question arises again: What can education
contribute with to the formation of social capital?
7. Creolization as social bond
What is the cultural matrix
for education in St. Martin? Colleagues I met in visits to the Caribbean for
teaching and conferences have widely differing backgrounds. Students in my
Master course on the island are well informed high ranking civil servants of
various departments. Their first hand information is valuable.
There apparently exists an
overt feeling of insecurity about the cultural identity which provides the core
of the social bond on the island. Recognizing ones weaknesses is an honourable
intellectual act and stepping-stone for strengthening every development.
In St. Martin, one cannot
avoid the concept of creolization or the creolization-process, a matter of both
the development of language and culture. It strikes me that creolization on the
island (the Simaartn language and culture), as explained to me, is
essentially based on the English language and culture, enriched with a great
many other influences.
The concept is rather
exclusive and local. French-based and Spanish-based creolization on the island
are commonly considered as different processes, developing on their own and
disconnectedly. Dutch cultural influences on creolization usually tend to be
marginalized in debates on everyday life and behaviour on the island. Even to
such a degree that Dutch orientations and practices have become nearly neutral
external standards that St. Martiners now can use at free will (!) as technical
resources in strengthening their organizational and institutional life. This
paradox contains a smart pragmatic use of old colonial capital.
How sustainable is
creolization as a cultural orientation for St. Martin as East-Caribbean
metropolis? Anyway, this does not do justice to the many French- and Spanish-speaking
St. Martiners (from Haiti, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic) who soon may
outnumber those who commit themselves to the English-based creolization
process. Not to forget the fast growing numbers of residents of Indian,
Chinese, and Lebanese/Syrian origin. People from these groups are here to stay!
Before they engage in integrative activities and interaction, they need
recognition and a sense of security.
8. Quo vadis St. Martin?
Reasoning from a
geo-political angle, it may be expected that Cuba soon will become the main
metropolis and St. Martin the secondary metropolis in the North-East Caribbean.
When Cuba really opens up, within a few years, St. Martiners who do not speak
Spanish will be considered as illiterate on their own island.
Fortunately, Caribbean
people have a flair for spoken languages. And, apparently, among St. Martin
intellectuals there is a high level of poetic literacy, and their commitment to
the written language of their choice is great. So, individually, St. Martiners
may cope very well. One may, however, fear the effects of exclusive, parochial,
and backward looking orientations in processes of creolization, especially if
they guide politics on the lower levels of education.
This parallels my concern
in the foregoing paragraphs dealing with exclusiveness of the political and
administrative practices on the island. An open, inclusive, and inviting
culture provides the best means for sustainable development of St. Martin as a
metropolis. Favourable conditions for peaceful and prosperous future
development of St. Martin as a Caribbean metropolis may be found in a
combination of a careful and realistic interpretation of the island culture,
full acceptance of existing broad-based diversity, a deliberate policy on
citizenship (also for the numerous undocumented inhabitants), and the formation
of social capital by educational policy. Now, education is at stake.
Pedagogy, identity, and
politics
Educating in an identity (ethnic) crisis context:
A study of the French West Indies case
University of
Martinique, French West
Indies
max.belaise@martinique.univ-ag.fr
Introduction
The French islands of Guadeloupe
and Martinique bear some specificities that single them out in the Caribbean
Sea region. First of all, because of their specific political status, they are
full members of the European Union and constitute what is usually called the
“tropical Europe”. For many observers, such as political analyst Fred Reno[4], a research professor from the Université
des Antilles—Guyane, this adhesion is more motivated by economical
interests more than cultural ones.
In such a peculiar context,
one could wonder what education means in the Francophone Caribbean. This paper
will not deal with -but just mention- the Haitian case because it would imply
another philosophical approach. The case of the French Overseas Departments
(the official denomination for Guadeloupe and Martinique) needs a real debate.
Indeed, these territories share a common history with the languages of the
other islands: they derive from the plantation society, yet they have to cope
with deep dilemmas, such as the European concept of assimilation or the search
for a specific identity. Different concepts have been expressed: the “négritude”
(Negritude) of Aimé Césaire, Edouard Glissant’s notion of “antillanité”
(Caribbeanness), and the concept of “creolité” (Creoleness) as developed
by Raphaël Confiant, Patrick Chamoiseau and Jean Bernabé.
For the French West
Indians, what does it mean to be educated in a context that runs the risk of
dispossessing them of their personality? According to François Flahault, a
French philosopher, Europeans are “convinced that they hold the universal
message”[5]. How to protest in front of the European
epistemological posture that posits that: “we hold the universal message, but
the others do not”.
In his essay Black Skin,
White Masks, Frantz Fanon[6] wondered if the “school inspectors and the
headmasters are aware of their role in the colonies. During twenty years, with
their school programs, they endeavour to turn the Negro into a White man. At
the end, they release him and then say: you have for sure a dependence complex
towards the White man”.
Is Fanon’s paradigm “out of
date”? Was his way of thinking too revolutionary? This paper will show that
Fanon’s thought is still topical. For instance, Edouard Glissant assimilates
pedagogy to demagogy. For him, the system is perverted: it does not meet
the needs of the Martinican people.
Many analysts share this
point of view. Yet the situation is not easy because, as Césaire said in a
recent interview: “We [the Martinican people] are complex people, we are this
and yet we also that. What matters is not to cut ourselves off from ourselves.”[7]
In the educational field we
find the same complexity. According to Jean-Marie Theodore, a research worker
in education sciences: “Il faut admettre que pendant que les intellectuels et
les idéologues contestaient la domination coloniale par divers moyens, ils
continuaient à perpétuer en reproduisant de manière mimétique son
enseignement.”[8]
So, how to educate in such
a context? How to promote men and women if we can define an appropriate
philosophy of education which could reconcile all the different options in
these islands, and how to allow them to be really in tune with their immediate
environment? What is to educate in a Creole world and/or a global world?
One can assume that the
fundamental cause is the acculturation of the education in a context of
identity crisis. By the same token, it may be said that an ontological collapse
is the main cause of crisis of education. Furthermore, how to deal with the
political centralism of France?
Our aim in this paper is
first to elaborate on the contradictions present in reality, trying to show how
a real philosophical thought based on the Socratic posture: “Know yourself”
will be a way to cope with those difficulties. Our second step will be to
debate what an authentic identity as result of a correct education would
entail. At a third moment, before concluding, we shall focus on the fanonian
man, the one he dreamed for our area and whose emergence would result from
authentic education.
1. The political context and the paradoxical
education endeavour
Ever since the French
revolution, since 1788, French people are convinced of one thing: their culture
is a universal one. So, seen from this principle, it appears as normal to
civilize others, if necessary by imposing “civilization” on them. Such a
universal culture was adopted by those who were colonized as they gave up their
own.
In the West Indies, the
African slaves experienced such postulate by alienating themselves, which means
that they had to renounce their habits, their gods, their traditional way of
education. Little by little a strange idea inhabited their consciousnesses: to
look like the masters and to acquire their culture—the sovereign one because of
its universality. In a word, this is the Caliban complex about which many
Caribbean philosophers have spoken—the Antiguan Henry Paget, the Martinican
Aimé Césaire, etc.
Today things have not
changed for those two actors in the Caribbean. The French continue to believe
in the superiority of their culture. The descendants of the African slaves,
most of them, are aspiring to this open sesame for a place in this world. This
is the reality that one can appreciate. However, what is the matter with it?
The French consideration of
its universal culture is contested today by many native research workers;
furthermore, some important anthropological works confirm that no one culture
is more important than another. Nevertheless, such feeling is today insidious
in the French national education system. It has been revealed recently by the
arrivals of millions of migrants in Voltaire’s country and by riots in the
suburbs of the main towns. Following those events, sociologists, historians,
and other scientists have examined the problem. According to them, the problem
depends on this atavistic character that the rejection of any multiculturalism
hides. Thus, in his analysis, Alain Touraine, a French sociologist considers
that: “Le républicanisme français s’identifie à l’universalisme, ce qui
entraîne le plus souvent le rejet ou l’infériorisation de ceux qui sont
‘différents’. Ces obstacles à l’intégration ont des causes profondes […] Nous
sommes marqués par une tradition coloniale.”[9]
The researcher is virulent
concerning such a posture: it cannot survive any longer—which he intends when
he declares: “Il n’est plus acceptable de penser et d’agir comme si la
France était le dépositaire des valeurs universelles, et avait le droit de, au
nom de cette mission, de traiter comme inférieures ceux qui ne correspondent
pas à ce moi idéal. La fausse conscience des Français quand ils parlent
d’eux-mêmes explique la faible ouverture aux sciences sociales.”[10]
This strong criticism is
becoming more and more common among the intellectuals and the scientists of education
because of a rainbow pupil and student population, because education has an
important role: to break away from the wrong idea that “School has to transmit
a universal and complete education.” For Esther Benbassa[11], this purpose which the mathematician and
philosopher Condorcet assigned to the school institution during the century of
the Enlightenment is no longer adequate.
In fact, what is defended
is a new purpose for what is called the republican school. However, what
does this concept mean? One hears the pleas for a school whose aim is no longer
to deliver ethnocentric teachings. In other words and in terms of the present,
it should be a school which crystallizes the new rainbow configuration of the
nation and the fact of multiculturalism, instead of considering this reality as
a threat.
However, the enlightenment weltanschauung,
or worldview, did not and does still not leave any room for the overseas
cultures. The Caribbean islands which belong to France must forget their
culture to adopt the French one. About such an assimilation, a politician from
Guadeloupe has stated: “La République accepte une décentralisation technique.
Vous allez gérer les routes, le tourisme, la formation, l’artisanat et que
sais-je encore! Mais vous ne gérer pas le symbolique. Vous ne gérez pas la
langue, la culture, votre âme, votre avenir.”[12]
Really is it possible to
live such alienation by assimilation without damaging the essence of the West
Indian communities? The question is not easy to answer. But we must remember
Césaire’s appreciation: we are complex people; a way to say we do not
know what we want and we are divided ontologically. The foundation of this
argument is that historically in the two French departments in Caribbean, only
one thing motivates people: to get the same rights as all other French citizen.
As Césaire gives us to understand, the political leaders had no choice: it was
no time to philosophize[13].
Today, many political
tendencies are noticeable among the people: the autonomist, the independentist,
the departmentalist. To the latter belong those who do not want any new
political status except the status of French department.
We may not forget Fanon’s
dialectics concerning those who are victim of what he called the lactification.
Complex. According to him, “The Martinican is a French-man, he wants to
remain part of the French, he asks one thing, he wants the idiots and the
exploiters to give him a chance to live like a human being.”[14]
This will implies a
counterpart, so the price of such (material) welfare is an abandonment of one’s
identity, a master element in the educational endeavour. Furthermore, all the
benefits of the anthropological philosophy of education are left unconsidered.
2. Identity phenomenology due to an authentic
educative act
The main negative
consequence of assimilation is the lack of development of
one’s identity. There are several arguments in support of this not surprising
result. Particularly when we know that to be accomplished it is necessary to
dialogue with other cultures, to learn from the genius of others. Today more
than yesterday, in a globalized world, we can measure what such a dialogue
means so that we may be sure that one culture cannot take advantage of the
others. Believing the contrary proceeds from pretentiousness, as Alice L.
Conklin[15] pointed out. So, everyone can claim—as current
research on ethno-anthropology of education does—that “Chaque culture a son
ethos propre qui donne une coloration particulière, intellectuelle morale et
affective à l’éducation dispensée en son sein.”[16]
One could object that the
French West Indians cannot complain because they receive an education in direct
link with their Frenchness. In the words of Césaire, Glissant and other
writter-pedagogists (most of whom are ancient teachers, active teachers,
educators), this is not the case. We find this remark in Césaire’s last book
(an interview with a political analyst of London University): “L’éducation que
nous avons reçue et la conception du monde qui en découle sont responsables de
notre irresponsabilité.”[17]
It seems that this
education is the main cause of our ontological collapse. Glissant who is a
radical maintains that the education received is a demagogy. Nevertheless, he
agrees that the system respects its own logic: the total insertion of the
Martinican in the European community and of the European in Martinique,
concedes the Martinican philosopher[18].
In short, the system is not
in tune with the island(s). Despite the great number of physicians, druggists,
scientists, and other high qualified specialists the education given does not
respect the Martinican and the Guadeloupean in what they feel deeply. It is
worth stressing the same reaction in Haiti. An article in a daily paper brings
to light the sufferance of this people under the cultural influence of France:
“La plupart des ouvrages que nous avons ne correspondent pas aux réalités du
pays. Les manuels, jusqu’à date, reproduisent le modèle français, même quand
ils sont conçus et produits en Haïti.”[19]
P. Chamoiseau, an important
writer of Martinique, expresses some objections about the concept of
universality, about which he energetically protests. His criticism is severe
when he draws our attention: “L’Universel était un bouclier, un désinfectant,
une religion, un espoir, un acte de poésie suprême. L’Universel était un
ordre.”[20]
There is no doubt that on the
islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique (mainly in the latter), everyone is
glossing over the identity problem in connection with education. For sure, the
pain has been identified: it is this political and philosophical doctrine of
which Césaire[21] says that it tends to hide away the
particularities of a person and to kill its personality, namely assimilation.
But we are responsible for a situation that seems impossible to accept.
Consequently, some observers suggest to get rid of any attitude of
self-denigration in order to believe in us[22]. Some medications have been prescribed.
To many of us, they consist only of rhetoric: we have to do this, we must do
that. Thus, everyone agrees that “we must integrate our area [the Caribbean
basin] but at the same time, we develop a discourse of withdrawal into
oneself”, replies Jean-Pierre Sainton[23] a historian of the Université des
Antilles-Guyane. Some of us would talk of Caribbean phobia!
This paradoxical posture is
not surprising. We know the solutions for our difficulties: to educate from our
point of view and conception of the world, not getting rid of our symbolic
production, what we have been doing up to now without a real transformation of
the school programme, of our methods of teaching, etc. Is this a declaration of
principles?
So, faced by this disaster,
we must ask ourselves: What must we do to promote ourselves—to be proud of our
culture (proverbs, sayings, dance, etc.) and to develop pedagogy of pride as
encouraged by Pierre Erny, a French ethnologist of education? This researcher,
who has spent a long time overseas in Africa, is sensitive to these questions
and concludes: “A human group which ignores itself and which is not proud to be
itself is socially ill. Sometimes pedagogy may play a cathartic role.”[24]
We can no longer accept to
walk in the direction we have been going till now, ignoring our culture and not
being able to add our humanity to the younger generations (the basis of a
philosophy of education). By the way, is this not the definition suggested by
the Spanish philosopher Fernando Savater, who said that “L’éducation est la
marque concrète de l’humain apposée là où ce dernier n’était que virtuel”[25]?
We must fabricate this new
man using endogenous cultural materials in order to operate the mutation. It is
to surpass our handicaps, to realize our idiosyncrasies according to Kant’s
anthropology[26]. It is significant that we have never done
that seriously and not jokingly. An anecdotic pedagogic production is not
enough.
3. The new man’s ontological development
Fanon reminds us that in a
colonized and civilized society, people suffer because “all ontology is
unrealizable.”[27] The psychiatrist and philosopher advocate for
the sudden appearance of the new man, one whose ontological development is not
disturbed. However, despite the success of education in these islands (too many
graduates), may we honestly consider that their education has meant the
blossoming of those educated? They are split in their inner being/life.
Undoubtedly, Fanon was prophetic in his thoughts.
The fanonian aspiration to
invent this new being means that the opposite course must be taken. We can
exemplify this by referring to the development of the Creole language. It has
been a long battle for the teaching of it to be authorized by the French
government. It is true that we were not the only region, on the national
territory, which suffered such discrimination. In this connection, France did
not accept to validate European law concerning the regional languages in
Europe. Most certainly our linguistic situation is not the same as in Haiti.
But most of the French West Indians are creolophone—it is the common language.
As Fanon said, “Practising a language is to assume a world, to inhabit a
culture,”[28] or, said otherwise, it is to possess a tool to
access to our essence and existence.
In our islands, we are used
to taking the posture of consumers. We consume all that has been produced
outside our territory, even the concepts made in Europe. The French West Indian
subject is under this dictatorship condition. Our own experience in Haiti close
to some teachers gave us the impression that most of the schools were dependent
on old books out of recent programmes that they received from Guadeloupe, Martinique,
and France. They were unable to cogitate and elaborate their own reflections,
to apprehend their universe and to make dialectics. Have they mastered
Descartes’ aphorism, “I think, therefore I exist.”
Practising this advice is
the guarantee to place one’s life under the logic of self-surpassing. It is
also a mean to liberate one’s creativity and to allow a choice of life. In
fact, to assume our life on this earth –if we follow Augustine’s dialectics of
the two cities, here on earth and in the celestial one. According to Jean-Paul
Sartre, “L’homme est non seulement tel qu’il se conçoit, mais tel qu’il se
veut.”[29]
Conclusion
Kant’s opening to his essay
On education reminds his readers of this fundamental postulate: “man is
the only being who needs education. For by education, he added, we must
understand nurture […] discipline, and scholar […].”[30] In a word, the act of educating is the duty of
each generation in each culture.
The Greeks thought about
the way of practicing this important act of life. Socrates, the conceiver of
philosophy, separated himself from his colleagues the Sophists and did not
follow their teachings. By his ethics, he initiated another method of teaching
based on the idea that the Athens needed some well‑prepared politicians.
In this sense, Plato testifies to his master’s purpose in his dialogues.
About our Caribbean area,
we know the intellectual effervescence to apprehend our reality. The recent
constitution of a Caribbean philosophical Association (CPA) is a sign of this
will.
It is true that till
recently the French islands were isolated. But the ideas go beyond the natural
border that separates us to know, the Caribbean Sea. So, more and more, our
thoughts are spreading from island to island. Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon,
Édouard Glissant, Chamoiseau, Confiant are increasingly being read in the
Caribbean and more decision-makers are beginning to understand us.
Education has to take
advice from anthropological research, even despite the politicians whose
posture relies on the postulate that “The republican school despises all
cultural singularities.”[31] According to this discipline, which is
necessary for the philosopher,[32] “L’éducation des êtres humains s’inscrit donc
dans un milieu spécifique qu’il faut caractériser à travers les conditions
extérieures qui vont l’influencer, tel que l’environnement physique, social et
culturel. Il s’agit de repérer les caractéristiques de la société dans
lesquelles l’éducation s’inscrit, tant du point de vue de son système
économique, idéologique que du point de vue social et culturel.”[33]
This postulate is accurate
and fitting to our archipelago. The problem for its French compound is that it
shares its history and destiny with a European nation. So, it does not have the
same opportunities as Jamaica or other islands of the Caribbean basin, a
creolized archipelago. Despite everything, we can share with the others what
gathers us: our common African, Indian, and/or European past.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Benbassa, E; .Bancel, N,
“Le passé colonial de la France: Un écueil historique,” in Le Monde de
l’éducation, no 338, juillet-août 2005, p. 90-93.
Cegarra, M., “Vers une
anthropologie de l’éducation : entre attirance et réserve,” in Spirale,
no 11, 203, p. 19-25.
Césaire, A., Nègre je
suis, nègre je resterai, Paris, A. Michel, 2005, 136 p.
Césaire, A., Discours à
la maison du peuple, Fort-de-France, Editions : PPM/SLND, p. 25-58.
Chamoiseau, P., Une
enfance créole II/ Chemin-d’école, Paris, Gallimard, 1996, 202 p.
Descola, Ph., “Offrir ce
magnifique moteur qu’est la curiosité,” in Le Monde de l’éducation, no
349, Juillet-Août 2006.
Dorwling-Carter, G., “A
quoi sert l’éducation donnée à nos enfants?,” in Antilla, 10 mai 2006,
p. 5.
Erny, P., Essai sur
l’éducation en Afrique noire, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2001, 345 p.
Fanon, F., Peau noire,
masques blancs, Paris, Seuil, 1952.
Flahault, F., Le
paradoxe de Robinson, Paris, Mille et une nuits, 2003.
Glissant, Le discours
antillais, Paris, Seuil, 1997, 803 p.
Kant, E., Anthropologie
d’un point de vue pragmatique, Paris, Vrin, 1991, 170 p.
Kant, On education
(Ueber Paedagogik) The Online Library of liberty.htm, 91 p.
Legrand, J.-L., “Place de
l’anthropologie dans les sciences de l’éducation,” in Spirale, no
11, 203, p. 4-17.
Léotin, M.-H., “Agir pour
l’éducation,” in Cahiers de l’UGTM-éducation, no spécial,
octobre 2002, p. 29-31.
Maldonado-Torres, N.,
“Frantz fanon and C.L.R. James on intellectualism and enlightened rationality,”
in Caribbean Studies, vol. 33, no 2, July-December 2005, p.
149-190.
Reno, F., “L’Europe
tropicale,” in La Tribune des Antilles, no 43, p. 22-23.
Sainton, J.-P., “La caraïbe
qui nous unit: construire une socio-histoire,” in Cahiers de
l’UGTM-éducation, no spécial, novembre 2003, p. 22-23.
Sartre, J.-P., L’existentialisme
est un humanisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1996, 78 p.
Savater, F., Pour
l’éducation, Paris, Rivages poche, 1998, 222 p.
Theodore, J.-M., “La
production d’outils pédagogiques,” in Cahiers de l’UGTM-éducation, no
spécial, octobre 2002, p. 25.
Touraine, A., “Les Français
piégés par leur moi national,” in Le Monde, no 18907, 8
novembre 2005, p. 37.
Yvan-Augustin, A., “L’école
haïtienne, une immense machine en panne,” in Le Nouvelliste, no 37407,
13 Juin 2006, p. 33-35.
***
The American University of
the Caribbean:
Montserrat’s Loss, St. Marteen’s Gain
University of
West Indies, Montserrat
gracelyn.cassell@candw.ms
Background
Montserrat, a tiny, 39.6 sq
miles or 102 sq km, British Overseas Territory, is located in the Eastern
Caribbean chain of islands. Antigua lies approximately 25 miles to the
North East while Guadeloupe is around 30 miles to the South West. Like
many other island microstates, Montserrat suffers from having a small open
economy, a small population and as a consequence, a small local market. The
island has always had to depend on exports and foreign direct investment for
foreign exchange earnings. Economic development thrusts are further
exacerbated by the high cost of transportation and a poor resource base.
Prior to July 1995,
Montserrat could be described as “a middle-income country with admirable sturdy
housing stock, little unemployment and an economy that was in fair shape.”
(Young, 2000) Since then, the island has been in the throes of a volcanic
crisis that has had a major impact on all aspects of life. Two-thirds of
the island, including, the capital Plymouth, the seaport, Bramble’s airport in
the east, and a significant portion of the tourism plant of historic sites and
accommodation in the southern part of the island have been destroyed by
pyroclastic flows. The population which for more than 100 years was constant at
slightly under 12,000 dwindled to 3,500 once the British Government in 1997
provided an assisted evacuation package for those who found living with an
active volcano too difficult. Many persons relocated to neighbouring
Caribbean islands, to the United States under a programme offering Temporary
Protected Status, while the majority relocated to the United Kingdom.
In 1978, the final year of
the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP)’s tenure in government with P. Austin
Bramble as Chief Minister, several projects were introduced in an attempt to
chart a path to sustainable economic development. One of these projects
was the American University of the Caribbean (A.U.C.). In the late 1970s,
Paul S. Tien approached the Government with the idea of setting up an offshore
medical school offering pre-clinical training for students recruited mostly
from North America. Not everyone in the government supported the idea,
but discussions were eventually concluded with the government granting a
license for the start of the school. As outlined in the PDP’s 1978
Manifesto, it was expected that “the recently registered Medical School” would
“provide many job opportunities and generate significant income and revenues
for Montserrat.” (p6) This was all part of an effort to create full
employment on the island. Bramble recognized that having the School on
Montserrat would stimulate the economy in a number of ways as well as create
linkages with the tourism industry. He saw the direct benefits for the
commercial sector and the construction industry.
A.U.C., the first offshore
medical school on Montserrat, was the second school of its kind to be
established in the English-speaking Caribbean. In 1977, St. Georges in
Grenada started its programme and Ross University in Dominica opened its doors
for business in 1979. By the 1980s, there were three more schools
operating in the Commonwealth Caribbean, Spartan Health Sciences University in
St. Lucia (1980), Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine in St. Kitts
(1982) and the University of Health Sciences in Antigua (1983). These
for-profit medical schools responded to an unsatisfied demand for graduate
medical education and a shortage of doctors in North America. Johnson,
Hagopian, Veninga, Fordyce, & Hart
explain: “Beginning in the 1950s, increasing numbers of Americans trained
abroad, either as a first choice or because they failed to obtain entrance into
U. S. schools. Between the 1950s and the mid-1970s, U. S. medical school
admission became more restrictive and numbers of slots declined relative to
residency program opportunities. Competition in the United States,
coupled with the ability to return there for residency training made overseas
medical education attractive for U. S. students, especially in Italy, Belgium,
Spain, France, and Switzerland. In response to the rising demand for
medical education from their own citizens, European schools placed restrictions
on admissions of American students. Schools in Mexico … responded by
increasing recruitment of U. S. students. Additionally, new “offshore”
foreign schools opened during the late 1970s and the early 1980s.” (p3)
A.U.C.’s Early Days
In addition to getting an
investment package which included a 15 year tax holiday and duty-free
importation of materials and equipment, Tien had negotiated for assistance with
the acquisition of land on which he would construct a Campus. The Bramble
government asked that Tien put some EC$250,000 in escrow for construction of
the campus. Tien also wanted the government to get the school listed in the
World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Directory of Medical Schools. The
request for WHO Listing, coming as it was from a British Colony and not a
member of WHO, was not accepted and Chief Minister Bramble, accompanied by
Tien, went to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London to present their
case for the British Government to make the request on Montserrat’s
behalf. According to Bramble, (personal communication, September 27,
2006) the British Government was concerned that by recommending the listing it
would be accountable for something over which it had no control. It
needed reassurance that the School would not bring its name into
ill-repute. It was only when Tien agreed to finance an internationally
recognized review team to assess the school’s academic programme for the
maintenance of standards that the British Government agreed to make the
application for WHO listing. This listing enables students to apply for
federal grants/loans for their medical education.
The island’s weekly
newspaper, the Montserrat Mirror, (New Caribbean School Holds First Classes on
Cincinnati Campus, 1978) using an excerpt from the American Medical News (1978,
September 1), reported as follows: “A new British West Indies-chartered medical
school began its classes in Cincinnati, Ohio, last week because the school’s
$3-million campus on Montserrat island wasn’t ready for occupancy. The American
U. of the Caribbean, School of Medicine (A.U.C.) which bills itself as “the
closest foreign medical school to the continental United States offering an MD
program in English,” has rented space for its 107 first-year students on the
Cincinnati campus of the College of Mt. St. Joseph. A.U.C. has rented
classrooms, labs, and office space for one year. The new school, which offers a
33-month curriculum, has attracted mostly American students. Tuition is
$2,500 per trimester plus a $500 registration fee. A.U.C. officials say the
school has been certified by the United Kingdom and will be listed in the World
Directory of Medical Schools, published by the World Health Organization. The
article went on to explain that the new medical school was founded by Paul S. Tien,
Ph.D., listed as the institution’s chief executive and administrative officer
and that he was a former President of Belmont Technical College in St.
Clairsville, Ohio, a two-year state school and a former chairman of engineering
technologies at Cincinnati Technical College. (p5)
A.U.C.’s early days in Ohio
were not without problems and Tien has to be given credit for not abandoning
the project at that point. According to Lawrence, who refers to
Tien as a China - born electrical engineer claiming to have a Ph.D. in
educational administration from the Union Graduate School, “One of the newest
of the Caribbean medical schools that have sprung up to cater to U.S. Students
unable to gain admission to schools here is still operating -- in Cincinnati,
Ohio—despite more than six months of legal and administrative battles with Ohio
educational authorities… Although Ohio authorities have been arguing since
before A.U.C. opened that it cannot hold classes within the state without being
certified by one of Ohio’s two educational boards, the school claims it is
exempt from state regulations because it is a foreign institution, incorporated
on the tiny British dependency of Montserrat…and it is only in Ohio
temporarily.” (153-4)
Lawrence goes on to
describe further legal complications affecting A.U.C. Two former A.U.C.
students had filed a lawsuit against the school charging it with fraudulent
misrepresentation in several areas. They wanted their money back in
addition to $100,000 in punitive damages. They also asked that “for the
class of all students, former students, and future students of A.U.C., a
permanent injunction prohibiting defendants from soliciting students and
promoting A.U.C. in a false and fraudulent manner, and compensatory damages of
$1,500,000.”
At the same time Lawrence’s
report shows that the student population ranging in age from 22 to 62, had
increased to 210 with 90% of the student body American and 10% from other
countries but with US resident status. The faculty of three had been increased
to 6.
Almost a year later, it was
finally reported (A.U.C. Ready to Break Ground, 1979) that tenders were to be
awarded to local contractors with fourteen of them bidding for a slice of the
72,000 square foot structure. Dr. Tien was still optimistic that the
buildings would be completed in time for an early January move of students from
temporary quarters in Ohio. However, there were several delays that affected
the construction process including delays with procuring materials and delays
caused by bad weather. But by the end of the year the school had long
outstayed its welcome in Ohio and Tien had little choice but to move to
Montserrat in January of 1980. The resulting unhappy state of affairs
that led to students walking the streets of Plymouth with their beds and
mattresses in protest over conditions in the dormitories (Three Weeks of
Classes at A.U.C., 1980) was eventually resolved once the dormitories were
completed. When the Campus itself was completed, it became a tourist
attraction on Montserrat. As Model says: “The Campus at A.U.C. is an
impressive purpose built brick complex consisting of an administrative block,
two teaching blocks containing large lecture rooms (one with closed-circuit
television along the aisles), laboratories, and a library, and dormitory blocks
containing 160 large two-bedded rooms each with bathroom. In addition, there is
a recreation room and a restaurant open to the Caribbean.” (p. 952)
Model gives us an idea of
the costs involved for the student attending the A.U.C. in the 80s.
“Tuition fees are about $10,000 a year, and the students tell me that board and
food cost a further $4,000. The Montserrat course thus costs about
$42,000 to which must be added the cost of fares back and forth to the
USA. Hospitals that accept students from A.U.C. for clinical training are
paid $2,000 a year for each student. (p. 952)
The impact of the presence
of the School on Montserrat was significant. By 1984, it was reported in
the Montserrat Times that a World Bank report credited A.U.C. with the economic
boom on the island. “Because of its small size, the economy of Montserrat
tends to be extremely sensitive to major investment projects.” The report
attributes the 14.5% growth in GDP during 1979 and the first half of 1980 to
construction of the college and to the arrival of 450 students. Almost two
years later, when the Montserrat Times reported (Brandt Represents A.U.C) that
Government had threatened to close the off-shore medical school by January 3,
1986 for non-payment of license fees, the question was asked “What will happen
if A.U.C. is forced out of Montserrat next January? Over sixty
Montserratians will be thrown out of work, many persons would lose rental
income on which they have been depending, taxi men would suffer and shopkeepers
will lose their business.”
During the 1980s, the
school faced several challenges while on Montserrat. The People’s
Liberation Movement (PLM) government which got into power in 1978, replacing
the Bramble regime, immediately set about extracting direct benefits from the
presence of the school on island. The PLM government introduced the The
Universities and Colleges (Licensing and Control) Ordinance in 1980 and
also introduced a student permit fee of US$500. A license fee for the
school was also introduced, which according, to a report in the Opposition
newspaper, (How Osborne’s PLM has Harassed the A.U.C., 1983) moved from
EC$60,000 in 1981 to EC$120,000 annually thereafter. Tien saw this as a
breach of the agreement arrived at with the PDP government and took the PLM
Government to court arguing that the license fee was a violation of the
School’s 15 year tax holiday.
On December 17, 1985, Tien
received a letter from Attorney General Odel Adams (A.U.C. Pays Up, 1986)
indicating that “With effect from the 3rd day of January 1986, no
further issue of work permits will be made to the academic staff of your
institution and all existing work permits shall be reviewed. Secondly, no
person shall be allowed admission to Montserrat either as an existing or
prospective student of the A.U.C. Finally it is Government’s intention to
withdraw its support for the inclusion of your medical school in the sixth
edition of the WHO’s listing of medical schools now in the preparatory stages
of publication.” The Montserrat Chamber of Commerce had to intervene to settle
the problem and Tien paid EC$240,000 which he claimed was a gesture of
goodwill.
Tien was also embroiled in
an industrial dispute with the Montserrat Allied workers Union in 1982.
It seems (MAWU Sets Out its Case Against A.U.C., 1982) that the Union attempted
to have dialogue with Tien once the school started operating in Montserrat but
Tien refused to meet with Union Delegates and asked instead for a list of
members working at A.U.C. In February 1982, a shop steward was fired and
the following day, there was a sick out by all Union members and picketing the
day after that. Locals were concerned about the signals being sent to
potential investors. Tien finally agreed to meet with Union officials and an
agreement was signed on February 18. However, Tien threatened on the
following day to close the cafeteria and to outsource janitorial services
actions that would have affected 14 and 20 workers respectively. Students
and faculty indicated their displeasure over the disruption of classes by what
they regarded as “industrial foolishness.” (Our Readers Say, 1982)
Despite his rocky relations
with the Government, Tien did not avoid opportunities to demonstrate that he
was a good corporate citizen. As early as 1980, he donated all of the
fencing for the western and northern sides of Sturge Park and provided
financial assistance to the various sporting associations on the island.
(A.U.C. to Help Sturge Park, 1984). The community was allowed to use the
facilities for sports including tennis and volley ball courts at the College
and it was only in the 1990s that a fee was charged for the use of the tennis
courts.
The students also played a
part in building bridges of friendship. The A.U.C. against the Montserrat
Amateur Athletic Association meet was regarded as an opportunity to further
improve the “bonds of friendship between A.U.C.[‘s] students and the local
community.” (A.U.C. and M.A.A.A. Compete, 1981). The first A.U.C. Tennis
Tournament that was held had involvement and participation from the Montserrat
community. (A.U.C. Tennis Tourney: An Outstanding Success, 1985).
Threats in the Environment
In addition to difficulties
with the government and the Union, Tien also had internal problems and external
forces creating threats to the survival of his school. In 1982, he fired Dr.
DiVirgilio who was the first Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. According
to the report (A.U.C. Threatened, 1982), DiVirgilio was involved in the
formation of a new school in Antigua, a school that was trying to lure faculty
and students away from A.U.C. The report goes on to say: “There has been
much talk within the student body of late, concerning problems at A.U.C.
It is alleged also that some faculty members have not been terribly happy with
the conditions under which they have been operating. Whereas they enjoy
Montserrat and like teaching, some faculty members have complained about the
School’s administration. Tien placed the blame for the problems on the fact
that the supply of students had been steadily falling with only 250 expected to
attend A.U.C. the following semester as opposed to 320 the previous
semester. “Dr. Tien blames the economic conditions in the United States
for this poor showing. In addition new offshore schools are springing up
in different places and drawing some of the students who would otherwise come
to A.U.C..”
Not long after, Tien
dismissed another member of faculty, Dr. Ranjit S. Nagi, Associate Dean of
Medical Studies and expelled Mr. Nelson Bolagi Akande, a second semester
student, and Miss Bosede Kufodu Uboh, a third semester student who were accused
of being (New Medical School, 1982) “guilty of subversion in that they were
actively involved with the formation of a new medical school in Antigua and
carried out a campaign to recruit A.U.C. students for the Antigua
School.” (Antigua School No Threat, 1982)
Then in 1984, (Tricks
Pulled on A.U.C.) it seems that staff from St. Georges University were on the
A.U.C. campus attempting to “recruit students and staff members from
A.U.C.” According to Tien, “Our students were offered one free semester
and told that they could be assured of good clinical rotation. They were
even offered a free flight to Grenada and our faculty members were told that
they would get higher salaries.” By April, Tien took action again St.
Georges University (A.U.C. Files Writ Against Grenada’s Medical School, 1984)
taking out an injunction against all of the defendants to restrain them from
carrying out similar acts against A.U.C. in the future.
Yet another threat reared
its head on the horizon. It would seem (What’s A.U.C.’s fate, 1986) that the
U.S. Senate was considering a bill “that could mean the death of A.U.C. and the
4 other off-shore medical schools presently operating in the Caribbean.
The bill states, that in order for U.S. students attending off-shore schools to
be eligible for student grants, the schools must have an enrolment of at least
60 per cent nationals.” But “students, graduates and parents, have written
to their congressmen in support of the school, asking that the senate bill be
thrown out.” It would seem that their efforts were successful.
In the wake of the 1984
closure of the University of St. Lucia School of Medicine (USLSM) which started
in 1983, Tien claims (A.U.C. Takes Stand on The Issue Of Academic Excellence,
1984) that the success of his school was as a result of placing priority on
high standards of medical education and having a first rate faculty.
According to Tien, of the fifty students from USLSM that were interviewed by
A.U.C. representatives who had flown to St. Lucia, only five met A.U.C.’s
entrance requirements.
There is evidence that
efforts were made over the years to ensure that the medical programme at A.U.C.
was regularly assessed. In 1983, a team (New York State Looks at A.U.C.,
1983) visited the school to evaluate the pre-clinical programme and also
visited the hospitals in New York where students would be placed for the
clinical programme. One year later (California Officials expected at
A.U.C. Next Week, 1985), representatives of the California Legislature Senate
Committee on Business and Professions, the California Medical Association and
the California Dental Association were reported as being expected to review
Medical and Dental schools in the Caribbean for accreditation and
licensure. These reviews would have been costly to A.U.C. but necessary
since student placements in US hospitals were and still are dependent on
positive reports on the school. This is supported by a Sounding Board
report. “Several States have developed mechanisms to permit students at certain
foreign medical schools to take part in clerkships within the states’
jurisdiction…New York State Board of Medicine jointly grants approval to
certain foreign medical schools that want to place students in New York-based
clinical clerkships. Such approvals have been given to St. George’s
University School of Medicine on the island of Grenada, Ross University School
of Medicine on Dominica, the American University of the Caribbean on St.
Maarten, Netherlands Antilles (formerly Montserrat)... p. 1603
Having overcome various
man-made challenges, the School continued its operations in Montserrat until
faced with the fury of nature in the form of Hurricane Hugo which battered the
island on September 17, and left the Campus in shambles. Tien found a new
home for the School at the Wayland Baptist Church in Plainview, Texas, while
plans were in place for rebuilding the Campus. Keynote speaker at the
1991 graduation, Kenneth Cassell, Kenny Cassell remarked: “This event is
important for the A.U.C. because it exploded the myth, popular at least for a
brief while, that Dr. Tien and his associates would take the opportunity to
close down their operations here and perhaps permanently relocate to another
country.”
The fact that Dr. Tien and
his associates achieved their target of restarting classes here just one year
after the massive damages to the campus by Hugo, is testimony to their
continued interest in the island, but more so to their dedication and
determination to succeed in whatever they undertake.” (p. 13)
The Move to St. Maarten
Once the volcanic crisis
started, there was not only an exodus of persons but an exodus of several
businesses from the island, among them the A.U.C. Tien’s contingency plan
was for the school to relocate to St. Maarten. As reported in Campus
Connection: “After the Soufrière Hills volcano began erupting on Montserrat in
July 1995, American University of the Caribbean found a new home about 100
miles southeast on the island of St. Maarten. Today A.U.C. students find
themselves on a beautiful, contemporary campus specifically designed to meet a
medical student’s needs. The academic facilities offer future doctors the tools
for earning a high-quality medical education including fully equipped gross
anatomy, histology and microbiology laboratories, and clinical patient
examination room. The four lecture halls on campus feature the latest
audio/visual technology, and the extensive library subscribes to more than 100
medical and scientific journals. It would seem that St. Maarten has seen some
benefits from having the School on its shores. The Daily Herald (A.U.C.
Expanding Third Phase Soon, 2003) reports that “Wescott-Williams, who is also
Second Lt. Governor, described A.U.C.'s 25th anniversary as a milestone.
A.U.C. has committed itself to St. Maarten and stuck to this commitment since
1996," she said. She alluded to the school's Department of Community
Services, which contributes significantly to the community. Similar sentiments
were expressed by Commissioners Laveist, Heyliger and other speakers.”
Conclusion
It has been recognized that
the lower cost of providing medical education in the Caribbean, (offshore
medical schools run an accelerated programme which eliminates holidays and they
also avoid the costs associated with research and a teaching hospital) along
with investment incentives including tax holidays and other concessions dangled
by Caribbean Governments, have made the region an attractive environment for
offshore medical schools. Indeed, it is now being suggested that
offshore medical education could very well be a niche market for Caribbean
countries.
“Offshore education, and, in
particular, medical schools, represent a small but growing services sector that
has responded to a growing (and unfulfilled) demand for physicians in the
United States. St. George's University School of Medicine in Grenada and Ross
University School of Medicine in Dominica are two of 23 primarily offshore
medical schools in the region, whose graduates together account for close to 70
percent of the international medical graduates entering the US. Demographic
trends suggest continued demand for international physicians in the US,
suggesting a significant opportunity for continued growth of this sector. To
continue to meet this demand, and deepen the economic impact of the sector, the
region should focus on creating a robust investment climate by raising accreditation
standards, supporting regional accreditation agencies, and moving towards a
harmonized and transparent investment regime, including encouraging FDI in the
higher education sector.” (xxix)
Politicians in Montserrat
are regarding the newly registered British International University with
investors from Dubai, as a reincarnation of an A.U.C. project. The
School was registered in April of this year and has already approached the
Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Education in Medicine and other Health
Professions (CAAM) for the review process to start. This is an important step
if the British Government is to make the request for WHO listing. The search is
also in progress for temporary accommodation before their Campus is
built.
This project has the
potential for a positive impact on Montserrat’s economy unlike those schools
licensed in previous years. The St. John’s University of Medicine that was
registered in 2003 was the brainchild of Dr. Daniel Harrington who once taught
at A.U.C. The School rented accommodation for a short period and had to
face various legal battles including infringement of copyright. (New Offshore
Medical School Hopes to Open in Early 2004, 2003). The University of
Science Arts and Technology was incorporated when the Government of Montserrat
and the Medical School of London signed an agreement. (Medical School of London
Signs Accord to Start Here, 2003). To date, this School which has bought
property and converted it into a Campus, has not yet received WHO Listing which
affects its ability to recruit students. The Atlanta Seoul University was
licensed in 2003, rented space and for a short period used local talent for
delivering its teaching programme. The School currently has no presence on
island.
The A.U.C. story suggests
that it is necessary to plan with contingencies in place for the
unforeseen. Entrepreneurs wanting to get into the now highly competitive
offshore education business need venture capital and a commitment to
maintaining standards. The student recruitment process, the teaching programme,
faculty and facilities should be able to stand up to scrutiny. At
the same time, the Government of Montserrat needs to give serious consideration
to the types and numbers of institutions that can feasibly operate on the
island. Projects without a significant investment component will hardly
attract the kind of benefits that were realized with A.U.C. Each
application should be considered carefully and taken through a rigorous due
diligence exercise, the danger is there that the Government could, as happened
with the offshore banking industry, be held liable for activities undertaken by
schools that it has allowed to operate on the island. This calls for
proper monitoring mechanisms, policies and procedures for the efficient
management of the offshore education sector. Untenable delays on the part
of Government affect the investor negatively. In the absence of a
national accreditation authority, the Government would do well to maintain
links with reputable accreditation institutions to ensure that standards are
maintained in the schools that operate on island. It is understandable
that governments are eager for any economic activity which will result in
growth. However, it is important that these activities and their possible
impact on the society are thoroughly assessed before they are implemented.
References and/or complementary bibliography
A.U.C. and M.A.A.A.
compete. (1981, July 21). Montserrat Times, p. 9.
A.U.C.
expanding, third phase soon. (2003, August 15). The Daily Herald. Retrieved
on September 30, 2006, from http://thedailyherald.com/news/daily/g76/auc76.html
A.U.C. files
writ against Grenada’s Medical School. (1984, April 19) Montserrat
Times, p.10
A.U.C. pays up.
(1986, January 10) Montserrat Reporter, p.8
A.U.C. ready to
break ground. (1979, June 23) The Montserrat Mirror, p. 12.
A.U.C. to help
Sturge Park. (1984, February 3). Montserrat Times, p. 11
A.U.C. takes
stand on the issue of academic excellence. (1984, March 23) p. 8.
A.U.C. tennis
tourney: An outstanding success. (1985, December 13) Montserrat Times,
p. 9.
A.U.C.
threatened. (1982, April 23) The Montserrat Mirror, p. 1.
Antigua School
No Threat. (1982, August 20) Montserrat Mirror, p. 10.
Brandt
Represents A.U.C. (1985, December). The Montserrat Times, 5(34),
p. 1.
Campus
connection: Welcome to the St. Maarten campus. (2006). AUC Connections,
1. Retrieved on October 7, 2006 from: http://www.aucmed.edu/aucconnections/Archive/WinterSpring06/campuswelcome.htm
Cassell,
K. Greater co-operation between Government and A.U.C. needed. (1991,
April 5). Montserrat Reporter, p. 13, 18.
Former
U.S. A.G. to speak at A.U.C. graduation. (1984, January 20). The Montserrat
Times, p. 1.
How
Osborne’s PLM has harassed the A.U.C. (1983, February 11). Montserrat
Times, p. 10.
Johnson,
K.E., Hagopian, A., Veninga, C., Fordyce, M.A. & Hart, L.G.
(2005). The changing geography of Americans graduating from foreign
medical schools (Working Paper No. 96. Washington: University of
Washington, Department of Family Medicine. WWAMI Center for Health Workforce
Studies.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Region. Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit. Caribbean Country
Management Unit. (2005). A time to choose: Caribbean development in the 21st
century. (Confidential Report No. 31725-LAC). Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Retrieved on January 30, 2006 from:
Lawrence, Susan
V. (1979, March 10). A moveable
med school. Science News, 115 (10) 153-155.
MAWU sets out its case
against A.U.C. (1982, March 5) Montserrat Times, p. 6.
Model, D. G. (1984, April
28). Montserrat: An offshore medical school. Lancet, 1(8383):
952-953.
New Caribbean school holds
first classes on Cincinnati Campus. (1978, September 23) Montserrat Mirror,
p. 5.
New medical school.
(1982, May 7) The Montserrat Mirror, p. 1.
New medical school enmeshed
in fight over accreditation. (1978, August 25). The Washington Post, p.
A11.
New Offshore Medical School
Hopes to Open in Early 2004. (2003, August 15). The Montserrat Reporter, p.
2.
New York State looks at
A.U.C. (1983, March 25). Montserrat Times, p. 10.
Our readers say. (1982,
February 26). Montserrat Times, p. 4-5.
Progressive Democratic
Party Manifesto 1978: A Charter for Continued Progress. (1978). St.
Johns, Antigua: Antigua Printing & Publishing Ltd.
Sounding board:
Nonaccredited medical education in the United States. (2000) The New
England Journal of Medicine, 342(21): 1602-5.
Three weeks of classes at
A.U.C. (1980, February 2). Montserrat Mirror, p. 12.
Tricks Pulled on A.U.C. (1984,
March 30). Montserrat Times, p. 10.
What’s A.U.C.’s fate.
(1986, September 19). The Montserrat Reporter, p.1.
Young,
I. J. (2000). Montserrat: Post volcano reconstruction and
rehabilitation – A case Study. Montserrat: Department for International
Development. Retrieved on January 30, 2006 from http://www.corporate.coventry.ac.uk/content/1/c6/01/02/90/MONTSERRAT%20POST%20VOLCANO%20RECONSTRUCTION%20AND%20REHABILITATION.pdf#search=%22ian%20jardine%20young%20montserrat%22
The General Agreement on
Trade in Services
and Education in the Caribbean:
Three Case Studies
PhD candidate, University
of the West Indies, Barbados
Introduction
In this article “Caribbean”
refers to The Commonwealth Caribbean. This term describes the archipelago of
islands, which form the eastern boundary of the Caribbean Basin. It includes as
well the mainland nations of Belize (British Honduras) and Guyana (formerly
British Guiana): these and most of the islands – Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad
and Tobago, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada; St.
Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, are independent nations. Anguilla,
Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, the Northern islands (the Cayman
Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands) are British dependencies or territories.
The Commonwealth of the Bahamas, geographically part of the Northern islands,
is also independent.
The impact of globalisation
on national education systems is very significant for the Caribbean. Much of
Caribbean education planning, historically and presently, has been based on the
concept that it is by national education that societies can be transformed to
move them from the Third to the First World. The emphasis on education as a key
to upward economic mobility can be considered successful strategy: The region
is relatively poor, with an average per capita income of less than US$3000
(about a tenth of the average for OECD countries). All of the Caribbean
countries are categorised as “developing” and have managed to survive
significant economic pressures. It has been a difficult balancing act to
preserve political stability in the midst of difficult social and financial
pressures and the threat posed from drug trafficking.
As predominantly small
island states, the Caribbean faces similar challenges to those in the South
Pacific and Mediterranean regions. The World Bank has described them as
being mostly small, very open and limited in their export base as well as being
very vulnerable to natural disasters. According to the World Bank World
Development Indicators 2006, except for Guyana (lower middle), Caribbean
economies may be classified as upper middle income by using per capita income
measures, although much less advanced than others such as Brazil, Argentine,
Chile and Mexico. The importance of education has grown because of the
necessity to train workers for a technologically advanced economy locally and
in terms of job opportunities abroad.
Education in the Caribbean
Much as in Great Britain
and Europe, Caribbean public education was initially conceived in the 1800’s as
a force to produce workers and as a tool for social control (through discipline
and religion) in the colonies. In the 20th century, until the 70’s,
education was used to promote nation building and representative democracy with
the change to internal self-government. In the post-independence era,
educational provision was expanded and there were determined efforts to address
equity in access and to promote the development of a national and Caribbean
identity. There were also major investments to improve and expand quality
educational provisions at all levels, including teacher training, examinations
and educational research.
The University of the West
Indies was founded in 1948 at the Mona campus in Jamaica, as a University
College in a special relationship with the University of London. In 1962 the
University achieved independent status In addition to the three main campuses
(Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados) the University has centres in all
of its non-campus Caribbean countries and has a distance education programme.
The courses and examinations for general degrees of the University are common
to all three campuses. Of the professional faculties, agriculture and engineering
are located at St. Augustine, law at Cave Hill, and medical sciences at Mona.
There are schools of medicine, dentistry and veterinary science at the St.
Augustine campus. All the contributing territories have policies of subsidising
students up to tertiary level.
Most Caribbean countries
spend a significant amount of their government budget on education. Since the
late 1990’s, education has been driven by essentially economic ends- material
progress, the impetus of consumerism (especially driven by location within the
American hegemony); the need to ensure technology sophistication and fit into
the global marketplace by exploiting whatever “comparative advantage” is
available. Issues of global competitiveness are of paramount importance given
that the area is, on its own, a small market, and cannot compete as a low wage
business environment. Caribbean people are convinced of the close correlation
between expenditure on education and education and economic performance.
This is borne out by Table 3, which compares Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and
Barbados.
In 1997, Commonwealth
Caribbean Heads of Government committed themselves to the implementation of
specific measures related to education. They agreed on a number of goals for
priority implementation including universal quality secondary education and 15
per cent enrolment of the post-secondary group in tertiary-level education by
the year 2005. This is still far below the level of post-secondary enrolment of
developed countries and some countries in the region itself. Heads of
Government recognised that knowledge is now the central factor of
competitiveness. They emphasised the importance of lifelong learning and the
need to develop and apply science and technology to the production of goods and
services. They agreed to enlist the active participation of the private sector
in policy development, planning, implementation and financing for relevant
education and training towards the development of creative and adaptive
individuals as well as skilled labour for the key economic sectors of industry,
agriculture and services, in particular tourism.
For the Caribbean, tertiary
education (i.e., education beyond secondary education), includes degree courses
taken for college or university credits or non-degree courses undertaken for
personal edification or pleasure to upgrade work-related skills. Post-secondary
education in the Caribbean is very varied. The base of publicly funded
institutions has traditionally been supplemented by private institutions sometimes
with government subsidies. In several states, overseas campuses, mostly
of American institutions, and franchising arrangements have been
multiplying.
Globalisation
The United
Nations Development Programme has defined globalisation as: “the widening and
deepening of international flows of trade, finance and information in a single,
integrated global market.”
Much of the
impetus of globalisation arises from the impact of trade agreements such as
GATT (the General agreement on Trade and Tariffs) and more recently GATS (the
General Agreement on Trade in Services) under the aegis of the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) (see Appendix 1).
The GATS, the
General Agreement on Trade in Services, is the first multilateral agreement for
trade in services. It aims to liberalise international trade in services which
now has greater growth potential than international trade in goods: even in
less-developed countries about 50% of GDP comes from non-government service
industries and the proportion is much greater and increasing even more rapidly
in developed countries (World Development Report 2006).
A commitment
under GATS is a formal agreement to liberalise trade in particular services
with or without limitations. Although there is no compulsion to liberalise
trade immediately, according to GATS, all countries that are signatories to the
agreement are committed to future steps of liberalisation. In education,
commitments can be made under 5 sub-sectors – primary, secondary, higher, adult
and other education services. Limitations may be made dealing with nationality
requirements, restrictions on foreign teachers, subsidies to national
establishments, qualifications and accreditation etc. Formerly government controlled
services, such as health and education, are vulnerable to being used as pawns
in WTO negotiations to secure advantages in other areas.
Globalisation and Education
UNDP’s John
Ohhoierhan said in an article in Co- op South (1995):“Countries of the South…
need to come to terms fully with globalisation in order to make the appropriate
changes in their development agenda and strategies.” (p.2)
The Caribbean
has relied heavily on education for social and economic development. In some
cases the movement from the Third to the First World has been physical with
emigrants attractive to their destination societies because of their
competencies and skills. Education has also enabled Caribbean governments to
attract foreign investment, whether for setting up offshore factories or and
banks or onshore hotels and businesses. In other words the infrastructural
progress made has been based on the use of education as a vehicle of national
development, especially in latter years, from an agriculture-based economy to industrialisation
and now global economic competitiveness.
State planning
and implementation have had a pivotal role in expanding mass education and
ensuring that investment in schooling is profitable to the nation. The
implications of globalisation for national education are enormous. What control
should, could or would the state have? What characteristics in terms of a
national public and collective identity would education have? What would be the
philosophy and emphases in order to prepare students for not only national but
also international or global labour markets? How does trade liberalisation
affect the capacity and strength of local and regional education strategies to
respond to local and regional needs and even to survive competition? There are
many concerns about the infringement by global institutions and agreements and
by transnational corporations on the power of the state. States in a globalised
world must inform, equip and empower themselves with appropriate strategies.
Traditional
education institutions all over the world have had to rethink their place in
wider society to respond to changing expectations. Certainly, in the British
tradition, which predominates in the Caribbean, education is not traditionally
regarded as a commodity. Yet, the liberalisation of international trade in
education, as fuelled by the activities of the WTO and the operation of the
General Agreement in Trades and Services (GATS), has produced a rapid growth in
an alternative education market. Internationalisation has meant the growth of
borderless education and considerable commercialisation. Also, developing
countries, in striving to provide mass education at all levels, have been
experimenting with distance learning and Open and Virtual universities.
Corporate Universities have been established to provide transnational and other
corporations with employees who have the requisite common skills across
boundaries and to facilitate optimal deployment globally. The alternative
education market in the United States has grown and focused on the demand for
provision of opportunities for life-long learning. Fast-paced private branches
of foreign colleges and institutions could be considered the thin edge of the
wedge in terms of the impact of globalisation on education in the Caribbean:
tertiary institutions have geared up to export testing and tuition services at
highly competitive rates.
There are also
practical social issues – culture and cohesion, the digital divide, equity and
equality in education provisions, planning, sourcing and financing of
education. There are issues relating to the privatisation of educational
services which may be detrimental to public access to the best educational
provisions. Apart from the economic considerations, for example, the return on
investments in personnel training, there are other intangible issues such as
cultural penetration and the maintenance of appropriate standards.
The University
of the West Indies is one of the most successful regional universities in terms
of its standard, service and contribution to social and economic progress and
is increasingly attractive to international students. However, its future role
and expansion has to be considered in the context of globalisation, both in
terms of the provision of expanded and relevant higher education programmes and
offering new services as well as meeting the challenge of competition. The
testing services of the Caribbean Examination Council at all levels will be
challenged by extra-regional competition. As the private sector recognises
market opportunities it will seek to provide products which can compete.
The Association of Caribbean Tertiary (Level) Institutions, whose members
include community colleges has recognised the need for a development of Quality
Assurance and accreditation strategies. The removal of trade barriers and the
increased availability of foreign exchange dramatically improved opportunities
to study for foreign qualifications to get comparative advantage in most
national regional and international labour markets. It may even be cheaper to
study in OVC’s (overseas campuses) than local and further more traditional
subsidies and development strategies may put Caribbean states at risk in terms
of the GATS anti-protectionism regulations.
Trends in
globalisation issues related to education, especially higher education, have
generated considerable debate and action amongst stakeholders and their
organisations particularly in developed countries. Amongst developed countries,
both individual and regional governments are making plans for their education
systems. The UK government has formally declared itself committed to
liberalising trade in services. Some developed countries, e.g. Canada and the
EU, have voluntarily announced that they will not deal with education in their
trade offers. In the Asian-Pacific region, countries such as Australia, New
Zealand, Singapore and Korea have clearly developed and implemented strategies
regarding education services.
In order to
compete locally and globally developing country higher education institutions
face financing challenges. In general, the financing of educational provisions
is a major consideration influenced by structural and administrative
consequences of partnerships between educational and business institutions. The
role of government in financing and determining curricula with regard to
national strategic planning has different implications in developing and
developed countries.
Becoming a
Member of WTO involves two types of commitments and a web of complex trade
rules (see Appendix I). Not joining in the GATS means risking exclusion from
equal access to markets and losing favourable access to important export areas.
A critical aspect of the GATS is non-reciprocity. In other words, a Member is
not obliged to open up to another Member even when its proposals have been
accepted. The USA is particularly adamant in reserving untouchable areas of its
education policies whilst demanding that other countries remove ‘restrictions’
or ‘barriers’.
Two major
issues that arise from dealing with education in terms of the trading in a
service. The WTO and some of its members talk about an Education Market -
as a global market opportunity. This is in stark contrast to the gut feeling of
most educators and trade unionists, and, indeed the general public especially
in the Caribbean, that education is a public good, which should not be traded
as a commodity particularly if this interferes with the responsibility of
states to provide equitable education to their citizens. Both sides can define
types of barriers except that they are on opposite sides of the fence:
Barriers to
trade in services in the GATS context.
These trade-restrictive practices are considered impediments to one of the
fundamental goals of the WTO- free trade—opening up of markets – trade
liberalization. These are usually defined by the developed countries in their
request documents as they strive to ensure clear passage for their institutions
into the developing countries .It should be noted that developing country providers
face similar barriers if they attempt to break into developed markets. For
example, there are non-recognition of qualifications, visa and immigration
restrictions for students and professionals, considerable barriers to the
establishment of commercial or professional presence such as accreditation,
financial barriers, needs tests and other barriers to the movement of natural
persons. Liberalisation holds no promise of reciprocity.
Barriers to the
delivery by national governments of social services to their citizens – with goals of removing social inequality and
stratification based on class and finance and directed towards developing
genuine democracy and economic viability. Certainly for developing countries
these goals require the development and maintenance of public quality education
systems as a normal and necessary part of their development strategy. Utilising
the available resources often means supporting students’ education at private
institutions.
Of the members
of WTO only 44 member states including 3 Caribbean states – Haiti, Trinidad and
Jamaica – have made commitments to trade in Education Services (see Appendix
Table 2). Only 21(15 developing and 6 transition) countries have included
commitments in higher education and among those making unconditional
commitments in higher education are the Congo, Sierra Leone, Lesotho, and
Jamaica. The European Union made some commitments but with limitations on all
modes. The USA, New Zealand, Australia and Japan all of whom submitted
negotiating proposals have limitations on some if not all modes and sectors.
Canada remains uncommitted in public education. Some commentators have
suggested that those developing countries, which have liberalised their
education sectors, have done so partly through incomplete understanding of the
implications and in the hope of receiving much needed assistance. The strongest
opposition to what is termed the commodification of education has come from
North American and European education unions and associations – the Association
of Universities and Colleges of Canada, the American Council on Education
(USA), The European University Association, the Council of Higher Education
Accreditation, the Association of Universities and the National Association of
Teachers in Higher Education (UK) and the global union, Education
International. The developing countries which are now committed might have
acted otherwise had there been more consultation and openness with their
education unions about decision making. In a resolution published in the 1998
entitled World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty-first Century,
Vision and Action, UNESCO advised its member institutions to refrain from
making commitments in higher education and if already committed, to make no
further commitments.
Those countries
which have already made commitments could opt for progressive Liberation
(Article XIX) and possibly request modification to a Schedule of commitment
(XXI). This has been the advice given to the Jamaican government in the
Jamaican National Council on Education (NACE) report.
The Regional
Negotiating Machinery (RNM) Report on “International Supply of Tertiary
Education and Services Trade Negotiations: Implications for Caricom” (2004)
warned: “States that have not made any commitments in their tertiary education
sector must proceed cautiously and only make commitments that will serve their
best interests. The complexity of the trade negotiations warrants the need for
technical assistance on behalf of the developing countries. “ (p.ii) and, with
respect to the US: “ as the leading provider of services in TLE (Tertiary Level
Education) and as a member of the WTO, the US has sought (from all other
Members) ‘full commitments for market access and national treatment in modes
1,2 and 3 for higher education and training services, for adult education, and
for ‘other’ education…. Given …non-reciprocity, CARICOM States would be well
advised not to accede to this request … (since) developed countries are much
more competitive in this sector and Caribbean domestic providers are not ready
yet for an open, market driven environment." (p. iii)
In Jamaica, and
generally in the Caribbean, it is at the tertiary level that ill-advised
commitment has the most costly and serious implications. The GATS
documents appear to use the terms ‘higher’ and ‘tertiary’ interchangeably when
referring to education. The GATS defines higher education thus: “(it) includes
two distinct groups: one relates to the teaching of practical skills in
post-secondary, sub-degree technical and vocational education institutions and
the other details with more theoretical educational services provided by
universities, colleges and specialized professional schools”. In the
Caribbean, the second group is more frequently described as tertiary level
education/ institutions (TLE’s or TLI’s).
The RNM Report
says that for Caribbean TLI’s, the environment is one where individual
countries are at different levels in terms of legislation, policy and procedure
with respect to access to their TLE markets, but they have traditionally
allowed foreign providers on a case-by- case basis. The criteria applied
examining how each provider fits into government education policies and
requirements, and has the capacity to fulfil governments’ development
strategies. There are many examples of various foreign provider arrangements
such as twinning, partnerships and branch institutions. Each Caricom state has
a different reality in both needs and policies, which makes it difficult but
not impossible to negotiate jointly. However negotiating separately especially
against the large, well-endowed and experienced negotiating machineries of the
developed countries is not a winning option. Under the GATS market forces not
social and environmental or local human resource development considerations
will be the guiding criteria.
In signing the
GATS agreements, many developing countries thought they would attract foreign
providers to assist in building sustainable education for the future. This has
not happened: for example in the Philippines, Senegal and Jamaica, foreign
providers are undercutting local universities and colleges. The GATS ignores
equity concerns between rich and poor countries or within countries for example
in negotiating procedures. There are concerns that the education sector like
education could be traded off to break a deadlock in other sectors.
Regional/bilateral Free trade agreements are more ambitious and far reaching
than may be immediately apparent. The pros and cons of making offers in
tertiary education in an effort to improve the quality of tertiary education
have to be carefully evaluated including the risks that national protection
regulations may be challenged as falling foul of the GATS rules
Most people agree that education is a public good but that there must be a
nuanced position on role of the private sector. Developing states need
strategies to put appropriate regulation in place and to manage liberalisation.
Several articles and speeches have recommended a co-ordinated Southern response
to globalisation. Concerns have been expressed about the weakness of developing
countries in international fora with regard to fair participation in decision
making and enjoyment of benefits. The contrasting experiences of Jamaica,
Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados support the urgent need to share concerns and
negotiating strategies and strengths.
The Jamaica Experience
“Jamaica is part of the
global village of this century of open borders, easy travel, mass migration and
easy access to information and technology. We are no longer educating our
people to live in Jamaica. We are preparing them for a borderless world. Times
have changed and we too must change. We must critically examine the product,
and together as a nation, make the necessary changes that are called for.”
Jamaica Prime Minister, PJ
Patterson, in his speech to launch the Education Transformation process in
February 2004: “Public Education is a central pillar of democratic society and
public institutions, from primary school to university, ideally prepare
students to be loyal citizens who play a role in shaping their societies. The
reality is that most if not all public education systems offer some service on
a basis of payment or in competition with a private education provider. In this
regard, Jamaica is no exception.”
Jamaica National Council on Education (2004)
Jamaica is the
largest island of the Commonwealth Caribbean with over two and a half million
people in an area of about 11000 km2. Since 1973 Jamaica has been a
member of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom) and since January
2006 the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). Regional ties are very
important because of the potential to facilitate sharing of
information, develop a common policy and strengthen negotiating power in WTO
meetings. Jamaica joined WTO in March 1995. Its commitments in education
under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) have some unforeseen
and potentially negative implications for the Jamaican government and the
Caribbean region with respect to provision of education services in the
Caribbean.
The Jamaican
Government’s commitment to education is typical for the region. The statistics
cited are from the Jamaican National Council on Education document “The GATS:
Higher Education & The Implications for National Economies (Jamaica)“
(2003). The budget expenditure in 2000 on education is about 15% with 17% of
that for higher education. Students’ fees for higher education used to be
totally covered by the government. Now they contribute to the economic cost 10%
at non-degree level and about 18% at the degree level for the Jamaica
University of Technology and the University of the West Indies. The government
is the single largest provider of higher (including post-secondary)
education. Dealing with approximately 800,000 students primary to tertiary
level, the government spends in its budget JA$30billion with households
spending about JA $19 billion; these are supplemented by additional government
expenditure through deferred financing for school building and funding from the
Jamaica Investment Fund as well as further substantial expenditure from
institutions especially the church. This was all part of a cost-sharing
programme where students and families bear part of the costs of education. It was
envisaged that school fees would be frozen at 2003/4 levels and removed by
2005-06.
In Jamaica at
all levels there is national or transnational private education and
institutions must be registered with the University Council of Jamaica, which accredits
courses and awards degrees on behalf of institutions that do not have the power
to do so. There are number of foreign providers with accredited programmes
offering these through local branch campuses, local partners, franchise or
distance education. There are a number of private locally owned institutions at
all tertiary levels. In order to increase and upgrade its teaching staff
and facilities it has been projected that Jamaica needs to spend an additional
JA$219 billion over the next 10 years. According to the National Council on
Education, the government would find it very difficult to significantly
increase the education budget particularly at the tertiary level. Yet, with the
“no limitations” on Mode 3, the Jamaican government could be required to fund a
potentially large market of foreign suppliers, who are providing education to
Jamaican nationals. Any financial support by governments for students or
institutions may be considered as subsidies with respect to GATS rules. This
support is present in the Caribbean region since the TLI’s could not provide on
their own supply services at a affordable price. Moreover according to GATS
rules any part of an educational institution which functions on a profit-making
basis would bring the institution under the GATS rules for national treatment
since then it would not be considered as totally financed by government but be
in competition with private providers.
The country’s
National Council on Education in 2003 gave as its opinion that government
higher education services in Jamaica could be regarded a trade in services
since they are offered “in competition” with private provisions such as
Northern Caribbean University (locally owned and administered) and the Florida
International University (foreign owned and operated). Furthermore the
government provides the operating costs of several high schools owned by
Denominations and Trusts; i.e. it subsidises private institutions at the
secondary level too.
In general
Jamaica’s horizontal commitments are only restrained by the country’s
immigration laws with respect to residency, work permits and taxation. From
Table 2 Jamaica has made Market Access undertakings for modes 1, and 2, and
even in 3 but for required local certification, registration and licensing – meaning
that the government will not limit the number of providers, the number of
students they may enrol, the legal form of new entrants or limit the level of
foreign ownership. The real issues here will be the government’s ability
respond equally to demands under National Treatment for financial support in
terms of boarding grants, student loans or any other financial support i.e.
subsidies for students attending local or foreign (i.e. Consumption Abroad),
public or private colleges and universities. So a student at Florida
International, or UT Jamaica or indeed any of the three UWI campuses (Jamaica,
Trinidad, Barbados) may require and expect parity of financial support.
Otherwise, the practical effect would be a non-level playing field in favour of
local providers. Where services are unbound in Mode 4 it means that service
providers, local or foreign can be limited by needs tests or quotas. However
the implications of the Most Favored Nation (MFN) principle that is a
fundamental commitment for all members could be tested in relation to these
cases.
The commitments
made by Jamaica on joining the WTO were not particularly at odds with the then
current situation. What was different were the long term implications of their
formalisation within the GATS system. NACE has recommended “a holistic
assessment of GATS on all levels of the education sector with a view to
determine the socio-cultural implications of a liberalized system” (NACE, 2004
p.26). Nor was or is there any significant difference from regional norms.
Williams 2004 is quoted in the RNM Report as saying that there are over 150
institutions (in the Caribbean) of which 60% are public, 30% private and the
remaining 10% exist with some government support’. All present and future
institutions are tools in the drive to increase the enrolment of post secondary
cohorts in tertiary level institutions that must be a strategic imperative in
the development of the region. Regional governments would be hard-pressed if
forced to apply the GATS rules regarding Market Access and National Treatment
across the board. However the vulnerability of developing countries is
highlighted by reference to the comment of the Australian Department of Foreign
Trade as quoted in Zigoura, McBurnie and Reinke (2003): “Australian commitments
entered in during the Uruguay Round were structured so that we have the ability
to discriminate between foreign and domestic private institutions (e.g. in
relation to subsidies), should this ever be an issue”.
The local
tertiary sector understandably has concerns about quality and accreditation
issues. They are concerned about inferior and irrelevant programmes being
offered by providers for whom the profit motive is paramount. Comments have
been made that foreign providers focus on areas where the necessary
infrastructure and staffing is minimal and leave local providers i.e.
governments to finance the more expensive and less immediately popular areas.
For example setting up arrangements for short business courses or computer
courses is cheaper and easier than dealing with laboratory sciences. According
to the RNM Report “[except for Jamaica] compared to developed countries,
CARICOM member states have only recently started to establish the regulatory
and infrastructural framework for the accreditation and quality assurance of
the tertiary education sector.” (p.8)
There are
several existing and planned linkages between UWI and other universities in the
member states of CARICOM and the recently instituted Caribbean Single Market
and Economy (CSME). The Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network (CKLN) is
expected to provide the infrastructure to support e-learning. CARICOM is
committed to funding and supporting the development of the regional UWI and
national TLI’s since it is recognized that these are best suited for and have
an intrinsic commitment to local societal interests and culture. However if
these are burdened by the responsibility of providing the costliest programmes
against competition from private, for- profit institutions with comparatively vast
resources and budgets their task is almost impossible. For instance, with the
foreign private sector able to attract quality staff with higher wages and
conditions of service there is the risk under- staffing and under-resourcing
public institutions which will reduce quality and destroy reputations and
public confidence as has happened in some Asian jurisdictions. Then, education
and consequently the society will be even more stratified. The competitive
strength afforded to private-for- profit TLI by their capacity to offer
flexible programmes especially to the adult working population boosted by
strength in ICTs which facilitate reduced student costs and increased profits
should not be underestimated. ICTs have been the drivers of the growth of cross-border
tertiary education and training over the Internet.
UWI
itself has a number of extra-regional linkages with other universities.
These facilitate student exchanges with universities in Japan, Suriname,
Canada, the UK, and the USA. At both ends students are required to pay the full
fees of the institutions. Of course, fees at UWI, which, at present, makes no
distinction between regional and extra-regional origin are much cheaper.
Consequently the University may lobby for scholarships and parents may arrange
loans, but these are always on an individual basis.
Besides its on-campus
offerings, UWI also has a Distance Education Programme (UWIDEC) and which
delivers courses to the non-campus territories. There has been considerable
investment in this to upgrade and expand especially in the area of computer
technology and telecommunications infrastructure. The Caribbean Examination
Council (CXC) provides testing services throughout the region. Its viability is
dependent on its market. They are therefore vulnerable to competition in
particular from distance education and testing services in the USA especially
since these are backed by the attraction of the US colleges whose requirements
they have years of experience of satisfying. Another fear expressed is concern
less the commitments enable Jamaica to be used as an insertion point for
foreign educational materials to be allowed into the region.
Summary
Commitments made under the
GATS involves a country in a web of complex rules and punitive measures even
when the government is instituting measures to ensure its citizens equitable
access to quality education as a necessary pre-requisite for development. The
Jamaican experience is a cautionary tale for developing countries.
The Trinidad and Tobago Experience
Trinidad and Tobago is a
twin-island republic, is also part of the Commonwealth Caribbean It has a
population of over 1.3 million people in an area of 5128 km2 (World
Bank,2005). Like Jamaica and Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago has been a member of
the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom) since 1973 and of the
Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) that was formalised in 2006.
Trinidad joined the WTO in 1995. It has commitments in education under the
General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). These are tabled in the
sub-sectors Adult and Other with full commitments (“none”) in Modes 1 and 2,
unbound in Mode 3, and Limitations in Mode 4 (see Appendix).
Full commitments mean
complete liberalisation, whilst in the unbound mode the government reserves the
right to impose limitations in the future. The limitations in Mode 4, the
Movement of Natural Persons, in this case lecturers and specialist teachers,
refer to Immigration laws and regulations relating to certification,
registration and licensing.
Like other Caribbean
countries, the Trinidad & Tobago government has pursued as a goal the
development of a well educated and trained labour force which might act as an
incentive for foreign direct investment towards the social and economic
development of the country. The education system is based on the British model.
Public education at both the primary and secondary level is free. There is now
universal access to secondary education. The Secondary Entrance Examination is
used as a filtering process to allocate students. From kindergarten to
post-secondary there are a number of private education institutions that cater
for a range of social and economic statuses. Government or government-assisted
secondary schools are generally considered to be of a higher standard than
purely private secondary schools although all prepare students for the
Caribbean Examination Council Examinations. There are two international schools
in Port of Spain with curricula based respectively on the Canadian and USA
systems.
There are also a number of
tertiary level institutions in the country, including Government Technical
Colleges and the Trinidad and Tobago Institute of Technology (which offers
certificate and degree programmes based on the North American Technology
Institute model). There is a government Institute of Languages and the French
and Venezuelan embassies support language schools as they do in other islands.
Continuing education programmes are available at a number of
institutions. The University of the West Indies has a campus at St.
Augustine (others are at Mona in Jamaica and at Cave Hill in Barbados) with a
Faculty of Agriculture (now the Eastern Caribbean Institute of Agriculture and
Forestry, ECIAF), a Faculty of Engineering, a College of Arts and Science and an
active Extra Mural Department which provides evening classes, summer seminars
and lectures for adults. The University of the West Indies School of Continuing
Studies offers courses in a number of areas both academic and non-academic. The
former Caribbean Union College now the University of the Southern Caribbean is
another tertiary institution.
The government spends
annually about 4.3% of GDP on education with largest allocation for tertiary
education. The government aims to have a 20% tertiary enrolment by 2010 and
pays full fees for Bachelor Degrees and 50% for Masters including up to 50% or
a maximum of TT $5000 at accredited private institutions. There has been
a significant increase in public-private partnership for education in Trinidad
and Tobago. For example British Petroleum has recently made a US $10 million
dollar investment in the government’s University of Trinidad & Tobago.
According to its Group Chief Executive, Lord Browne of Madingley, Group Chief
Executive (2005): “An open and meritocratic education system is fundamental to
establishing the standards of society – promoting and rewarding individual
effort and commitment. It is the key to unleashing creativity, for which this
country is famous, and the key to accessing the full potential of your people
... I also believe that we should make a leading contribution to support the
development of the new University of Trinidad & Tobago and, in particular,
to support the planned development of high-quality research in science and
technology.”
The investment takes a
number of forms: Brighter Prospects, the bpTT (British Petroleum Trinidad &
Tobago) Scholarship Award programme for Mayaro district, provides scholarships
to students who possess the ability to pursue academic and technical/vocational
training, for those who may lack the means to do so. It creates
incentives for students from pre-school to primary, through to secondary and on
to tertiary and technical/vocational training. bpTT has partnered several
educational institutions including the University of the West Indies and the
Trinidad & Tobago Institute of Technology under this programme. The
programme also provides for new entrepreneurs in the community, who qualify, to
access the facilities offered in the Mayaro Initiative and Private Enterprise
Development.
A partnership between bpTT
and the Geological Society of Trinidad & Tobago made the bold and
progressive step to develop an accredited Petroleum Geoscience programme at the
University of the West Indies. Members of bpTT’s staff have lectured full
semester courses, served as guest lecturers in specialized areas and also
coached and mentored students during summer internships and final year
projects.
bpTT provides 10 bursaries
annually with a total value of TT$100,000 to students attending the University
of the West Indies. These bursaries are awarded in the disciplines of
Engineering and the Social Sciences.
bpTT partnered the British
High Commission and the British Council to award scholarships to potential
young local leaders and decision-makers for study in countries with established
economic relations with the United Kingdom. Preference for this scholarship is
usually given to nationals already established in a career within Trinidad and
Tobago.
bpTT also supports the
Fulbright Scholarship Programme and has sponsored one Fulbright scholar per
year over the last four years.
Other bpTT educational
initiatives include:
-
Internships
-
Math Olympiad
-
Lectures by BP experts
-
Mentorship programmes with secondary and tertiary level institutions
-
Schools Energy Education (SEE) programme
-
Primary and secondary schools educational programmes
-
Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) Awards to the top 100 students in Trinidad and
Tobago.
Besides these opportunities
for tertiary education, there is anew programme, H.E.L.P (Higher Education Loan
Programme)., which provides access to funding. The loans incur a small interest
repayable on completion of study and beginning of employment.
All of this is in keeping
with Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s mandate for his country to develop the
infrastructure to promote advances in health and education as part of of his
plan “Vision 2020” to move forward the country’s economy. Hence, the University
of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) was founded in 2004 through a partnership of the
government, the private sector and the national community. UTT is a
not-for-profit entrepreneurial university that the government has directed to
take a leading role in developing state-of-the-art tertiary education and
research. Then, in 2005 the Trinidad and Tobago Health Sciences Initiative
(TTHSI) was formed to advance the health sciences and education sectors through
the establishment of a long-term strategic collaboration between University of
Trinidad and Tobago, Johns Hopkins Medicine International, the Trinidad
Ministry of Health and the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Science, Technology
and Tertiary Education. This unique, three-pronged collaboration in
consulting, educational and advisory services is destined to exceed other Johns
Hopkins Medicine International's global partnerships. To successfully implement
a project of this scope and size, Johns Hopkins Medicine International brought
together Johns Hopkins experts in medicine, public health, public policy and
management to advise, train and manage the range of services. Some activities
resulting from this initiative include the planning and evaluation for
development and expansion of clinical health facilities, public health
education programs, clinical research and herbal research programs.
Summary
The Trinidad & Tobago
has identified the areas in which it can best profit by liberalisation but has
retained the options to impose and maintain regulation. This has enabled it to
handle the pressure for education provisions and manipulate the available FDI
largely on its own terms.
The Barbados Experience
“Barbados has already made a commitment to
liberalise all of its sectors within the creation of the Single Market and
Economy. Restrictions will continue to apply in those areas reserved by the
Crown and those that amount to non-discriminatory regulation.” Barbados
Ministry of Economic Development re Trade in Services (2002).
“One of the basic benefits
of liberalisation in services is that it increases the variety and amount of
education services available to WTO members. These are vital to all countries,
including the emerging economies, which are in need of technology-savvy,
well-trained workforces that are able to compete in the global economy. This
acts as a spur to foreign investment and further transfer of important
technologies. The growth of education services also raises demand for a wide
range of important technologies. The growth of education services also raises a
demand for arrange of related goods and services, including production and sale
of educational and training material an equipment.”
The above is taken from a
brief on Educational Services prepared by the Barbados Ministry of Economic Development
for Consultations in June 2002 with a number of education stakeholders
including the Ministry of Education, education unions, and the University of
the West Indies (Cave Hill campus) and. The document talks about the crucial
role of education in fostering economic growth, personal and social development
and reducing inequality by providing skills to facilitate effective
participation in the workforce that is, reducing unemployment.
Barbados is a small island
of the Commonwealth Caribbean, heavily populated with about 260 thousand people
in an area of 431 km2. Like Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago Barbados
has been a member of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom) since
2003 and has been a prime mover in the formation of the Caribbean Single Market
and Economy (CSME) that was formalised in January 2006. Barbados became a
member of the WTO in 1995. It has no commitments in education under the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
As in many countries,
Barbadian governments have based their education planning on a national
presumption that education is a public good or, as the brief puts it, ‘a
“public consumption” item’ to be provided free or ‘at prices not reflecting the
costs of producing it’. Education has traditionally been mainly
government funded and since 1960 not only primary but secondary education has
been free in government schools. There is a system of government assisting
secondary schools with grants to cover salaries of some teachers particularly
in the sciences, subventions to include specialised subjects in the curriculum
and bursaries to assist some students. In government-approved secondary
schools, students get books under a Textbook Loan Scheme with a small fee to
cover administrative expenses. At the tertiary level the economic cost of
Barbadian students at the University of the West Indies is paid for a first
degree and post –graduate studies may be supported. Scholarships are awarded
annually to the best students at Advanced Level -Caribbean Advanced Proficiency
Examinations under the aegis of the Caribbean Examinations Council or the
Barbados Community College Associate Degree examinations. These Scholarships
can be used to study in approved areas at overseas universities and most
students go to the UK, Canada or the USA. Exhibitions are also awarded annually
for study at the University of the West Indies. There are also Government
funded Student Loans available. Annual Education expenditure is about 18% of
the budget allocation 8% of GDP: post secondary /tertiary education is about
one-quarter of the education budget and for 200/01 was estimated to be US$45
million up from US$24milion in 1990/91. Given the public- private mix of
education finance for students or institutions, it is possible that under rules
of the GATS, education services may be deemed as not entirely supplied in the “
exercise of governmental authority (neither on a commercial basis nor in
competition)” (GATS), and be considered as subsidies with respect to GATS
rules. The Barbados Community College and the Samuel Jackman Prescod
Polytechnic for example, although essentially government institutions have some
sections which may be defined as functioning on a profit-making basis which
would bring the institutions under the GATS rules for national treatment i.e.
not totally financed by government but in competition with private providers.
This is also true for primary and secondary schools and post-secondary training
institutions.
There are no Overseas
Colleges in Barbados but a number of institutions offer courses and tests under
franchising arrangements with overseas institutions mostly from the UK. There
are an increasing number of students who are doing post –graduate studies using
Information Communications Technology for distance education. The Cave Hill
campus for UWI is heavily involved in the UWIDEC programme by which courses are
offered to students in the non-campus territories. The Barbados Community
College has also franchised some of its programmes to other islands and also
facilitates the examinations of overseas universities. Particularly at the
Tertiary level there are a number of proposals for changes in the education
system that might be affected by the GATS rules. For example, the Barbados
Community College has just expanded its offerings in language education with
the aid of EU funds; the Barbados Government plans to merge the Community
College, the Polytechnic and Erdiston Teacher Training College into a
University College of Barbados. At the stakeholder meeting on services it was
the perceptive warning of a senior civil servant with considerable experience
both internationally and in the education sector which really alerted the group
to the potential danger of commitment of the education sector to the GATS.
Liberalisation of education services may be detrimental to the success of this
project.
Barbadian teachers and
educational institutions at all levels have been very involved in regional
activities. There has been a considerable increase in activities closely
related to education and supportive of the systems and processes of education
directed towards national and regional development. These include testing
services, services for students locally and regionally in exchange programmes
and the expansion of ICT systems to support a growing demand for diverse
training and adult and other education services. Curricula which take into
account local and regional culture are considered important in maintaining a
cultural and national identity. However there is a relatively limited market
and it would be difficult to support several of these services in an open
market. Some government subsidisation is essential to maintain equitable
opportunities and reduce stratification and social divisions and the National
Treatment regimes of the GATS could impose impossible financial burdens. On the
other hand some local and regional educational services are marketable outside
the region.
Summary
The advice contained in the
Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM) Report on “International Supply of Tertiary
Education and Services Trade Negotiations: Implications for Caricom” (2004) is
important. It is very easy to be seduced in thinking that the GATS rules are
reasonable and user friendly and offer opportunities for developing countries
to access much needed Foreign Direct investment to improve education provisions
towards national and regional strategic developmental goals. However the
long-term implications of MFN and National Treatment and Market Access
regulations and the impact of commitment to liberalisation on strategies
governments employ to protect and encourage home industries and service
providers. There is also the important fact that mutual recognition agreements
and reciprocity are not imbedded in the GATS. This means that issues related to
professional services such as immigration laws and accreditation processes
should be scrutinised. Any government seeking to ensure that post-secondary
education serves its community’s goals and aspirations must analyse the
restrictions or limitations trade liberalisation imposes.
To date Barbados has made
no commitments with respect to educational services relating to the four modes
of supply. This has enabled it to maintain maximum flexibility in planning and
implementing its own trade liberalisation programme in a sensitive area without
fear of charges and penalties.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Barbados Ministry of
Education, Youth Affairs and Sports (2001) Education in Barbados Information
Handbook
Barbados Ministry of
Education, Youth Affairs and Sports (2002) Economic And Social Report 2001
Task Force on National
Reform (2004) JAMAICA: A TRANSFORMED EDUCATION SYSTEM – Final Report, Kingston
Jamaica
The University of the West
Indies Strategic Committee (2003) Strategic Plan II 2002-2007 UWI Mona, Jamaica
Appendices
I. The WTO and GATS
The General Agreement on
Trade in Services is a multilateral legally enforceable agreement covering
international trade in services and is administered by the World Trade
Organisation has 149 member countries. The GATS focuses exclusively on trade in
services. , Services being defined as service in any sector except
(Article 1.3b) services engaged upon “in the exercise of Governmental
Authority”. The GATS agreement defines “a service supplied in the exercise of
governmental authority” as any service that is supplied neither on a
commercial basis nor in competition with one or more service suppliers
(Article 1.3c). Educational Services is listed amongst the 12
service sectors covered by the agreement. The education sector is further
subdivided into five sub-sectors: primary, secondary, tertiary, adult and
‘other’ education services.
Trade in Services is
defined in the GATS by identifying 4 supply modes:
Mode 1 – Cross-Border
supply – “from the territory of one Member into the territory of any other
Member” i.e. the service travels (as a good might), producers and consumers
remain at home and communicate by post, fax, and the Internet.
Examples: transnational
distance education, virtual education institutions (like Phoenix University),
Education software, ICT
delivered corporate training.
Mode 2 - Consumption abroad
– supply “in the territory of one Member to the service consumer of any other
Member” i.e. the consumer travels to the country of the service supply. This is
comparable to tourism or business travel: students travel to study (and live)
in another country.
Mode 3 - Commercial presence
- supply “by a service supplier of one Member, through commercial presence in
the territory of another Member” i.e. foreign direct investment (FDI)
Transnational education,
possibly involving local partnerships: locally established universities or satellite/branch
campuses, language training companies, private training companies
Mode 4 –Movement of natural
persons – supplies “by a service supplier of one member, through presence of
natural persons of a Member in the territory of any other Member”. This is
comparable to temporary emigration or business travel by the service provider.
Examples: teachers,
researchers, lecturers working abroad on a temporary basis.
Becoming a Member of WTO
involves two types of commitments:
General Obligations for
Most Favored Nation Treatment (MFN) and Transparency apply automatically
Specific
Commitments where Members can
decide and negotiate the extent to which a service sector is covered under GATS
rules. They refer to a government’s undertaking to provide Market Access
and National Treatment for a service activity on the terms and conditions
specified in the schedule. The entries on a Member’s schedule of specific
commitments are legally binding.
Specific commitments are
either: Horizontal – applying to all sectors on the Member’s list of
commitments usually with respect to modes of supply often 3 and 4.
It refers to describing the
level of commitment of a specific sector as: NONE where the Member imposes no
limitation on Market Access or National Treatment or BOUND unless otherwise
specified. Then, if the Member wants to be free to introduce or maintain
regulatory measures inconsistent with Market Access and National Treatment, the
Member indicates ‘UNBOUND’.
TABLE 1: MODES
OF SUPPLY OF EDUCATION SERVICES
|
Mode of Supply According to GATS |
GATS Definition + Explanation |
Examples in Education |
Size, Potential of market And major advantages/ impediments |
Caribbean concerns |
|
Cross-border supply |
The supply of a service “ from the territory of
one member into the territory of any other Member” – The service travels, both provider (exporter)
and consumer (importer) remain home, c.f. the export of a good e.g. banking, data processing, legal or
architectural services, tele-medical consultations |
Distance education E-learning Virtual education institutions e.g. Phoenix U Education software Corporate training through ICT delivery |
Currently relatively small
but rapidly growing
market Seen to have much potential through the use of
ICT’s and the Internet Cheaper since infrastructural requirements
are smaller Speedy delivery |
Accreditation Quality assurance Content re local curricula and culture Acculturation Competition for local services |
|
Consumption Abroad |
The supply of a service “in the territory of
one member to the service consumer of any other Member” – c.f. tourism, health care, ship or aircraft
maintenance or business travel by the consumer or |
Students travel to other countries to do courses
of study/degree programmes |
Currently represents the largest share of the
global market for education services especially in post-secondary education. N.B. GATS commitments are of little
significance given general lack of restrictions and relative to non-GATS
issues such as student visas and funding. GATS may help re greater recognition of
degrees by home-country institutions |
Cost Encouragement of brain/skill drain Impact on aid/scholarship provisions Future remittances from migrants |
|
Mode of Supply According to GATS |
GATS Definition + Explanation |
Examples in Education |
Size, Potential of market And major advantages/ impediments |
Caribbean concerns |
|
Commercial Presence |
The supply of a service “by a service supplier
of one member, through the commercial presence in the territory of any other
Member” – i.e. foreign direct investment (FDI) e.g.
into hotel or manufacturing industries, banking, insurance, health clinics |
Overseas schools/ colleges/universities (OVC’s) Language training companies Private training companies e.g. Fujisutsu, Twinning partnerships, franchising
arrangements with local institutions Examination and testing services |
-Growing interest and strong potential for future
growth. But there is significant reluctance to make binding commitments: Few
WTO members have made full commitments for HE under this mode. |
Cost – finance leakage but also savings on
living and travel expenses Accreditation Quality assurance Competition – difficulties in building
indigenous institutions Competition for staff Loss of quality and staus for local
institutions Curriculum, culture access and equity issues extension of government subsidies Issues re national treatment Technology transfer Efficiency transfer Increased commercialisation |
|
Mode of Supply According to GATS |
GATS Definition + Explanation |
Examples in Education |
Size, Potential of market And major advantages/ impediments |
Caribbean concerns |
|
Movement of Natural
Persons |
The supply of a
service “by a service supplier of one Member,
through presence of natural persons of a Member in the territory of any other
Member” - c.f. temporary emigration or business travel
by the service supplier e.g. nurses, doctors, consulting
engineers/lawyers/account-ants |
Teachers, lecturers, researchers working
abroad on a temporary basis |
Potentially a strong market given the
emphasis on/increasing demands for the mobility of highly skilled professionals. Generally more politically sensitive than
other modes Generally less commercially significant than
other modes Most WTO members maintain horizontal
commitments (e.g. immigration rules applying to all service sectors) Academics encounter little difficulty-
mobility is demand driven; special skills |
Although the GATS agreement is quite specific
that this relates only to temporary movement, this inevitably favours the
migration of skilled professionals to countries where pay and conditions are superior.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
TABLE 3: Expenditure per student in US$ for
2000
|
Country |
Primary |
Secondary |
Tertiary |
GDP per
capita |
Literacy Rate |
|
Jamaica |
323 |
500 |
1703 |
3,561 |
86.4 |
|
Trinidad
& Tobago |
816 |
734 |
N/A |
8,176 |
93.5 |
|
Barbados |
1871 |
2432 |
5634 |
14,553 |
97.0 |
|
Source:
(Jamaica National Council on Education,2004) |
|||||
The Evolution of Science
Curricula in Developing Countries
and the Issue of Relevance
University of
the West Indies, Trinidad
& Tobago
junemgeorge@yahoo.com or jgeorge@fhe.uwi.tt
Introduction
Many developing countries
today are ex-colonies of super powers and there are some countries that are
still under colonial rule. Colonial dominance by superpowers such as France,
Great Britain, Germany, and the United States of America (USA) can be detected
in the nature and functioning of the education system in several developing
countries. In the post-independence period there have been some attempts by
developing countries to reshape the school curriculum to meet local needs and
conditions. For example, in the 1980s, Nigeria changed the structure of its
school system from the British model to a 3-year Junior Secondary and a 3-year
Senior Secondary system. In Mozambique, the post-colonial government moved to
replace the test-centred Portuguese system with a less authoritarian system. In
Mali, adjustments were made to the structure of the school calendar to cater
for the fact that school children were involved in the rural economy (Woolman,
2001). In addition, particularly in post-independent African countries, there
has been some focus on producing science curricula that are vocationally
relevant (Lewin, 1992). Despite these efforts, though, the problem of
re-designing an education system to cater for specific local economic and
cultural issues still persists. In this paper, the focus is on the continuing
influence of colonial systems of education on science education in developing
countries. It is argued that the onus is on local science educators to ensure
that the distinctive characteristics of the local setting are catered for in
the school science curriculum so that students would come to see the relevance of
science to their personal life, their immediate community, and the national
community.
The Evolution of Science Curricula in
Developing Countries
Great Britain provides a
good example of how a mother country influenced the education system in the
developing world. At some point in history, Britain colonized places such as
India, several countries in the Caribbean, several countries in Africa, Cyprus,
Hong Kong, and so on. The education system that it introduced in these colonies
was designed to meet its own needs, including the provision of educational
opportunities for the children of British personnel working in the colonies,
and the education of clerks to ensure the smooth running of its overseas
operations. When the British first introduced science into the education system
in the colonies, it sometimes took the form of agricultural education as that
was an area of immediate concern. Over time, the separate science subjects of
biology, chemistry, and physics were introduced. The impact of the British influence
is perhaps more readily appreciated through a consideration of the nature of
the examinations that Britain introduced to the colonies. These examinations
were set by British Examination Boards, notably those run by the Universities
of London, and Cambridge, and were designed to determine the achievement level
of students after five years and seven years of secondary schooling
respectively, that is, of students in the fifth and sixth forms of secondary
schools.
By the 1950s, secondary
education in Britain was selective. The syllabi for the then national
examinations for fifth and sixth form students, termed the General Certificate
of Education Ordinary level (GCE O-level) and Advanced level (GCE A-level)
examinations respectively, served to prepare students for the intense
competition of gaining university places in science. The science curriculum was
traditional, with conventional topics such as Electricity and magnetism;
Heat, light and sound; and so on. The examination placed strong emphasis on
the recall of factual information and the solving of routine problems. The
questions were typically traditional and the overall tone of the examination
was positivistic. The science curriculum at the lower end of the secondary
school at that time was diverse since there were no national examinations at
this level (Jenkins, 2004, pp.33-34). This scenario was mirrored in many of the
British colonies at that time. Secondary education was available only to a
select few and the secondary school curriculum, including that for science, was
patterned after the British model. Students in the colonies also sat GCE
O-level and A-level examinations.
As the colonies gained
independence, beginning around the 1960s, new developments in education began
to take place. Strikingly, some of these developments occurred at the lower
secondary level and they were also influenced by developments in Britain
itself. For example, in the period 1968-1969, the West Indies Science
Curriculum Innovation Project (WISCIP) was developed for use in the lower
secondary sector in Trinidad and Tobago to meet the needs of students in the
soon-to-be- established junior secondary schools. This curriculum, designed
mainly by teachers in existing grammar-type schools, drew on recommendations
contained in Curriculum Paper No. 7: Science in General Education, which guided the development of the Scottish
Integrated Science Curriculum (Reay, n.d.) The Scottish Integrated Science
Curriculum, in turn, influenced science curricula in places such as Hong Kong,
Malaysia, and Nigeria. WISCIP itself influenced the development of science
curricula in Swaziland.
This move towards the
teaching of integrated science in Britain was innovative in more than one way.
Science was to be taught in an integrated fashion, with no specific focus on
any one of the separate sciences. In addition, the new integrated science
curricula broadened the scope of the science curriculum to include overarching
themes such as “science for citizenship,” “science for the enquiring mind,” and
“science for action.” Teachers in developing countries who were required to
deliver this type of curriculum faced several challenges. Many of them had been
trained in one or two of the separate science subjects only and typically from
very positivistic perspectives. What has evolved over the years is that,
although the term “integrated science” is still used to describe the offering
at the lower secondary level, what is often offered is a programme that has
elements of physics, chemistry and biology (and possibly earth science), with
biology constituting the largest component. One explanation for this
distribution of subject matter is that more lower secondary science teachers in
developing countries are likely to have been trained in biology than in any
other science discipline.
In the mid sixties, there
were also winds of change at the upper secondary level in Britain. In 1965, the
Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) was introduced for fifth form
students, primarily to facilitate students in the newly established modern
secondary schools. These schools catered for students at the lower end of the
ability range and the format of the examinations allowed for a considerable
amount of teacher input through the design of syllabi and assessment of student
learning through project work and oral presentations. In the early 1970s, The
Nuffield Foundation of the United Kingdom donated a large sum of money for use
in school science and mathematics curriculum reform, with an emphasis on
investigative work in science. This had a domino effect on the organization and
delivery of the science curriculum generally, and eventually led to the
revision of the GCE O-level and A-level syllabi. By the 1980s, the CSE had been
incorporated into the GCE examinations in the creation of the General
Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) programme. One hallmark of the
scoring of GCSE examinations is that it is criterion-referenced as opposed to
the norm-referenced nature of the GCE examinations (Jenkins, 2004).
Even before the creation of
the GCSE, winds of change were also blowing in the Commonwealth Caribbean. The
Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) was established in 1972 by an agreement
among 15 English speaking Commonwealth Caribbean countries. It offered its
first set of examinations for fifth form students in 1979 and integrated
science was the only science offering. Fifth form students continued to write
the Cambridge GCE O-level examinations in biology, chemistry and physics, until
1985 when the first CXC examinations in these subjects were offered. From its
inception, CXC examinations, including those in science, have had a strong
school-based component. In 1999, CXC began
offering examinations equivalent to the GCE A-level examinations. Examination
Boards such as the West Africa Examinations Council, Nigeria Examinations
Council, Matriculation and the Secondary Education Certificate Examinations
Board of Malta, were established in other former colonies to replace the GCE
system of examinations. One goal of these examination bodies is to produce
examinations of a high standard that are more relevant to the local context
than the GCE examinations.
Science education reform
activity was also taking place at the primary level, but at a later date. The
impetus for some of this work in developing countries was provided by
developments in the 1960s in both the UK and the USA. Harlen (1987) outlines
that three primary science projects in the USA (Elementary Science Study,
the Science Curriculum Improvement Study, and Science – A Process Approach),
as well as three projects in the UK (the Oxford Science Project, the
Nuffield Junior Science Project and Science 5-13) greatly influenced
the development of primary science curricula in former colonies such as
Nigeria, India and New Zealand, beginning in the 1970s. Decades later, the
influence of American and British primary science curricula is still prominent
in countries such as Cyprus (Zembylas, 2002). Developing countries have had to
struggle with issues such as the role of science process skills in primary
science education – issues which originated in the materials from the developed
countries and which the developed countries were able to sort through much more
efficiently. The net result is that years after the heavy reliance on science process
skills was abandoned in the USA, the focus was still prominent in primary
science curricula in some developing countries.
What Science? The Issue of Relevance
During colonial times, the
local context into which these science curricula from developed countries were
being imported was seldom ever considered. As mentioned above, some attempt has
been made in some countries in the post-colonial period to shape education to
fit local needs. This is an on-going struggle as several obstacles are faced. There
are economic and human resource factors that impact on any such attempts. There
must be the appropriate human resource base and sufficient funding to change
curricula that have existed over years, and which carry a certain amount of
prestige because of their association with the developed world. There must also
be a desire to change. Opposition to change comes from many quarters, including
school personnel and, most significantly, parents. Some of those in positions
of power are likely to have been educated in the colonial mode and may find it
difficult to understand why that which has “worked” in the past should be
changed. Furthermore, it is sometimes argued that we live in a global society
and our students should be prepared to function in a global world by following
curricula that are similar to those followed in developed countries.
These kinds of issues lead
us to take a consideration of the question of relevance of the curriculum.
Aikenhead (2006) cautions us that there is some ambiguity in meaning associated
with the term “relevance.” The questions “relevant for whom?” and “relevant for
what?” are often asked. In the context of developing countries, with their push
toward economic development, the tendency is often to focus on producing
science graduates at the secondary school level who can pursue further studies
in science and technology at tertiary institutions to augment the country’s
human resource capacity in this area. The fear in developing countries is that,
in the absence of a pool of citizens qualified in the areas of science and
technology, they would be “left behind” in this era of globalization. Such
thinking reflects a focus on science curricula that are relevant to the needs
of the country. This is a legitimate concern that cannot be ignored. However,
what is often not discussed is that in order to have students who are motivated
enough to study science through the secondary level to the tertiary sector, we
must cater for the needs of those students so that their interest in the subject
would be piqued and so that they would be more inclined to see the study of
science as serving not only the country’s needs, but also their needs as well.
The personal needs of science students in developing countries need to be
brought centre stage.
From a review of research
studies on the relevance of science, Van Aalsvoort (2004) provides a three-part
categorization of relevance that clearly focuses on the student – personal
relevance, professional relevance, and social relevance. Personal relevance is
achieved when education in science “makes connections with pupils’ lives” (p.
1152). Science education is said to have professional relevance when it leads
students to see how their studies can result in possible membership in various
professions. Thirdly, Van Aalsvoort suggests that science education that has
social relevance will help students to clarify human and social issues. This
classification provides a useful scheme for considering the relevance of
science curricula in developing countries. This is not to suggest that one
should only consider the welfare of the student when planning the science
curriculum. However, it is necessary to meet the needs of students even as
attempts are made to meet other legitimate needs.
The connection that the
science curriculum can make with students’ lives is not a straightforward issue
as students in developing countries are sometimes exposed to a mix of
influences – those that have emerged out of the local culture, and those that
have been more recently imported from industrialised settings, particularly the
USA. So, for example, some students in developing countries (even some in rural
areas) have access to the latest technological devices including the computer
and the internet, videogames, MP3 players, cell phones, and so on. A science
curriculum with personal relevance for such students might involve the use of
some of the technology in the teaching/learning process, the study of the
functioning of some of the devices, and the study of the impact that they have on
society. Often, this is the approach that is taken in developing countries in
the quest for more relevant science curricula (for example, the Integrated
Science curriculum of the Caribbean Examinations Council). While this general
approach serves a need, it does not deal with the whole spectrum of students’
lives. A missing component is the portion of the students’ lives that is
governed by those traditional practices and beliefs that have been generated in
their community over many years and which are typically passed on orally from
one generation to the next. Three likely areas of influence of such beliefs and
practices are discussed here.
It is a well-known maxim
that children do not come to the classroom with empty minds. They bring with
them a lot that they have learnt prior to formal instruction. Even though
children in developing countries may not have learnt formal science before
entering the science classroom, they bring with them ideas about content areas
that are covered in the formal school curriculum. For example, they would have
learnt (and will continue to learn) traditional practices and beliefs
pertaining to health care, food preparation, agricultural practices, the care
of infants, and so on. Sometimes, such traditional knowledge can be explained
by conventional science, but many times, it bears no relationship to
conventional science (for a fuller account, see for example, George, 1995;
George & Glasgow, 1988, 1999). If science as taught in schools is to have
personal relevance to students, then it is essential that connections be made
between the school science and the traditional knowledge that students may draw
on in their daily lives. If this is not done, then students are likely to
practise “cognitive apartheid” (Cobern, 1996) by keeping their everyday
knowledge completely isolated from the school science knowledge and resorting
to school science only when they need to as, for example, when they have to
write school examinations.
Secondly, in addition to
ideas about content areas covered in school science, students in developing
countries bring to the science class their own basic assumptions of how the
world functions (their worldview) that may not be in accord with the
science-related worldview. For example, the desire to exploit and manipulate
nature has been a characteristic of conventional science for some time. This
orientation has been fuelled by technological advancements over the years.
Although there is some concern now in conventional science circles about the
degradation of the environment, there is still much evidence of exploitation.
In contrast, in some developing countries, there exists the view that nature
provides everything that one needs for one’s survival and it must be treated
with respect. Consequently, one should manage one’s interaction with nature in
order to reap maximum benefits (George, 1999). A science curriculum that has
personal relevance for students would make connections to students’ worldview
and would encourage discussions about the similarities and differences between
what students bring to the classroom and what school science has to offer.
Thirdly, there is the arena
of communication. In science, there are very formal mechanisms for
communicating and, typically, some of these are transmitted in the school
science curriculum. This mode of communicating is likely to be at variance with
the ways in which students in developing countries communicate in their
everyday lives. Such students often recount their experiences by telling
stories. Indeed, they would have learnt much of the traditional knowledge in
their community through stories. But, there are usually no stories in science
classes (even though there are some great stories in the history of science)
and, further, the story-telling mode is not considered acceptable in formal
communication in science. Then, there is the question of how one structures
one’s argument. Explanations in conventional science rely heavily on formal
logic. On the other hand, claims made in everyday conversations in a developing
country context are likely to be supported by warrants consisting of personal
experiences and the authority of elders (George, 1995). Another communication
issue is likely to be the difference in the language used in formal science
instruction vis-à-vis everyday life. To what extent is language a barrier to
students in developing countries in their attempt to understand the scientific
concepts and principles that are taught to them? To what extent is traditional
knowledge being eroded because the language of instruction in schools is
different from the everyday language of the owners of the traditional
knowledge? McKinley (2005) advocates that for the survival of traditional
ecological knowledge, programmes should be taught through indigenous languages
so that the dialectal relationship between language and traditional knowledge
is maintained. In an era of globalization where official government policy is
likely to be towards mastery of globally used languages, this may be seen as a
difficult proposition. Yet, the fact remains that if efforts are not made to
tackle issues of communication in the science class, school science may be
lacking in personal relevance for students in developing countries.
Although the discourse
above has focused on students in developing countries, some of it may also
apply to students in industrialised settings who may be operating outside of a
science-related world view.
Science curricula in
developing countries typically do not meet the criterion of personal relevance
with a cultural slant as described above. Although there have been many
projects aimed at making the science curriculum more relevant to the local
context, the cultural context of the learner has hardly been considered. Given
that many of these science curricula in developing countries often started off
as some variation of the colonial ones, it is not difficult to see that there
was no pattern of cultural integration that was there to be used as the
template. This presents science educators in developing countries with the
unique opportunity to invent and create, but this seldom happens. The really
large-scale science curriculum projects that focus on the local culture are to
be found in developed countries such as Canada (e.g. Aikenhead, 2000;
Sutherland, 2005 ) and New Zealand (e.g. McKinley, 2005) and these are designed
for the First Nation and Aboriginal people in those settings. The work by
Lubben and others in Southern Africa (e.g. Lubben et al., 1996) comes closest
to this with their focus on the use of contextualised science resource
materials. Such contextualised materials focus on the students’ everyday
experiences and may or may not be culturally based.
There is perhaps less
difficulty in presenting school science in developing countries in a way that
depicts professional relevance. Science-related professions such as medicine
and engineering are usually held in high esteem in such contexts. Because of
the absence of the cultural component of the science curriculum, however, some
potential science-related professions are not highlighted. For example, a great
deal of the bush medicines has not been researched, some indigenous
technologies have not been studied and re-vamped to make them more efficient,
traditional techniques for sustainable development have not been showcased as
effective and worthy of further study, and so on. One cannot help but speculate
about the likely benefits to developing countries if the science curriculum
were made more culture sensitive.
Finally, the science
curriculum can only help to clarify social and human values if these values are
thoroughly understood in context. While some values are universal,
others are not. It is therefore important that the local culture be understood
as a first step toward considering how school science might help students to
clarify social and human values. It is also important that there be no hidden
agenda in the science curriculum that seeks to impose values from the developed
world on students in developing countries without careful consideration of their
welfare and well-being.
A Paradigm Shift?
The approach to science
education in developing countries that is suggested in this paper requires a
paradigm shift from what currently obtains. This shift must be initiated by
science educators in developing countries who understand their cultural context
and the specific cultural characteristics of their students. There is no
pattern from the developed world that can be adopted or adapted – the creation
must come from within. Hopefully, with such a shift, more students from
developing countries would be excited about science and would see the relevance
of science to their own lives and to life in their community and country.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Aikenhead, G. (2000)
Rekindling traditions: Cross-cultural science and technology units. Retrieved
December 4, 2000, from http://capes.usask.ca/ccstu.
Aikenhead, G. (2006). Science
education for everyday life: evidence-based practice. New York: Teachers’
College Press.
Cobern, W. (1996).
Worldview theory and conceptual change in science education. Science
Education, 80(5), 579-610.
George, J. (1995). An
analysis of traditional practices and beliefs in a Trinidadian village to
assess the implications for science education. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation, The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago.
George, J. (1999).
Worldview analysis of knowledge in a rural village: Implications for
science education. Science Education, 83(1), 77-95.
George, J., & Glasgow,
J. (1988). Street science and conventional science in the West Indies.
Studies in Science Education, 15, 109-118.
George, J., & Glasgow,
J. (1999). The boundaries between Caribbean beliefs and practices and
conventional science. Kingston, Jamaica: Office of the UNESCO
Representative in the Caribbean, 1999. ix, 42p. (EFA in the Caribbean:
Assessment 2000. Monograph Series; No. 10.
Harlen, W. (1987). Primary science:
the foundation of science education. Physics Education, 22, 56-62.
Jenkins, E. (2004). From
option to compulsion: school science teaching, 1954-2004. School
Science Review, 85(313), 33-40.
Lewin, K. (1992). Science
education in developing counties: Issues and perspectives for planners.
UNESCO, Paris: International Institute for Educational Planning.
Lubben, F., Campbell, B.,
& Dlamini, B. (1996). Contextualised science teaching in Swaziland; some
student reactions. International Journal of Science Education, 18(3),
311-320.
Mc. Kinley, E. (2005).
Locating the global: culture, language and science education for indigenous
students. International Journal of Science Education, 27(2), 227-241.
Sutherland, D. L. (2005).
Resiliency and collateral learning in science in some students of Cree
ancestry. Science Education, 89, 595-613.
Reay, J. (n.d.). School
science education in Trinidad and Tobago. St. Augustine, Trinidad: The
University of the West Indies, Faculty of Education.
Van Aalsvoort, J. (2004).
Logical positivism as a tool to analyse the problem of chemistry’s lack of
relevance in secondary school chemical education. International Journal of
Science Education, 26(9), 1151-1168.
Woolman, D. C. (2001).
Educational reconstruction and post-colonial curriculum development: A
comparative study of four African countries. International Education Journal,
2(5), 27-46.
Zembylas, M. (2002). The
global, the local, and the science curriculum: a struggle for balance in Cyprus.
International Journal of Science Education, 24(5), 499-519.
Letting
the voiceless tell their stories
Using oral sources for Caribbean history
writing:
yet more biased accounts?
PhD candidate, Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
milgeorge@yahoo.com
1.
Writing history
How do we write
history? Furthermore, what is history? History can refer to different things.
At a personal level, it is a construction of the mind: the way people remember
and reconstruct past events. It can also be a collective enterprise
whereby a group recalls things gone by. In academic circles, it refers mostly
to the (Western) discipline which records facts that took place in time and
space and offers interpretations about the more or less intentional links
between them, for example, in terms of causal relationships and/or
correlations.
Events that
make up human life have meaning because they are understood and explained as
being part of unfolding stories. The past is past, and of itself it has no voice.
We are the ones who knit the traces of the past into a tapestry of
stories, placing individual events within general frameworks, suggesting
causes, effects, and correlations. History is something that we do. We tell
stories and write histories.
Whichever way
history is understood, it has to do with past events and the way they are used
and explained. Different peoples have told and retold their past in a myriad of
ways. Communities that have privileged the spoken word have used oral
narrations as the channel of their historical consciousness. Others that give
priority to the written word have favoured written documents and sources.
However, history writers, as much as story tellers, have been selective in
whatever and whomever they considered worth being remembered.
When attempting
to write the history of education, one always runs the risk of giving the false
impression that historians always have access to how things were.
History writing always remains storytelling and, as such, it cannot escape being
perspectival. There is not merely one story to be told or history to be
written, but many.
Given that
whatever we write or tell depends on our vantage point, it is necessary while
writing history for academic purposes that we provide others the tools to
assess and critique our story. We need a methodology aimed at transparency.
History and
historiography are not identical. While the former is about telling a story
about the past or letting the past tell some of its stories, the latter has to do
with the history of history writing. Historiography is often used to cover the
history of historical knowledge and interpretation, surrounding non-written
accounts of the past and the broader issues of methodology. Higman speaks of a
focus on the written products of historical thinking but with constant
reference to the larger sphere of social memory and the way in which knowledge
of the past has changed over time, the social recognition and status of
historians, changes in subject matter and source materials, the philosophies
and assumptions of historians, and the ever-changing relationship between
historical interpretation and contemporary social and political contexts
(Higman, 1999:1).
For Higman,
methodology is therefore concerned with the technical concerns of historians
and the theoretical frameworks they employ to interpret and communicate their
findings. The technical concerns relate to the means by which historians
identify and access historical evidence, the means they use to interrogate
these data, and the tools applied to analyze them (Higman, 1999: 1).
2.
Postcolonial history writing
Is our writing
history or thinking about history western-styled or Eurocentric, or
neither? Chakrabarty states that it is insofar as the academic discourse
of history – that is, “history” as a discourse produced in universities – is
concerned, “Europe” remains the sovereign, theoretical subject of all
histories, including the ones we call “Indian,” “Chinese,” “Kenyan,” and so
on (Chakrabarty, 2000: 27).
If the perspective
of the writer conditions the result of his or her findings, we may ask: What
elements of the European “analytical criteria” can and must be adapted to the
St. Maarten reality? Must the way European history of education has been
written be taken as the standard for writing St. Maarten educational
history in “academically acceptable” ways? Would the globalization of the
European historiographical method not amount to a case of intellectual
colonialism insofar as “Europe” would pretend to tell us what is academically
acceptable and what not?
It is not
uncommon for citizens of “postcolonial” countries to accuse North Americans and
Europeans of practicing a form of neo-colonialism, criticizing the claim that
their ways of writing history are normative.[34]
However, if all writing and narrating is done from the point of view of the
writer and/or narrator, then post-colonial history writing will also have its own
bias. In such a case, academic acceptability will lie much more in the degree
to which scholars can justify their method, i.e. the ways in which their data
were collected, pieced together, and interpreted. The methodological question
thus becomes of paramount importance.
3. Written and Oral histories
As said above,
some communities have favoured the written transmission of data and stories
about history over the oral one. Alleyne views the written modality as
corresponding with “European,” “modern,” “urban,” and the latter to “African,”
“folk,” “rural” (Alleyne, 1988:20). This duality has important implications for
Caribbean history writing.
The written and
the oral traditions are well developed and used in the Caribbean. Yet, while
the written tradition or the evidence/documentation theory based on written
documents providing the exclusive source of knowledge of the past can be
arguably described as having ignored the lives and institutions of the average
people, the oral modality has not been granted its due importance.
Given that most
of the written documentation was under the control or supervision of the
colonial masters, the Caribbean written tradition can be seen as a “history
from above.” This history was more often than not written from the perspective
of outsiders, or at least of people who had problems identifying themselves
completely with their geo-social surroundings. The colonized peoples had their
stories, poems, and songs by means of which they voiced their own outlook on
their historical predicament. This was an oral history, a “history from below.”
4. Use of oral sources for writing histories
So-called “oral
history” refers to the history writer’s search for and tapping into the
spoken word as source of relevant information for historical reconstruction.
The historian can use:
-
culturally-sanctioned oral traditions,
-
more or less rehearsed interviews, and
-
printed compilations of stories told about the past.
Oral sources of
information are sought not only to fill in the lacunae in the written sources,
but also to arrive at knowledge which would otherwise not be available.
Information may or may not be available due to the state of the written sources
or their nature. It can therefore not be expected of official school archives,
for instance, that they should provide researchers into the history of
education with information about the thoughts and feelings of the students
while they were seated in their classroom during a lesson of Maths. For a
history writer wanting to reconstruct the unofficial story of colonial
classroom practice, oral interviews of people whose stories have not made it
into the written archives can open new vistas.[35]
However, oral
interviews are not free of problems. Michael Frisch has criticized the
overvaluation of oral history as “Anti-History.” He views “oral historical
evidence because of its immediacy and emotional resonance, as something almost
beyond interpretation or accountability, as a direct window on the feelings and
(...) on the meaning of past experience” (Frisch,
1990). Furthermore, it seems that people seem to
remember different aspects of the past. Tonkin has pointed out that one cannot
detach the oral representation of pastness from the relationship of narrator
and audience in which it was occasioned (Tonkin 1992:2).
History writers
using oral sources must therefore never relinquish the onus of critical
analysis. They need to assess the reliability of the narrator and of
their narration. It is at this point that the researchers must resort to
triangulation to limit the arbitrariness and possible biases contained in the
account of their informant(s). Thus, it will be necessary not only to interview
someone who possesses relevant knowledge, but also to interview more than one
person. Furthermore, the interviewees should ideally be people who represent
different angles of the story.
The above means
that the researchers into oral history face the question how to choose whom to
listen to. History has meaning for people and that is why history still exists
today. As underlined by Thompson, the voice of the past matters to the present.
But whose voice – or voices- are to be heard? (Thompson, 1988:viii) On whose
authority is the interviewees’ (re-)construction of the past based? Whom is it
intended for? And which of the voices interviewed fairly conveys “the voice of
the past” (especially considering that the past has many voices)?
Thus, the issue
of objectivity and subjectivity enters the stage. In the case of oral history,
the most subjective accounts could be described as objective source if and when
we are interested in a person’s feelings, evaluation, or reflection of past
events. However, even when the informants are being interviewed about the more
factual components of an event, their subjective retellings of it will
presuppose a certain degree of objectivity. Dates and places are relative; they
depend on the measures being used. Events are not dated, nor are they mapped.
As Kant indicated, things and events have an existence in themselves which
escapes us. However, we understand them and assign them their place according
to our human frame of mind. Still, within the realm of human subjectivity,
dates and places can be in ascertained in ways which are relatively “objective”
to us humans, for instance, by agreeing on a dating or measuring system. By
using this conventional measuring systems, we can assess whether the
information which our informants hold about past events are only “true for
them” or also “true for others.”
In short, it is
the research question that will determine whether the researcher employing oral
sources must zoom in on the more subjective content (“true for him/her”) or
whether he or she ought to navigate between the subjective lines and go in
search of the more objective details that may transpire out of the accounts
(“true for him/her and true for others”).
Much of history
writing is based on interpretations of data. This is particularly true when
oral sources are used. Not only does the history writer interpret what he or
she hears, the oral informants do, too. The role of memory in the act of
looking back and retelling the past can never be stressed enough (Hodgson,
1975:5; Trillin, 1977:85; Cliff, 1997:594; Portellie, 1991:2). For Portellie, the telling of a story preserves the
teller from oblivion (Portellie, 1981:162). The tale itself creates a special
time, “a time outside time” (Tonkin 1992:3). The characteristic of narrations
is that the narrators need to connect with their own memories and with their
audiences, and both of them have to tap into the structure of the narration.
Oral accounts
are therefore not merely an information-giving exercise, but also an
interpretive account during which the informants try to recall the past as much
as they attempt to explain how they were involved in it. During his or her
research, the history writer using oral sources will therefore have to ask
questions such as the following:
-
Were the different interviewees differently situated in relationship to the
events under discussion?
-
Might they have different agendas, leading them to tell different versions of
the same story?
-
Might intervening events —for example, ideological shifts between the time of
the events under discussion and the time of the interview, or subsequent
popular cultural accounts of these events— have influenced later memories?[36]
5.
Writing histories of education
Our interest is
not only in history writing, but more specifically in writing the history of
primary education in St. Maarten, with special reference to the unwritten
stories of those involved. When researching the “history of education,”
phenomena and processes of education and schooling are being studied in their
historical dimension. While the methodology used is that of “history writing”
as a scientific discipline, the contents of the research are fairly diverse and
relate to all fields of education (e.g. history of family education and child
abuse, history of school realities and innovation processes, history of youth
care and special institutions for handicapped children, history of Educational
Sciences, etc.).
In most cases,
the research focus is limited to the understanding of the evolution of the
educational mentality and practice, and does not intend to contribute to
new theoretical-pedagogical insights, let alone the construction of a new
pedagogical theory. However, the history of education can indirectly give
direction to and be critical of the research being conducted in other
educational areas; it can explain and change phenomena. History shows, for
instance, that things do not necessarily have to be the way they are, simply
because people are always keeping and changing things. Progress has its
continuities, as well as its discontinuities. True historical research
can indirectly offer liberating insights for educational theory and
praxis.
Following the
international trends in the field, the history of education is understood as
part of the “new” social and cultural history. Historical events are
envisaged as cultural phenomena within a long duration of time. The history
writer, too, finds him or herself within cultural processes which colour his or
her analysis, for instance, by imposing present concerns and preoccupations
upon the past.
Caribbean
history and historiography are very complex. Caribbean societies are generally
multi-ethnic and multicultural, although the African- and European-derived
modalities predominate in most cases (Alleyne, 1988:19). This means that the
various segments of the population often harbour their own separate concerns.
Each social layer making up the Caribbean has received a different appraisal
from the old colonial masters and continues polarizing society in different
ways and at different levels.
It is against
the backdrop of these developments that I must raise the following
methodological questions: For whom is my history of education on St. Maarten
being written? Whose concerns am I serving? Will St. Maarteners recognize their
past experiences in my account and analysis of the past development of
education on St. Maarten? Furthermore, will they accept my explanation of the
links between the events, especially considering that “I wasn’t born there”?
6.
Suggestion for future research
In order to
give an example of how the use of oral sources could nuance the input obtained
from written sources, I shall now present a hypothetical research project which
could be conducted in St. Maarten.
6.1.
The official written story
The Methodist
Agogic Center (MAC) was established in 1976 by a letter from the Lt.
Governor on behalf of the Executive Council granting permission for the start
of three Kindergartens and four first grade classes.[37]
Currently, there are two campuses and one main office with early stimulation
classes.
The Mission
Statement of the MAC of 1976 states that it is the school’s aim “to develop and
implement a programme of Foundation Education that will provide for the Total
Development of any child in St. Maarten, creating a learning environment
with many opportunities for self-fulfillment by means of instruction in the Mother
Tongue.” “Mother tongue” means English as language of instruction.
6.2. The unofficial oral stories
If future
history writers took the MAC’s Mission Statement of 1976 at face value and
combined it with current official and unofficial written information about
instruction, they might conclude that the school’s presupposition that the
pupils’ mother tongue is English was still accurate in, say, 2000. After all,
St. Maarten is an English-speaking territory.
However, if our
hypothetical researchers wrote a history “from below” (an oral history),
paying heed to the voice of the parents, they would certainly be in a
better position to reconstruct what is actually happening in the field. They
would be made aware that in today’s St. Maarten, “mother tongue” can refer to more
than one language (e.g. Spanish and Haitian Patois). Conclusions of this type
would also direct the researchers’ attention to other issues related to the
language of instruction, such as classroom climate, teaching effectiveness,
social prejudices, the polarization of citizenship and nationhood in terms of
“St. Maarteners” and “foreigners,” etc. In this hypothetical case, the use of
oral sources would show that the responses of the parents interviewed would
have nuanced the impression given by the official written sources that English
was every pupil’s “mother tongue.”
7. Conclusion
If the writing
of Caribbean history —better still— histories is based solely on the “word” of
written primary and/or secondary sources, we might be misrepresenting the context
within which the events under study took place. By doing this, we might end up
reducing some segments of reality to muteness, while we attribute to others
more representativeness than they actually had. Used critically and
methodically, oral sources can lend a voice to the countless voiceless
protagonists of our local and regional Caribbean histories.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Alleyne (1988).
“Linguistics and the oral tradition,” in B.W. Higman (ed.) (1999), General
History of the Caribbean. Vol. VI: Methodology and Historiography of the
Caribbean, pp. 19-45. Unesco Publishing/Macmillan Education Ltd., London.
Chakrabarty
(2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical
Difference. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Frisch, Michael (1990). A
Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History,
pp. 159-160. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Higman (ed.)
(1999),General History of the Caribbean Vol. VI: Methodology and
Historiography of the Caribbean. London: Unesco Publishing/Macmillan Education
Ltd.
Hodgson, Godfrey (1976). America
in Our Time. New York: Random House.
Kuhn, Cliff (1997).
“There’s a Footnote to History!’ Memory and the History of Martin Luther King’s
October 1960 Arrest and Its Aftermath,” in Journal of American History
84:2 (September).
Portellie,
Alessandro (1981). “The time of my life: functions of time in oral history,” in
International Journal of Oral History 2.3, pp. 162-180.
Portellie, Alessandro
(1991). “The Death of Luigi Trastulli: Memory and the Event,” in The Death
of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories, pp. 1-26. Albany: State
University of New York Press.
Thompson, Paul
(1988). The voice of the past: Oral history. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Tonkin, Elizabeth (1992). Narrating
our pasts: The social construction of oral history. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Trillin, Calvin (1977).
“Remembrance of Moderate Past,” in New Yorker (March 21).
What the Tamarind tree
whispers:
Notes on a pedagogy of tragedy
University of
St. Martin, the
Netherlands Antilles
fguadeloupe@diasporainternational.org
“This is the
miracle: that a fragment of the world, human consciousness, arrogates to itself
the privilege of being its mirror. But this will never produce an objective
truth, since the mirror is part of the object it reflects.”
Jean Baudrillard.[38]
“After gaining their
freedom the enslaved Africans on Saint Martin & Sint Maarten (SXM) were
blinded and deafened by the radiance and the music of flamboyant tree; the tree
of absolute sovereignty. They lost touch with the world; with the Dionysian
forces that should always counterbalance those guided by Apollo; with Exu that
constantly troubles the static civilisational aspirations of Ogun. And we, we
the neglected trees on the island gave them back the gift of sight, smell,
sound, and taste. Through us they understood that all of life is an infinite
rehearsal.”
This is what the tamarind
trees whisper in their silence as they touched me when an old-timer remarked
something to the effect of “don’t get catch under the tamon tree after dark
because jumbies goin’ haunt you.” The old-timer spoke through the voice of a
young educated professional, who prided himself with his masters’ degree earned
at a fancy North American university. Most saw in him a man of the world, a saga
boy, ‘one of the girl’s them sugar,’ as the reggae superstar Beenieman
would put it, a well-groomed professional who drove around in an
air-conditioned car, and who saw it as one of his tasks to shuttle his less
educated countrymen into the 21st century.
This is what I usually saw
in him too. But not today. Today as I heard the whispers of the tamarind trees,
when the old-timer spoke through him, I saw him for what he is, for what I am,
for what we all are on this island, for what all human beings are, and that is
living/dead. There is nothing strange about this. We the living, are the
mouthpieces of the dead. We inherit their tongue and their works. We suckle on
the breasts of those who suckled on their breast, who in turn suckled on
others’ breast, ad infinitum. We, carry the dead within us. Without the
dead we could not be. Hence, we are living/dead.
From the whispers of the
tamarind tree I discerned that this is just the most superficial level of
existence. For, after they had revealed to me that the dead speak through us,
the trees cynically asked who can truly know the dead? And for that matter, the
living? In that questioning I understood what the Greek poet-philosopher
Lucretius meant when he wrote that “by protracting life, we do not deduct one
jot from the duration of death.” Life is coterminous with death. And both of
these terms, life and death, only conceal a more fundamental Nothingness (which
is not an Idea about the absence of an Idea). From this Nothingness, this
unknowable, this non-thought that both founds and demolishes thought,
emerge all partial Somethings, including our concepts of life and death, which
in the end could be nothing but mere illusion.
But that was a too
farfetched and frightening a thought to entertain. I could not entertain it. I
answered the trees in a tongue similar to theirs, the tongue of silence that
speaks through the imagination and bawled, “who me, a nothing? What the world,
pure illusion? Boy what pipe you smoke? We, we human beings, are God’s
creations made in his image and after his likeness. Imago Dei. You all,
you all damn trees with all you bittersweet fruits, contradicting yourselves.
You all are vestigium as Thomas Aquinas put it. If Nothing is
fundamental, then you all don’t exist either. I don’t want to hear anymore of
you all heresy. Leave me alone, cause I have to write a paper on teaching
social studies in the primary schools on the island.”
The tamarind trees laughed.
It was a shrieking laugh that made all the hairs on my body stand up straight,
a powerful feat since the hairs on my body are tightly curled. There is even a
folktale which I grew up hearing about a poor black woman who cheated the Devil
out of snatching her soul. She dared him to iron all her tiny corkscrew curls
straight. The Devil lost. Such a feat could only be accomplished by using Dark
& Lovely in the hands of a Dominican hairdresser. I thought to myself these
trees are more powerful than the Devil himself. I had better go easy on these
trees.
The trees noticed my fear.
They sought to calm me. They said, “you shouldn’t fear us, for we are all
connected. The living/dead landscapes, riverscapes, oceanscapes, and skyscapes,
together with those we support and nurture, your kind, could be nothing but
mere illusion. The problem with your kind is that you don’t listen. We did not
say that you are an illusion, that the world is an illusion. We said
it could be nothing but mere illusion. It was conjecture. Surely a man
of your talents must know what a conjecture is. Like you, we too are enigmas to
ourselves. If you don’t believe us, then heed the words of one of your sages
Ceronetti who once wrote ‘when I think “human condition,” I lose any notion of
happiness or misfortune – the night carries it away, all that remains is a
hopeless puzzle.’[39] You, like us are vestigium. You
represent as another one of your sages Nancy put it ‘only the causality of the
cause, but not its form,’[40] which for all intents and purposes can be a
formless Nothing.
When the oldtimer spoke
about the jumbies under our tree it was to make you aware that reality as you
think it is, is not really Reality. The reality of Phillipsburg with its beach
bars, hotels and casinos is not Reality. The beautiful women in their SUVs and
their French manicures that you drool about are not Reality. The dude boys with
their degrees and verbal acrobatics are not Reality. The discourses of the
rabble-rousers who claim SXM is losing its identity, on the account of all the
newcomers, is not Reality. SXM being shackled by Curaçao and the Netherlands is
not Reality.
Reality, if Reality it is,
is Nothingness. It is unknowable. It is God without the name and the theologies
and rituals you adorn it/her/him with. Reality is a ? We are mediums, we
trees, living/dead like your kind. Why you can hear us we don’t know but we
conjecture that Nothingness (which again is not the Idea of an absence of an
Idea) sent us to assist you in writing your paper for the conference.” And so I
listened. And so I reasoned with the trees. And so I wrote. And so I understood
that those who accept reality as Reality are those who stand for a nationalist
pedagogy of liberation with a romantic bent.[41] Those who understand that they can never
understand Reality, and are content with that realization, stand for a pedagogy
of tragedy; a pedagogy that can be the groundwork of a new style of social
studies that we offer in primary schools.
Pedagogies of tragedy begin
with the fundamental lesson that human beings exist within two non-resolvable
dialectics, namely, that of Dionysus and Apollo, and that of Exu and Ogun. In
plain English this means that we are conscripts of plural metaphysical jails.
And to really understand these jails, we must creolise these dialectical pairs.
Ogun needs to be paired up with Apollo, and the similarities between Exu and
Dionysus need to be appreciated. Africa needs to meet ancient Greece, so as to
open both their particularities to universality. Ogun is the god of
civilisation. Through Ogun humankind received the much needed intuitions on how
to tame fire and smelt iron. Apollo is the God of form and order, and he
presided over our development of medicine and architecture. Without Ogun and
Apollo we would still be running around in caves. Through the combination of
these two forces, mankind engages in the making of culture. This engagement, or
should I say production of culture, brings with it all the comforts of life. It
also brings with it our longing to commemorate the past; to mummify tradition
and culture.
How does this translate to
teaching social studies to pupils attending SXM’s primary school? I am not a
primary school teacher so all I can give is some pointers, leaving the
development of such a program in more capable hands. When we touch upon the
evolution of mankind in our social studies classes, we ought to make pupils
aware of the metaphysical forces of Ogun and Apollo, for it is through these
forces that we became the dominant species among all the animals that populate
the face of this earth. We tamed the earth, only to end up entrapping ourselves
in a manmade objective culture.[42]
We must teach our
schoolchildren that their parents and community leaders longing for some
prelapsarian age may be nothing more than manifestations of our collective metaphysical-linguistic
understanding of the big house of objective culture. Why do I say
metaphysical-linguistic? It is simple. We cannot think without language. And
language always contains an unknown extra-linguistic source (a metaphysical
presence which eludes us).[43] To think even something as self-evident as “I
exist,” I need language. I am always in a phrase and to escape this phrase I
need another phrase. There is no getting out of phrases. We must teach our
pupils to identify this philosophical conundrum with the god Exu.
Exu is the god of
communication. He knows all human and extra-human languages. But he is also
well versed in the language of Nothingness. It is through Exu that we are aware
of the more within our language; that we have a sense of that ever
elusive Beingness of being which we term our Self. It is our awareness
of Exu that reminds us of Dionysus. For our students we must equate Dionysus
with dissent. Dionysus is the force that constantly deconstructs objective
culture. That rebels against it. That summons in us the sense and notion that
the present should not be the slave and handmaiden of a mummified past (whether
these are Romantic-leftist or Romantic-conservative).
After teaching our students
about these four forces we must create a synthesis that forever remains
incomplete. Thus they must come to understand that Dionysus carries within
himself Exu, Apollo, and Ogun, while being part of Exu, Apollo, and Ogun.
Together these four forces should remind them that every civilisation they
learn about in history classes and every contemporary civilisation is caught up
in an infinite rehearsal, which “implies that there is no final performance – a
civilisation never arrives at a final performance – the final performance is
itself an infinite rehearsal.”[44] A special assignment after they have
rationally grasped all this is to have them sit under a tamarind tree and
listen to its numinous whispers……………….deconstructing the power of reality (and
its Father, discursive rationality).
References and/or complementary bibliography
Baudrillard, J. The
Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact. Translated by Chris Turner. New
York: Berg, 2005.
Blanchot, M. Faux Pas.
translated by Charlotte Mandell. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Harris, W. Selected
Essays of Wilson Harris. London: Routledge, 1999.
Lyotard, J.F. The
libidinal Economy. Translated by Ian Hamiliton Grant. London: Continuum,
2004.
Lucretius. Titus, Carus. The
Way Things Are: The Dererum Natura. Translated by Rolf Humphries. Indiana
University Press, 1968.
Nancy, J.L. The Muses.
Translated by Peggy Kamuf. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Sekou, L.M. National
Symbols: a primer. Phillipsburg: House of Nehesi,
1997.
Changing Times —
Creating Inclusive Schools
University of
the Virgin Islands, USA
Introduction
World leaders in the dawn
of the millennium have agreed to cut poverty around the world in half over the
next 10 years. They have also agreed that all boys and girls need to go to
school because education is one of the most effective ways that young people
and adults can improve their lives. In fact, it is a universal goal to achieve
Education for All Children (EFA) by the year 2015. The EFA movement
is, as its name suggests, concerned with ensuring basic education to
everyone. This movement was launched at the World Conference on Education
for All in Jomtien, Thailand in 1990 and ended up with the World Declaration on
Education for All (the Jomtien Declaration 1990). This declaration came
about due to the following reasons:
Educational opportunities
were limited, with too many people having little or no access to education;
Basic education was
conceived narrowly in terms of literacy and numeracy, rather than more broadly
as a foundation for a lifetime of learning and citizenship; and
Certain marginalized
groups- disabled people in most countries, members of ethnic and linguistic
minorities, girls and women in some countries, were at particular risk of being
excluded from education altogether.
This situation is
particularly true all over the world, of one group of young people who are
often kept out of school, live out of sight in their own homes, communities,
and therefore are more likely to live in poverty than anyone else. This
group of young people are children who are disabled. Disability is when a
person’s physical or mental condition keeps them from being able to function in
an expected manner. People can be born disabled, which is called developmental
disability or can become disabled during their lifetime as a result of an
untreated illness or an accident. There are different kinds of
disabilities: physical, sensory, emotional, hidden or visible disabilities.
The World Education Forum
(2000), points out that there are more than 113 million children with no access
to primary education and 880 million adults who are illiterate. .In developing
countries, the situation is even more devastating. Few disabled children,
and even fewer disabled girls—go to school, even if their disability has
nothing to do with their ability to learn. About 98% of them do not go to
school because in many poor countries, schools are not built with disabled
children in mind. The buildings may be difficult to get to or to get
around. To make things even worse, disabled children are stigmatized and
shunned by the community where they live. Parents often hide their
disabled children. So often, these children are not allowed to play, or
do things with their family and peers. Because many people including some
parents think that children with disabilities cannot learn or develop the
necessary skills that are prerequisite to productive life, not much is expected
from them. When these young children with disabilities grow up, they often must
depend on somebody else to care for them. Disabled people are among the
poorest people in the world because they have not been taught the life-skills
to support themselves that are extended to people without a disability. When
disabled children are allowed and encouraged to learn like everyone else, they
can improve their own lives and the lives of people around them rather than
being dependent on others. If children with disabilities are given the
opportunity, they can be independent, productive and a fully included member of
their communities and can live meaningful lives. Instead of becoming a
social burden, they can contribute to the social and economic well-being and
development of their families and communities. Children and people with
disabilities are marginalized and excluded because they are denied education
and life long learning opportunities.
The main goal of education
must be to ensure that every student gains access to knowledge, skills and
information that will prepare him/her to be a productive member of the
community and workplace. This central purpose is extended to ALL students
and must accommodate students with diverse backgrounds, abilities and
interests. Unfortunately, in most countries and in particular in the
developing countries, a dual system, general education and special education
still exist. In most developing countries, the birth of a child, especially the
birth of a son is a joyous occasion. In many of these countries, a child
is not born with a mouth only but with two hands as well. Children are
expected to contribute to the economy of the family from early. Young
boys from the age of seven will look after the family’s herds -- be it cattle,
camels, sheep or goats. Young girls, assist their mothers by performing
house chores and/ or taking care of their young siblings. Due to the
nature of this subsistence economy where everybody is supposed to contribute to
the livelihood of the family; many parents mistakenly, see the birth of a child
with a disability, or a child acquiring a disability after birth as a tragedy
for the following reasons:
Many parents think that
disabled children need more attention and care as compared to children without
a disability. Unfortunately, some families see such a child as someone
who will be taking away from the meager economy of the family instead of adding
to it. As a result, they find it economically irresponsible to invest in
a child who is perceived as someone who can neither provide for the family nor
be able to support himself/herself. Ashton, B. (1999), rationalizes the
act of such families by saying “Early lack of investment in disabled children
is not just a reflection of ignorance. In situations of poverty, this is
a desperate but rational decision” (p. 1).
In countries where
resources are meager, children with disabilities are the ones who get the
shorter end of the stick. They are fed and clothed less; and if in the
process they get sick, they seldom get treatment. That is why Erb
and Harris-White (1999) did not find many children with disabilities in
some villages in Tami Nadu, India and assumed either there were no children
with disabilities born in these villages or did not survive the ordeal after
birth. It is very probable that the later is true.
Even if children with
disabilities survive these ordeals, their parents are less inclined to send
them to school for a number of reasons. Some parents feel that their
child might not be able to withstand the teasing and the mocking that they may
receive from the other children. In many countries, young children use
the disability form as a nickname to call children with disabilities instead of
using their names. Referring to them as the ‘blind child”, the ‘crippled
child” is very common. Others do not want the neighborhood to know that
they have a disabled child and consequently stigmatize the family.
The story of a young girl from the republic of Mauritania drives the point
home. This is taken directly from her testimony. “When I was one year
old, as a result of a polio epidemic which ravaged a large number of children,
I became disabled. And so, a different life began for me. The life of a girl
who is the bearer of shame. So, I had to keep myself away from others, screened
from indiscreet eyes. Our society thinks that disabilities are a malediction
and persons with a disability are the object of prejudices, which lead to bad
treatment and rejection. I was hidden”
(Coulibaly,www.portal.unesco.org/education/). According to Hunt, P. (1966),
stigmatizing the family might have a serious repercussion by diminishing the
marriage prospects of siblings. Above all many parents decline to send
their children with disabilities to school because they see it as an unwise
investment. In most developing countries, sending a child to school is an
investment. These parents have a choice either to keep the child with
them and allow him/her to help by working at the farm or at home and contribute
directly to the family’s economy or send him/her away to school (in most cases
away from the village) incurring additional expenses. This is not
an easy decision and it takes a lot of thinking and discussing with the
family. In cases where they have more than one child and
cannot afford to send all of them to school, they want to make sure that they
send the one who most likely will succeed.
Having one child does not
make it easier either. Before they send their only child away, they have
to make sure that the child is up to it and that he/she guarantees some sort of
return on their investment. Such decisions are only easy when it involves
a child with a disability. Most parents do not see investing in a
disabled child as a worthwhile investment and decides to give priority to
children without a disability. This means that having a disability is the
single most important factor that keeps children out of school. It is
estimated that out of the 115 million children out of school, 40 million have
disabilities. According to studies commissioned by UNESCO, 98% of
children with disabilities in developing countries are denied any formal
education (Hegarty, 1998). If we look closer to numbers in specific
countries, it is even more alarming. In Tanzania, less than 10 % of the
children with disabilities attend school (Rajani, R., Bangser, M.,
Lund-Sorensen, U. & Leach, V. 2001). Similarly, according to Okidi,
J. A. & Mugambe, and G. K. (2002), in Uganda, in the 1991 Population
and Housing National Census, there were 190,345 persons with disabilities; of
this more than 50% never attended school. Looking into the literacy rate
between people with disability and people without disability, in Baharin, it
was revealed that 27% of the population over 10 years of age were illiterate
compared to 77% of disabled people (Elwan, Ann 1999).
It is clear therefore, that
for many years, children with disabilities have been locked at the back of
their homes or confined to a separate classroom or school where they learn
different things in a different way. This was done under the incorrect
assumption that if you are different you will probably learn less and must be
taught differently. As a result, children with disabilities in poor countries
even if they go to school, they receive inferior education due to the following
reasons:
First and foremost, most of
the schools are built without having in mind people with disabilities.
They are inaccessible, and lack basic equipments. Some children come to
school carried by parents or riding a mule or a donkey. Arriving at
school doesn’t make it easier. At the school they have to contend with
high stairs that lead to the schools and within the schools. No one made this
condition clear than Diarata the young girl from Mauritania when she said
“….Linked to the problem of the behavior of the students were the added
difficulties posed by the environment. It is very difficult to “walk”
under a hot sun and at a temperature, which could be as much as 48 degrees
C. The kilometer which separated my house from my school seemed endless under
the very hot sun and over the burning sand of Kaedi….The classrooms were not
always accessible and public transport was not always adapted to persons with a
disability (Coulibaly, www.portal.unesco.org/education/). The few schools
that are built to accommodate people with disabilities are always over -crowded
and lack the basic resources to do an average work.
Such teachers are heard
saying that they need “special skills” to teach children with
disabilities. This is not necessarily true; a good teacher can teach
children with disabilities and those without disabilities in the same
classroom. Over the years, several good teachers proved that children
with disabilities can be taught in the same classroom with non disabled
children through the use of well planned teaching approaches which encourage
the active participation of all children. This does not necessarily mean
that teachers do not need some technical assistance as how to improve the
delivery of their lessons. Institutions of higher education have
contributed immensely to this problem. Most schools train teachers to
teach in regular classrooms and special classrooms. They call the former,
teachers and the latter, special education teachers. The schools that
certify these teachers told them that they cannot teach children with special
needs if they come to the regular classroom. Only specially trained teachers
are supposed to teach children with disabilities. The irony is that
institutions of higher education talk “inclusion” and practice “exclusion.”
Another reason for the low
achievement is due to the fact that many people have low expectations for
children with disabilities, and worse of all they make them develop low
expectation of themselves. Children with disabilities are expected to do poor
in school because they are not healthy. This notion of not being
healthy is rooted in the belief of some people who consider themselves as
moderate and caring, who have suggested along the way that because of their
health problems, students with disabilities cannot be
placed in regular classrooms and could be placed in a regular classroom only if
their health has improved, which means if their disabilities are ‘cured.’ This
is wrong. Children with disabilities cannot be cured, and if cure is a prerequisite
to inclusion, most persons with disabilities will never be included.
Fortunately, there is a new era; the Era of Inclusion.
As indicated above,
although there are many reasons and the reasons could vary from country to
country and from one culture to another; the most common barriers towards the
education of pupils with disabilities all over the world could be summarized as
follows:
-
weak political will,
-
insufficient financial resources and the inefficient use of those available,
-
inadequate attention to the learning needs of the poor and the excluded,
-
a lack of attention to the quality of learning, and
-
an absence of commitment to overcoming gender disparities.
What is inclusion?
The new philosophy of
inclusion is built on the belief that people/adults work in inclusive
communities, work with people of different races, religions, aspirations,
disabilities. In the same vein, children of all ages should learn and grow in
environments that resemble the environments that they will eventually work
in. That is why inclusion is defined as the practice of placing children
with disabilities in the same (regular) classroom with non-disabled students
and providing them with specialized services and/or curriculum. Ferguson,
1996, describes inclusion as an effort to create schools that meet the needs of
all students where children with and without disabilities are educated together
in age–appropriate general education classrooms. It would entail keeping
children with disabilities in regular education classrooms and bringing the
support services to the child, rather than bringing the child to the support
services (Smelter, Rasch, and Yudewitz, 1996). It is very important to note
that it is not enough to put children with disabilities in a regular classroom
and expect them to learn equally with their peers. Inclusive education
supporters’ advocate that almost all students should begin school with their
peers in the age-appropriate general education classroom, and then, depending
on their needs, move into environments that are more restrictive or less
restrictive. Inclusive education can be thought of as a pendulum clock.
It goes to the right, to the left, and to the right, yet it always comes to the
center. Similarly, children with disabilities should be allowed to go to
the special classes for different reasons and services whenever the need
arises, yet they must come back to the regular classes and learn with their
peers, if that is what is best for the child.
Education is a right and a
privilege
Children with disabilities
have the right to free and appropriate education. This right is embedded in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights which passed on December 10, 1948 by the
General Assembly of the United Nations. The 2nd article of
this historic declaration is very relevant to the cause of people with
disabilities and reads as follows: “Every one is entitled to all the rights and
freedoms set forth in this Declaration without distinction of any kind, such as
race, color, sex, language, religion, or other opinion, national or social
origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no
distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or
international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs,
whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other
limitation of Sovereignty (Universal Declaration Of Human Right, 1948,
Article 2)”.
Although Article 2, as it
is written does not mention the word disability it urges all member states to
extend this right, without exception to all people including people with
disabilities.
After the passage of the
Universal Human right, a giant step towards the improvement of Education of
people with disabilities was taken by the United States of America when on May
17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown vs. Board of Education declared that
separate education facilities are inherently unequal (Brown vs. Board of
Education 1954). This landmark civil rights case made it clear that
segregating students in schools based on race is unconstitutional. Again,
there was no mention of children with disabilities; however, parents of
children with disabilities in the United States of America were able to use the
refutation of the accepted practices of “separate but equal” as a point of
reference in requesting that their children with disabilities receive free and
appropriate public education. This decision signaled the end of all legal
segregation in the United States of America.
Another giant step was
taken towards the right of all children including children with disabilities
when in November of 1959, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed
the “Declaration of the Right of the Child by General Assembly resolution 1386
(XIV) 20. In this declaration, Principle 5, and 7 are very relevant to
the child with special needs which reads as follows:
Principle 5: “The
child who is physically, mentally handicapped shall be given the special
treatment, education and care required by his particular condition.”
Principle 7: “The child is
entitled to receive education, which shall be free and compulsory, at least in
the elementary stages. He shall be given an education which will promote
his general culture and enable him.”
Mistakenly, many educators,
and other lay persons think that inclusive education is designed to benefit
children with disabilities only. To the contrary,
research shows that inclusive education helps the development of all children
in different ways. Wolery, M. and Wilbers, J, (1994), admits that
although inclusion is primarily designed to include children with disabilities
learn with their peers in the regular classrooms, the benefits are extended to
children without disabilities, parents of children without disabilities and by
and large the whole community. Children with
more typical development gain higher levels of tolerance for people with
differences. They are provided with opportunities to learn more realistic
and accurate views about individuals with disabilities. They are provided with
opportunities to develop positive attitudes towards others who are different
from themselves, not to mention that they are provided with models of
individuals who successfully achieve, despite the challenges.
Investing in inclusive
education is a win, win situation. Students with specific challenges make
gains in cognitive and social development as well as physical motor
skills. In addition, children with disabilities are spared the negative
effects of being taught in a segregated classroom and all the name-calling, and
labeling that comes with it. Under the name of inclusive schools, many schools,
many times, do some sort of labeling without even noticing it. For example,
in one school the whole school is divided into teams. Each team was
given a color. For example, the color for team A is Red and Team B is
Yellow. All of the teams were divided heterogeneously, except that of the
special education students. All of the special education students who
were going to that specific school were grouped together, and were given a blue
color. In other words, the background for their identification card was
blue. The teachers as well as the school administrators, who are in
charge of a certain team, also exhibit the same color of their teams. One
day one of the students from a different team saw one of the assistant
principals exhibiting a blue color since she was in charge of the special
education team. This student came closer and told the administrator “doc,
are you” Specie” (Special) too? All the special education students were
referred to as “Specie”. Regardless of how we do it, grouping or
tracking based on abilities, is a cruel practice and many children with
disabilities have suffered over the years immensely from it. Inclusion is
designed to bring these practices to an end.
It is an undeniable fact
that when children with disabilities are taught in the same classroom with
their peers, they are exposed to competent models that allow them to learn new
adaptive skills and/or learn when to use their existing skills through
imitation. Children learn from each other faster than they can learn from
anybody else.
In addition, when children
with disabilities go to school with their peers, they are afforded the
opportunity to interrelate with competent peers with whom to interact and
thereby learn new social and/or communicative skills. Just like children
without disabilities admire, and try to emulate other students in their school;
children with disabilities will also have a larger pool of young men and women
to emulate and learn from.
Finally, in an inclusive
classroom, children with disabilities will be provided with opportunities to
develop friendships with typically developing peers, and with realistic life
experiences that prepare them to live in their communities. It is only
fair to expose young children with disabilities to young men and women without
disabilities and hear their dreams and their aspirations. Instead of
confining them in one location under the disguise of alternative schools, it
would make much more sense to allow these young men and women with disabilities
to sit and talk with the other students, about colleges and universities, about
careers and professions.
Inclusive education has
also a profound positive effect on the whole community. Wolery, M. and
Wilbers, J., (1994), label’ communities that support and encourage inclusion as
progressive communities, and that as such by supporting inclusion they create a
healthy and financially strong community. Some of the benefits that the
community can receive are as follows:
Conserve resources by
limiting the need for segregated, specialized programs.
Families of children with disabilities
and those without disabilities come together and learn from each other.
Families of children with disabilities might learn about typical development;
develop relationships with families of typically developing children who can
provide them with meaningful support not to mention the fact they may feel less
isolated from the remainder of their communities.
Families of children
without disabilities may develop relationships with families who have children
with disabilities, and thereby make a contribution to them and their
communities. Such encounters will also give them an opportunity to teach their
children about individual differences and about accepting individuals who are
different.
Features of Inclusive Schools
Effective inclusive schools
have certain features, and it is essential that any school that tries to
accommodate children with disabilities exhibit some of the following features:
1. A new breed of
professionals and paraprofessionals: All the staff in inclusive
schools appreciate and value human diversity, and believe that every child has
varied talent and that he/she can learn at high levels, moving at his/her own
pace and is committed to the pursuit of individually configured excellence. In
developing countries; a one-room schoolhouse that had
multi-grades 1-4 and one teacher was common. Such schools were very
effective. Students in this one-room school were not separated and
labeled. They all learned from the one teacher and from one
another. The teacher was expected to teach all kids who
entered the class and every child progressed according to his/ her pace.
Then came the era of modernization or as some people call it
‘westernization. These eras differentiated between regular education
teachers and special education teachers and if there are two kinds of teachers,
there will be two kinds of students: regular students and students with special
needs. It seems that with the advent of trained teachers came
specialization; and with specialization came segregated schooling. The trend is changing now; this new
breed of educators and service providers make students feel valued for their
potential as people, and help them learn to value each other.
2. Collaboration: If
inclusion is going to be successful there should be collaboration and
communication among teachers, families, school administrators, general
educators, special educators as well as para-educators. Teachers working
together not only create more energy around problem-solving and effective
strategies, but they also model people skills for students. As a result,
practices such as cooperative learning, peer tutoring, team teaching, parent
partnerships and common planning time are very essential. When there is
collaborative teaching arrangements and good communication between the
above-mentioned individuals, children with disabilities would get fair and
better education.
3. Changing roles and
responsibilities: In an inclusive school, every person in the
building is a contributor in the learning process. Teachers do not say to
each other these are my students and those are yours. No one would claim
any student. All of the participants- specialist, as well as other
teachers provide support to each other. Every participant in the teaching
and learning process share their expertise in order to use strategies that
assist all students to successfully participate in class
instruction.
4. Access:
Most inclusive schools make all the necessary modification to the building, and
have assistive technology devices available, so that students with disabilities
may access all aspects of the school. There will be no inclusion without
active participation of children with disabilities in the classroom
activities. This active participation is totally dependent on accessible
schools. Access and participation goes hand in hand together, and one
cannot happen without the other. Inclusive schools apply simple
techniques to make schools accessible. Most buildings are one story
buildings with ramps leading inside instead of stairs. The inside of such
buildings are level, avoiding the need for stairs and ramps. Toilets and
latrines are wide enough that a person in a wheel chair can turn around.
5. The use of Assistive
Technology: The 21st century is marked by the fast progress in
assistive technology devices and services, that is evident among the
ever-increasing populations of people with disabilities. These
technological advances have changed the quality of life for many individuals,
helping them to be independent and productive. Assistive technology made
it possible for many people with communication, physical, learning and sensory
disabilities to gain more control over their lives and environment. There are literally
hundreds of assistive technology products. These products have been designed to
collectively meet the needs of individuals across a wide-range of
disabilities—blindness, learning difficulties, etc. as well as temporary or
permanent problems. These
devices vary from computers to speech synthesizers. Others may be less technologically
sophisticated. Simple accommodations such as large print books,
preferential seating, or modified desks, can be sufficient for many individuals
with severe disabilities to be successfully included. The use of such devices
is well discussed (Golden, 1998; Todis & Walker, 1993). Simply put,
if you get children with disabilities on technology as early as possible, they
will be able to influence their environment and explore their surroundings,
otherwise they will become quite content with doing the minimum themselves and
expecting the maximum from others. Inclusive schools through the use of
Assistive Technologies come up with methodologies and strategies to
minimize the effect of the student’s disabilities and help children
with disabilities develop a solid foundation in basic skills at lower grades
and scientific, analytical and communicative skills at higher levels. In
inclusive schools, most educators do realize that the absence of assistive
technology devices have a profound, limiting effect on the life of
children with disabilities
6. New Forms of
Accountability: As in the traditional way, inclusive schools do not
totally depend on standardized tests to determine if students are progressing.
In fact, standardized tests are coming under fire from different angles.
Many contemporary educational leaders and researchers are blaming standardized
tests for:
Encouraging the
accumulation and recall of fragmented and decontextualized facts and skills.
Stifling teachers from
enriching the curriculum by making them focus on the information, forms and
formats required in the tests.
Reinforcing bias in terms
of gender, race, ethnicity and social class.
Instead,
inclusive schools practice new alternative assessments such as curriculum-based
assessment and portfolio assessment that yield meaningful information to
parents, teachers, and students. These new professionals are coming
together to develop new assessment instruments and/or accommodations to go
along with taking standardized tests. These make sense, since the pace,
style, language and circumstances of learning will never be uniform for
all. Sound practices of full inclusion, always advocate for diverse
formal or less formal approaches as long as they ensure sound learning and
confer equivalent status.
7. Student –Focused:
Inclusive schools are student -focused (person oriented) while traditional
schools are deficit driven. The traditional schools always forget the
person with disability as a person and focus on the child’s disability by saying
he/she is autistic; or put emphasis on the person’s deficit by saying “he/she
functions at a 12 month level. To the contrary, inclusive
schools use person-centered planning approaches that encourage teachers and
other service providers to plan learning activities around the individual’s
gifts and capacities instead of his /her disabilities or deficits. The
whole idea of the person-centered approach is designed to encourage teachers to
build classroom activities that are individualized and responsive to the
individual’s personal needs, experiences, and interests.
8. Continuing
Professional Development: In most inclusive schools, the
administration and staff take staff development very seriously. In most
cases, there are committees to determine and design professional development
activities that focus on knowledge and skills that they can use to teach all
students.
9. A Sense of Community:
A well designed inclusive school is distinguished by valuing and supporting all
children and adults and accepting them to participate fully. In such
schools differences are looked at as sources of knowledge and strength from
which to build.
10. High standards:
In an inclusive school, all students are supported in the achievement of valued
outcomes. In such schools curriculum for students with disabilities is
not watered down, neither students with disabilities are assigned to a separate
set of standards. If necessary, however, students with disabilities can receive
individualized accommodations to reach the same high standards.
11. Partnership with
Parents: Families have a major contribution to make to children’s
education. This could only happen when educators understand that parents
of children with disabilities are experts in their own right. If there is
anyone who knows the most about a child with a disability, it is the parent
(s). As a result, in inclusive schools, parents must be accepted and
recognized as partners and brought into the school through various means:
committees, volunteers, and guest lecturers. Building effective
partnership between schools and families must be preceded by the following:
Schools must understand and
acknowledge children’s right as it is outlined in the UN Convention on the
Right of the Child. This involves recognition of the entitlement to a
home, family and membership of the local community as basic rights of the
child. This right allows children to live with their parents while they
are receiving proper education. Taking them away from their families and
communities in order to receive proper education is unwarranted.
Similarly, it is important
that the schools and the community at large understand that the right to having
a family is only meaningful if the child is fully included in the family.
If the ultimate goal is for children with disabilities to be included in
society, it is necessary that this begins within their own family. In
some cultures, when families of children with disabilities realize that their
child is different, it might create a strenuous relationship. In such a
situation, inclusive schools have a role to play by encouraging open
communication between the family and other families and/or between the family
and the school in order to relieve stress, rebuild hope, and enable the child
to experience family life.
Children can do well in
school if learning and development is reinforced at home. When parents
and teachers work together, children will learn more. Inclusive schools
by design are meant to support the child’s learning and development at home, by
offering parents appropriate learning experiences to help their children learn
and grow.
Parents have a wealth of
information about the disability of their child; how their child is developing,
and what would be their educational needs. It is very difficult for
teachers and school administrators to acquire this sort of information.
Such information could be made available for educators only and if the school
develops a cooperative working relationship between the school and
families. One of the main responsibilities of inclusive schools is to do
just that.
Inclusive schools are
supposed to make sure that parents have a right to be involved in the decisions
that are made about their children. The era whereby experts come together
and make decisions that affect the lives of children and their parents is
gone. This new era of inclusion encourages parents to be present in
meetings at school or local and/or state offices of education where the status
of their children will be discussed. Inclusive schools do not require the
presence of parents only; but also prepares them to play a meaningful role by
inviting them to attend educational seminars and workshops to develop
leadership skills.
12. Leadership at the
micro and macro level: There is no question about it, from top to
bottom; the leadership must support inclusion for it to be successful. When the
leadership at the building level is supportive of inclusion, they will sell the
concept of inclusion to their faculty and staff. The Principal in inclusive schools
must play a crucial role by supporting teachers’ effort to collaborate, and
encourage them to experiment and try new ideas. Principals in inclusive
schools should strive to achieve the following:
Accessible schools:
It doesn’t require a fortune to make schools accessible. Fortunately in
most developing countries, schools are built as a one story building, and it
might not take that much to have wide doors and open corridors.
Educational leaders should always be mindful of the fact that it is easier to
make schools accessible when you first build them rather than to fix them at a
later date.
Collaborative teaching
arrangements - teachers working together not only create more energy around
problem-solving and effective strategies, but they also model people skills for
students. Principals in inclusive schools always emphasize and reward the
spirit of working together.
Flexible school structures
- schools need physical arrangements that are adaptable to a variety of student
needs as well as instructional approaches. One of the new things that teachers
of inclusive education should consider is what is coming to be known as “Block
Scheduling”, especially, when a school is made up of buildings that are apart.
It might be difficult for children with mobility disability to move faster from
one class to the other on time. Therefore, scheduling classes for a
longer period and in the same classroom might be helpful. Block
scheduling is a new concept being practiced in the United States schools.
It might have some relevance with inclusive schools.
Performance-based and
alternative assessments - there are many ways to demonstrate learning, and
student performance expectations should be as individualized as their
instruction.
Cooperative teaching and learning approach
One of the best and the
most effective technique is what have been advocated for years in regular
classrooms as the cooperative teaching and learning approach. Here the
special educator, the speech therapist, the psychologist and other support
personnel co-teach alongside the general education teacher. This does not
necessarily mean that every lesson, every unit throughout the year must be
taught in collaboration with the other members of the support staff. It only
means that these individuals work with the regular education teacher whenever
it is necessary. The regular education teacher is in charge of his/her
class; and all of the above mentioned specialists are there to assist.
Sometimes they could come to the classrooms and teach a lesson, or make a
presentation. Other times, they can take anyone of the students who need
special assistance and work with that student separately.
In this model, students
could be divided into small groups. The group is very heterogeneous and
is based on anything else but ability. Students could be grouped based on
their interest and work together to achieve group goals. One of the
responsibilities emphasized for such a working group is that the group is
responsible to demonstrate that all members have learned something. The
teacher must make it clear to all members of the group that it is important
that all members understand the concepts and master the skills to be acquired
from the group activity. All members of the group are made aware that
they are responsible to assist other members to ascertain their knowledge of
the same content. This approach is recommended highly for inclusive
classrooms since children with disabilities are included as members of the
group without much difficulty.
One method of teaching that
is particularly associated with the cooperative teaching and learning approach
is “Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (STAD) method devised by Salvin and his
associates at John Hopkins University. Here students are assigned to four
or five member groups. Once these assignments are made, a four step cycle
is initiated: teach, team study, test and recognition. Teaching is done
in different ways, including the lecture-discussion method. Once the
teacher covers the different materials, group members are instructed to study
together. Teacher made worksheets and answer sheets are distributed to
help them study better. During the study period, students are told that
they will have to support one another because the group goal can be achieved
only if each member learns the materials being taught. They are told that
the teams are not in competition with one another. After the study
period each student is tested individually and a score for each group is
tallied. Based on the score each group receives certificates that read
“GOOD TEAM”, “GREAT TEAM”, “SUPER TEAM” are issued to each group.
Co-teaching
Co-teaching is defined as
two educational professionals delivering substantive instruction to a group of
heterogeneous students with diverse learning needs. This collaborative
approach allows all students including those with disabilities to remain in the
general education classrooms. Current educational research shows that
co-teaching is an appropriate instructional approach to be used in inclusive
classrooms and can improve educational programs, and reduces stigmatization for
students if planned properly and given the necessary support (Focus on
Exceptional Children. Vol. 28 (3), 1995).
A co-teaching relationship
may consist of some combination of a general education teacher, special
education teacher, and/ or support staff. The most common team of
educators found in co-teaching relationships may include the following:
-
Special education teacher and General education teacher
-
Two general education teachers teaching the same subject vertically or
horizontally or teaching different subjects.
-
A paraprofessional and a general education teacher or a special education
teacher
-
A regular education teacher or a special education teacher and a school
counsellor or a school psychologist.
-
A regular education teacher or a special education teacher and a speech and
hearing specialist.
-
A regular education teacher or a special education teacher and a parent.
It is very possible that
any on of the above mentioned combinations can be successful in delivering
effective instruction provided they are given enough time to know each other
and be able to cultivate a collaborative relationship and prepare good lessons
together. Deliberate and ongoing communication among everyone
involved is essential (Cook and Friend 2003) Above all co-teaching will only be
successful if it is given support at the micro, mezzo and macro levels of
the school system administration.
In his article,
Co-teaching: An Effective Approach for Inclusive Education, Donni Stickney
(2003) writes that co-teaching can use a variety of techniques depending on the
students and the content they are teaching. A few techniques cited by Stickney
are as follows:
Interactive Teaching:
Here a general education teacher and a special education teacher teach a lesson
together. One of them introduces the lesson and teaches the main concepts
and /or skills while the other teacher directs the guide practice or what is
called the “sit work”. In such an approach teachers can alternate roles
of presenting, reviewing, and monitoring instruction at any time.
Station Teaching: Here you
divide the students into small groups and allow them to rotate from one station
to another. Each teacher would take a small group while another group of
students is using the classroom computer to research a topic. During the
course of the week, all students work at each task/station.
Parallel teaching: This
technique requires that students are divided into two small mixed ability
groups. One of the co-teaching partner works with a small group of
students while the other co-teaching partner works with another smaller
group. Both groups are taught the same content by two different teachers.
Alternative Teaching:
Here a specialist works with a small group of students on an enrichment project
or a special topic. This small group might be working in an area of
interest or an area where special assistance is required. While the
specialist works with the small group, the general education teacher will work
with the remainder of the students.
Consultant Model: The
consultant model allows the special education teacher to pull-out the students
with special needs and work with them separately as a group or one by one, but
also co-teaches within the general education classroom several hours a week.
Integrated teaching approach
For many years many
teachers have succeeded in teaching different subjects as separate
entities. Many teachers failed to realize that History and Geography;
Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics have a lot in common and cannot be taught in
watertight compartments. The integrated teaching approach brings this to
an end. Integrated teaching is defined as organization of teaching
matter to interrelate or unify subjects frequently taught in separate academic
courses or departments (Joglekar, S., Bhuiyan, P.S., and Kishore,
S.1994). Shoemaker, B. (1989) defines it as an approach that cuts across
subject-matter lines bringing together various aspects of the curriculum into
meaningful association. However, it is Krogh’s (1990) explanation that
make it very relevant to be used in inclusive classrooms when he wrote that
this approach allows children to learn in a way that is most natural to
them. Teachers can teach units made up of themes of interest to the
children. Such units are designed to be relevant, meaningful and flexible
in its application; taking into consideration the diverse learning styles of
the students. Another approach suggested by Lillian Katz and Sylvia
Chard (1989), is called the Project Approach. Here students are asked to
select a topic of interest, researching and studying it by forwarding
hypothesis, collecting data and suggesting solutions to problems.
The integrated approach can
be used horizontally which means that two or more teachers teaching the same
subject or different subjects but at the same grade come together and plan a
unit. For example, an English teacher and a History teacher in grade four
comes together and they plan a unit. It could also be used vertically
whereby teachers in two different grades come together to plan and teach a
unit. A Biology teacher (agriculture) and a Physical Education teacher could
come together and plan such a unit. This approach might be more
appropriate at higher educational levels.
The integrated teaching
approach can enhance teaching and learning in inclusive classrooms if is
applied properly. Its proper application would require the creation of an
environment that encourages active involvement of all students. In
addition all topics and themes chosen must help students relate to real life
experiences and be able to transfer such knowledge and apply it in real life.
Conclusion
World leaders reached a
consensus to cut poverty in the world in half over the next 10 years. They have
also agreed that all boys and girls born in 2005 be able to complete primary
schooling by the year 2015. These goals are noble and timely; but in order
to make them a reality we have to include all children –including those with
disabilities. You cannot cut poverty while you eliminate the economic
contributions of people with disabilities.
One of the many steps that
have to be taken to achieve the MDG and EFA goals is that all participating
nations must come up with explicit educational policies that foster the
inclusion of pupil with disabilities. When inclusive schools are created
and pupil with disabilities are welcomed and valued, research has demonstrated
that all students, those who have special needs as well as those considered as
typical, benefit. Pupil with disabilities will develop better socially and
intellectually, and those without disabilities will become more familiar with
the problems that children with disabilities face which would make them more
sensitive to the needs of people with disabilities.
When pupils with
disabilities are included in the regular classroom in an increasing number, teachers
will be forced to come up with lessons that are tailored to the need of a
diverse student population. There are some general education teachers who
believe that they are neither trained nor experienced to teach children with
disabilities. This is not true. Cannon, G. (1992) conducted a
study on teachers and found out those teachers in general and special education
agreed on 82% of essential teaching practices for effective instruction of
children with disabilities. In other words, the teaching methods that are
used by special education and general education teachers to teach children with
disabilities are the same. Consequently, any teacher of inclusive
classrooms who would care to use the teaching techniques discussed in this
manuscript with little adjustment will yield good results. Their success in
becoming successful teachers of inclusive classrooms could also be facilitated
if they can use technology to individualize instruction and expose their
students to adopting assistive technology devices and services...
References and/or complementary bibliography
Ashton, B. (1999).
Promoting the Rights of Disabled Children
Cannon, G, (1992).
Educating students with mild handicaps in general classrooms: Essential
teaching practices for general and special educators. Journal of
learning disabilities, 25 (5) 300-317
Coulibaly, Diarata.
My Life is a Succession of Battles to Survive. Available from:
http://portal.unesco.org/education/ev.php-URL_8137&url_DO=DO_TOPIC&U
Elwan, Ann. Poverty
and Disability: A Survey of the Literature - Social Protection Discussion
Paper Series. No. 9932. World Bank, Washington DC: December 1999.
Erb, S., &
Harris-White, B. (2001). The Economic Impact and Developmental
Implications of Disability and Incapacity in Adulthood; A Village Study
from S. India. Paper to the Workshop Welfare, Demography and Development,
September 11-12, Downing College, Cambridge
Ferguson,D.L. (1996).
Is it Inclusion yet? Bursting the Bubbles. In M.S. Berres, D.L.Ferguson,
and Reewal (PP. 16-37). New York: Teachers College Press.
Friend, M., & Cook, L.
(2003). Interactions:
Collaboration Skills for School Professionals (4th ed.). Boston:
Allyn and Baco
Golden, D. (1998).
“Assistive Technology in Special Education: Policy and Practice”. Council
of Administrators of Special Education. Inc., Albuquerque, N.M.
Hegarty, S.
(1998). Review of the Present Situation in Special Education. Paris:
UNESCO.
Hunt.P. (Ed.) (1966).
Stigma, the Experience of Disability. London: Deoffrey Chapman
Joglekar S., Bhuiyan P.S.,
and Kishore, S, .Integrated Teaching –Our Experience. J. Postgard
Med. 1994, 40: 231-2
Katz, L., and Chad, S.
(1989). Engaging Children’s Minds: The Project Approach
Scholastic.
Krogh, S. (1990). The
Integrated Early Childhood Curriculum. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Okidi,J.A.,and Mugambe,G.K.
(2002). An Overview of Chronic Poverty and Development Policy in
Uganda. Chronic Poverty Research Center, Working Paper 11.
Rajani, R., Bangser, M.,
Lund-Sorensen, U., Leach, V. (2001). Situation Analysis of Children
in Tanzania
Shoemaker, B.
“Integrated Education: A Curriculum for the Twenty-First Century.” Oregon
School Study Council 33/2 (1989).
Smelter, R.W., Rasch, B.W.,
& Yudewitz, G. J. (1996). Thinking of Inclusion for all Special Needs
Students. Better think again. School Board Journal, January/February
Stickney, D.
Co-teaching: An Effective Approach for Inclusive Education. From TTAC
Link Lines, November/ December 2003.
http://www.wm.edu/ttac/articles/inclusion/coteaching.html
Todias, B. and Walker, H.M.
(1993). “User Perspectives on Assistive Technology in Educational
Settings.” Focus on Exceptional Children, 26 (3), 2-16
Wolery, M., & J. Wilbers,
eds. (1994). Including Children with Special Needs in Preschool Programs: Results
and Implications for Practice. Washington, D.C.: National
Association for the Education of Young Children.Wolery, R.A., & S.L. Odom.
2000. Administrator’s Guide to Preschool Inclusion. University of North
Carolina: Early Childhood Research Institute on Inclusion.
Does Block Scheduling
Decrease Instructional Time?
A Look
at St. Croix’s Five Public Secondary Schools
using Four Block Schedule Types
University of
the Virgin Islands, USA
In 1994, the National
Commission on Time and Learning issued a report declaring that the future of education
was dependent on the effective use of school time. No one, of course,
questioned that. However, they further proposed the idea that block
scheduling be used as a means of promoting increased student learning.
Block scheduling is defined as a restructuring of the school day into classes
that involve longer class periods than the traditional fifty-minute ones (Adams
& Salvaterra, 1997).
In 2000, a mere six years
after the provocative report, Walker found that more than 40 percent of all
secondary schools in the U.S. had adopted some form of block scheduling. In the
United States Virgin Islands, block scheduling was implemented in the 1998-99
school year at all five secondary public schools on St. Croix, and just like
the rest of the nation, a variety of models were used.
Models in the Literature
DiBiase & Queen (1999)
define the 4X4 model as containing classes that are taught for 90 minutes each
day with four classes completed each semester. It is called a 4X4 block because
students take four classes per semester and they have four classes daily.
Rikard & Banville
(2005) define the AB format as a structure in which students attend classes for
approximately 95 minutes on alternate days for one academic year. Queen (2000)
called this a two-day rotating system and indicated that students complete
eight classes over the course of the academic year. With this model, students
attend four classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the first week, and
have four different classes on Tuesday and Thursday of the first week and
Monday of the next week.
The modified block schedule
is another type described by Queen (2000). In a modified block, there are two
or three 90-minute blocks (usually two days a week) as well as some split
45-minute classes (usually the other three days of the week). Using this
method, classes are scheduled in various combinations. Some schools also use a
modified block with four days in the block. In this model, students have
classes on Monday and Wednesday, a different set of classes on Tuesday and
Thursday, and all classes on Friday. The National Middle School Association
(1996) described a rotating schedule as having classes that follow a master
schedule of all classes in a particular sequence with classes being held at
different times each day. In this scheme, a student might have math in the
morning on Mondays, near noon on Wednesdays, and in the afternoon on Fridays.
Some schools have adopted this rotating scheduling in a block schedule using
either a 5-day or 7-day rotating schedule, with each class being taught in a
block.
Models Used on St. Croix
Through interviews with the
principals and analysis of the bell schedules for the five secondary schools on
St. Croix, the researcher determined that the two high schools use almost
identical models, but the three junior high schools use models that are
different from the high schools and different from one another.
The first high school,
referred to as SCHOOL A, contains students in grades 9-12 and has a population
of approximately 1250 students. A second high school, SCHOOL B, also has
students in grades 9-12 and has a similar population of approximately 1250
students. Both use the 4X4 block.
All three junior high
schools contain students in grades 7 and 8. The first of the three junior high
schools, SCHOOL C, with approximately 600 students, uses a two-day per week
modified block. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays, students attend six classes
per day. On Wednesdays, the students have three classes (the classes they had
in the morning on the non-block days). On Thursdays, the students have the
remaining three classes (the classes they had in the afternoon on the non-block
days). SCHOOL D, another junior high with approximately 400 students, also uses
a modified two-day block. However, it is very different from SCHOOL C’s
schedule. On Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, students have six classes
following a traditional schedule. On Tuesday and Wednesday, three courses have
75-minute blocks and the other three meet for 40 minutes. SCHOOL E, with a
student population of approximately 600, uses a modified four-day block in
which students have three of their six classes on each of the block days, and
all six on Friday.
To sum up, the following
table indicates the various block schedule models.
|
BLOCK
SCHEDULING MODELS IN THE LITERATURE |
||
|
Model |
Brief Description |
St. Croix Usage |
|
4X4 Block |
Four classes per day every day for one
semester; four different classes in the second semester |
SCHOOL A SCHOOL B |
|
AB |
Four classes per day on one day with a
different four classes per day on the second day; these two days alternate
throughout a full school year |
NONE |
|
2-day Modified Block |
Fifty-minute class periods on three days per week;
longer block periods on the other two days |
SCHOOL C SCHOOL D |
|
4-day Modified Block |
Three classes per day on the block days on
alternating days; all six classes meet on one day per week |
SCHOOL E |
|
Rotating Block |
Four ninety-minute class periods per day; students take a variety of classes at various
times throughout the week on a rotating basis |
NONE |
Minutes Available for Instruction
The researcher looked at the
bell schedules for each of the five schools. An analysis for each of the
individual schools, as well as an aggregate table, follows.
SCHOOL A begins
classes at 7:55 a.m. and dismisses at 3:15 p.m. Thus, the school day includes
440 minutes for a total of 2200 minutes per week. This school follows a 4X4
block every day. It has a five-minute transition time between blocks and a
60-minute lunch. This breakdown is shown in the following table.
|
SCHOOL
A MINUTES FOR TRANSITIONS AND LUNCH (EVERY DAY) |
|||||
|
Classes convene |
Transition to Block 2 |
Transition to Lunch |
Lunch (including transition to Block 3) |
Transition to Block 4 |
Classes conclude |
|
7:55 a.m. |
9:30 a.m.- 9:35 a.m. |
11:05 a.m.-11:10 a.m. |
11:10 a.m.- 12:10 p.m. |
1:40 p.m.- 1:45 p.m. |
3:15 p.m. |
|
|
5 minutes |
5 minutes |
60 minutes |
5 minutes |
|
This means that 75 minutes
per day (for a total of 375 per week) are allowed for transition and lunch, and
that of the 2200 minutes of the school week, students spend 1825 minutes in
class.
SCHOOL B also begins
classes at 7:55 a.m. and dismisses at 3:15 p.m. with students in school 440
minutes a day and 2200 minutes per week. The school follows a 4X4 block that is
similar to SCHOOL A’s, shown in the following table.
|
SCHOOL
B MINUTES FOR TRANSITIONS AND LUNCH (EVERY DAY) |
|||||
|
Classes convene |
Transition to Block 2 |
Lunch (including transition from Block 2 to
lunch) |
Transition to Block 3 |
Transition to Block 4 |
Classes conclude |
|
7:55 a.m. |
9:30 a.m.- 9:35 a.m. |
11:05 a.m.- 12:05 p.m. |
12:05 p.m.- 12:10 p.m. |
1:40 p.m.- 1:45 p.m. |
3:15 p.m. |
|
|
5 minutes |
60 minutes |
5 minutes |
5 minutes |
|
SCHOOL C is a junior high that
begins classes at 7:45 a.m. and dismisses at 2:25 p.m. Thus, the school day
includes 400 minutes for a total of 2000 minutes per week. The school follows a
two-day modified block with a traditional schedule (with six classes) on
Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays, and a block schedule (with three classes) on
Wednesdays and Thursdays. It has three-minute transition times between classes
and 45 minutes for lunch. The breakdown follows.
|
SCHOOL
C MINUTES FOR TRANSITIONS AND LUNCH |
|||||||
|
Traditional
Schedule Days (Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays) |
|||||||
|
Classes convene |
Transition to Period 2 |
Transition to Period 3 |
Lunch (including transition from Per 3) |
Transition to Period 5 |
Transition to Period 6 |
Transition to Period 7 |
Classes conclude |
|
7:45 a.m. |
8:50 a.m.- 8:53 a.m. |
9:48 a.m.- 9:51 a.m. |
10:46 a.m.- 11:31 a.m. |
11:31 a.m.- 11:34 a.m. |
12:29 p.m.- 12:32 p.m. |
1:27 p.m.- 1:30 p.m. |
2:25 p.m. |
|
|
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
45 minutes |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
|
|
Block
Schedule Days (Wednesdays and Thursdays) |
|||||
|
Classes convene With 10-minute Home- room |
Transition to Block 1 |
Break and Transition to Block 2 |
Lunch (including transition from Block 2) |
Transition to Block 3 |
Classes conclude |
|
7:45 a.m.-7:55 a.m. |
7:55 a.m.- 8:00 a.m. |
9:45 a.m. -9:55 a.m. |
11:40 a.m.- 12:35 p.m. |
12:35 p.m.- 12:40 p.m. |
2:25 p.m. |
|
|
5 minutes |
10 minutes |
55 minutes |
5 minutes |
|
Sixty minutes per day are used
for transitions/lunch on the traditional days; 75 are used on the block days.
In a week’s time, 330 minutes are used for transition and lunch. Thus, of the
2000 minutes of the school week, students spend 1670 minutes in class.
SCHOOL D, the smallest of
the junior high schools, begins classes at 7:35 a.m. on Mondays, Thursdays, and
Fridays (traditional schedule days) and dismisses classes at 2:20 p.m. on those
days. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays (block schedule days), classes begin at 7:30
a.m. and are dismissed at 2:25. This means that the school week has a total of
2025 minutes. The breakdown is shown in the following table.
|
SCHOOL D MINUTES FOR TRANSITIONS AND LUNCH |
|||||||
|
Traditional Schedule Days (Mondays,
Thursdays, and Fridays) |
|||||||
|
Classes convene (Per 1 with homeroom) |
Transition to Period 2 |
Transition to Period 3 |
Transition to Period 4 |
Lunch (including transition from Per 4) |
Transition to Period 6 |
Transition to Period 7 |
Classes conclude |
|
7:35 a.m. |
8:35 a.m.- 8:38 a.m. |
9:33 a.m.- 9:36 a.m. |
10:31 a.m.- 10:34 a.m. |
11:29a.m.- 12:24 p.m. |
12:24 p.m.- 12:27p.m. |
1:22 p.m.- 1:25 p.m. |
2:20 p.m. |
|
|
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
55 minutes |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
|
|
Block Schedule Day (Tuesdays) |
|||||||
|
Classes convene (Per 1 w/no homeroom) |
Transition to Period 2 |
Transition to Period 3 |
Lunch (including transition from Per 3) |
Transition to Period 4 |
Transition to Period 6 |
Transition to Period 7 |
Classes conclude |
|
7:30 a.m. |
8:45 a.m.- 8:48 a.m. |
10:03 a.m.- 10:06 a.m. |
11:21 a.m.- 12:16 p.m. |
12:16p.m.- 12:19 p.m. |
12:59 p.m.- 1:02 p.m. |
1:42 p.m.- 1:45 p.m. |
2:25 p.m. |
|
|
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
55 minutes |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
|
|
Block Schedule Day (Wednesdays) |
|||||||
|
Classes convene (Per 4 w/no homeroom) |
Transition to Period 6 |
Transition to Period 7 |
Lunch (including transition from Per 7) |
Transition to Period 1 |
Transition to Period 2 |
Transition to Period 3 |
Classes conclude |
|
7:30 a.m. |
8:45 a.m.- 8:48 a.m. |
10:03 a.m.- 10:06 a.m. |
11:21 a.m.- 12:16 p.m. |
12:16p.m.- 12:19 p.m. |
12:59 p.m.- 1:02 p.m. |
1:42 p.m.- 1:45 p.m. |
2:25 p.m. |
|
|
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
55 minutes |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
|
Seventy minutes per day are
used for transitions/lunch, meaning 350 per week. Thus, of the 2025 minutes of
the school week, students spend 1675 minutes in class each week.
SCHOOL E, the other large junior
high, follows a four-day modified block. It begins classes at 7:50 a.m. and
dismisses classes at 2:25 p.m. on the four days of block scheduling (Mondays
through Thursdays with three classes per day). On Fridays, school starts five
minutes earlier and all six classes occur, meaning that the school day includes
395 minutes on the block days and 400 minutes on Friday for a weekly total of
1980.
On block days, the day
convenes with a 25-minute homeroom. There are three-minute transition times
between classes, a 15-minute morning break, and 75 minutes for lunch (with
three-minute transitions before and after). On Fridays, there is a six-minute
homeroom and a 54-minute lunch. The following table displays the breakdown.
|
SCHOOL E MINUTES FOR TRANSITIONS AND LUNCH |
||||||||||||||
|
Block Schedule Days (Mondays, Tuesdays,
Wednesdays, and Thursdays) |
||||||||||||||
|
Classes convene with 25-minute Home- room |
Transition to Block 1 |
Break and Transition to Block 2 |
Transition to Lunch |
Lunch |
Transition to Block 3 |
Classes conclude |
||||||||
|
7:50 a.m.-8:15 a.m. |
8:15 a.m.- 8:18 a.m. |
9:48 a.m.-10:09 a.m. |
11:39 a.m.- 11:42 p.m. |
11:42 a.m.- 12:57 p.m. |
12:57 p.m.- 1:00 p.m. |
2:25 p.m. |
||||||||
|
|
3 minutes |
21 minutes |
3 minutes |
75 minutes |
3 minutes |
|
||||||||
|
Traditional Schedule Day (Fridays) |
||||||||||||||
|
Classes convene with 6-minute Homeroom |
Transi-tion to Period 1 |
Transi-tion to Period 2 |
Transi-tion to Period 3 |
Transi-tion to Lunch |
Lunch |
Transi- tion to Period 5 |
Transi- tion to Period 6 |
Transi-tion to Period 7 |
Classes con-clude |
|||||
|
7:45 a.m. |
7:51 a.m.- 7:54 a.m. |
8:48 a.m.- 8:51 a.m. |
9:45 a.m.- 9:48 a.m. |
10:42 a.m.- 10:45 a.m. |
10:45 a.m. - 11:39 a.m. |
11:39 a.m.- 11:42 a.m. |
12:36 p.m.- 12:39 p.m. |
1:33 p.m.- 1:36 p.m. |
2:25 p.m. |
|||||
|
|
3 min |
3 min |
3 min |
3 min |
54 min |
3 min |
3 min |
3 min |
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The table shows that 105
minutes per day are used for transitions, a morning break, and lunch on the
block days, and 75 minutes per day are used for transitions and lunch on
Fridays. In a week’s time, 495 minutes are used for transitions, breaks, and
lunch. Thus, of the 1980 minutes of the school week, students spend 1485
minutes in class each week.
A compilation of the five
schools is shown in the table below.
|
TIME IN CLASS BASED ON BELL SCHEDULES |
|||||
|
School |
Opening Bell |
Closing Bell |
Total # of minutes per week |
# of minutes out of class (lunch/breaks/
transitions) |
# of minutes in class (time available for
instruction) |
|
SCHOOL A |
7:55 |
3:15 |
2200 |
375 |
1825 |
|
SCHOOL B |
7:55 |
3:15 |
2200 |
375 |
1825 |
|
SCHOOL C |
7:45 |
2:25 |
2000 |
330 |
1670 |
|
SCHOOL D |
7:35 (M,R,F) 7:30 (T, W) |
2:20 (M,R,F) 2:25 (T,W) |
2025 |
350 |
1675 |
|
SCHOOL E |
7:50 (M-R) 7:45 (F) |
2:25 (All days) |
1980 |
495 |
1485 |
The table shows that
students in the two high schools (SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B) are in class 83.0
percent of the school day. Likewise, SCHOOL C students are in class 83.5
percent of the school day and SCHOOL D students are in class 82.7 percent. In
contrast, the SCHOOL E students are in class only 75 percent of the school day.
This large difference is caused by the 75-minute lunch period (which, in
actuality, is 81 minutes with the before and after transitions) as well as the
21-minute morning break on the block days. SCHOOL E’s school day is also
shorter.
Comparison of Actual Schedules with
Hypothetical Traditional Schedules
The researcher also
compared the actual in-class time for each school with the amount of time that
would be spent in class if the schools converted to a traditional schedule and
kept the same number of minutes for transitions and lunch. Since the two high
schools do not have traditional schedules on any day, the researcher created
seven-class hypothetical ones keeping the transition times at five minutes and
the lunch (including one transition) at 60 minutes. They are shown below.
|
Hypothetical Traditional Schedules for the
Two High Schools |
||||||||
|
SCHOOL A |
||||||||
|
Classes convene |
Transition to Period 2 |
Transition to Period 3 |
Transition to Lunch |
Lunch (including transition to Period 5) |
Transition to Period 6 |
Transition to Period 7 |
Classes conclude |
|
|
7:55 a.m. |
5 minutes |
5 minutes |
5 minutes |
60 minutes |
5 minutes |
5 minutes |
3:15 p.m. |
|
|
440 minutes per day; 85 minutes per day for
transitions/lunch |
||||||||
|
2200 minutes per week – 425 minutes for
transitions/lunch = 1775 minutes in class per week |
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
SCHOOL B |
||||||||
|
Classes convene |
Transition to Period 2 |
Transition to Period 3 |
Lunch (including transition from Period 3 to
lunch) |
Transition to Period 5 |
Transition to Period 6 |
Transition to Period 7 |
Classes conclude |
|
|
7:55 a.m. |
5 minutes |
5 minutes |
60 minutes |
5 minutes |
5 minutes |
5 minutes |
3:15 p.m. |
|
|
440 minutes per day; 85 minutes for
transitions/lunch |
||||||||
|
2200 minutes per week – 425 minutes for
transitions/lunch = 1775 minutes in class per week |
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The table reveals that both
high schools would have 50 fewer minutes per week in class if they converted to
a traditional schedule, and students would complete seven, not eight, classes
during the year.
Because each of the three
junior high schools does use a traditional schedule at least one day per week,
the researcher did a comparison of the minutes per week spent in class if the
traditional schedule was followed all five days. That table follows.
|
TRADITIONAL SCHEDULES FOR THE JUNIOR HIGH
SCHOOLS (Stats done on Hypothetical 5-Day
Implementation) |
||||||||||
|
SCHOOL C |
||||||||||
|
Classes convene |
Transition to Period 2 |
Transition to Period 3 |
Lunch (including transition from Period 3) |
Transition to Period 5 |
Transition to Period 6 |
Transition to Period 7 |
Classes conclude |
|||
|
7:45 |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
45 minutes |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
2:25 p.m. |
|||
|
400 minutes per day; 60 minutes per day for transitions/lunch |
||||||||||
|
2000 minutes per week – 300 minutes for
transitions/lunch = 1700 minutes in class per week |
||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
|
SCHOOL D |
||||||||||
|
Classes convene (Period 1 includes homeroom) |
Transition to Period 2 |
Transition to Period 3 |
Transition to Period 4 |
Lunch (including transition from Period 4) |
Transition to Period 6 |
Transition to Period 7 |
Classes conclude |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
7:35 a.m. |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
55 minutes |
3 minutes |
3 minutes |
2:20 p.m. |
|||||||||
|
405 minutes per day; 70 minutes per day for
transitions/lunch |
||||||||||||||||
|
2025 minutes per week – 350 minutes for
transitions/lunch = 1675 minutes in class per week |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
SCHOOL E |
||||||||||||||||
|
Classes convene with 6-minute Homeroom |
Transi-tion to Period 1 |
Transi-tion to Period 2 |
Transi-tion to Period 3 |
Transi-tion to Lunch |
Lunch |
Transi- tion to Period 5 |
Transi- tion to Period 6 |
Transi-tion to Period 7 |
Classes con-clude |
|||||||
|
7:45 a.m. |
3 min |
3 min |
3 min |
3 min |
54 min |
3 min |
3 min |
3 min |
2:25 p.m. |
|||||||
|
400 minutes per day; 75 minutes per day for transitions/lunch |
||||||||||||||||
|
2000 minutes per week – 375 minutes for
transitions/lunch = 1625 minutes in class per week |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The table shows that the
number of minutes SCHOOL C students would be in class would increase from 1670
minutes per week (with the current block schedule) to 1700 minutes using a
totally traditional schedule. The number of in-class minutes for SCHOOL D would
remain exactly the same. At SCHOOL E, the number of in-class minutes would
increase from 1485 (using the current four-day block) to 1625 using a
traditional schedule.
According to Queen (2000),
block scheduling has been accused of reducing total instructional time. He,
however, disputes this claim because he feels that since block-scheduled
classes meet half as many times, the amount of time used for the housekeeping
activities (i.e. attendance, collection of homework, announcements) is reduced
by half. The researcher interviewed the principals of the five schools on St.
Croix for further insight. The principal of SCHOOL A stated that usually about
ten minutes was used for housekeeping duties (i.e. roll-taking, collecting
homework, passing out materials) at the beginning of each class period and
another five minutes was used for exit activities (i.e. assigning homework,
reminding students of ongoing projects, giving directions concerning upcoming
events). Using Queen's argument and the principal’s approximate time
suggestions, the researcher calculated the amount of probable
instruction time using the two schedules. Since homerooms can be either
housekeeping or instructional in nature, ones lasting less than 15 minutes (10
minutes for housekeeping; five minutes for exit duties) are counted only as
non-instructional time. Ones lasting more than 15 minutes are counted in the
same manner as other classes. The results are shown in the following table.
|
COMPARISON OF ESTIMATED AMOUNT OF
INSTRUCTIONAL TIME USING CURRENT SCHEDULES AND HYPOTHETICAL TRADITIONAL
SCHEUDLES |
|||||
|
|
SCHOOL A |
SCHOOL B |
SCHOOL C |
SCHOOL D |
SCHOOL E |
|
Number of Minutes of In-class Time Per Week Using Current Block Schedule |
1825 |
1825 |
1670 |
1675 |
1485 |
|
Number of Classes Per Week Using Current Block Schedule |
20 |
20 |
24 |
30 |
18 |
|
Approximate Number of Minutes Used for
Housekeeping/Exit Activities Per Week (15 minutes x number of classes) Using Current Block Schedule |
300 |
300 |
360 |
450 |
270 |
|
Calculated Number of Minutes of Actual
Instruction Time Per Week Using the Current Block Schedule |
1525 |
1525 |
1310 |
1225 |
1215 |
|
|
|||||
|
Number of Minutes of In-class Time Per Week Using Hypothetical Traditional Schedule |
1775 |
1775 |
1700 |
1675 |
1625 |
|
Number of Classes Per Week Using Hypothetical Traditional Schedule |
30 |
30 |
30 |
30 |
30 |
|
Approximate Number of Minutes Used for Housekeeping/Exit Activities Per Week (15 minutes x number of classes) Using Hypothetical Traditional Schedule |
450 |
450 |
450 |
450 |
450 |
|
Calculated
Number of Minutes of Actual Instruction Time Per Week Using Hypothetical
Traditional Schedule |
1325 |
1325 |
1250 |
1225 |
1175 |
The table reveals that in
four of the five schools, the amount of time that is estimated to be available
for actual instruction is greater in a block schedule. In the fifth school,
SCHOOL D, the amount of instructional time stays the same (because under the
current block system every class meets every day albeit for longer and shorter
periods on the block days).
There is more instructional
time available using the block schedule for four of the schools, and one school
would have exactly the same number of minutes. SCHOOLS A and B (the high
schools) would show the greatest decrease in instructional time if they
converted back to a traditional schedule. Using the block schedule, they have
200 extra minutes per week of probable instructional time. Using the
block schedule, one junior high, SCHOOL C, has 60 extra minutes per week and
SCHOOL E, the other large junior high, has 40 extra minutes. SCHOOL D, in which
students meet in every class every day, even on the block days, would have no
change.
Conclusion
Overall, the researcher has
to conclude that block scheduling increases, or in the one case, does not
decrease, the amount of time available for instruction in the five schools she
analyzed. With the 4X4 block, over three hours per week is gained. With the
four-day modified block, 40 minutes per week are gained. With one version of
the two-day modified block, 60 minutes are gained. With the other version of
the two-day modified block, no change was shown.
Thus, going back to the
claim of the original report of the National Commission on Time and Learning
(1994) that block scheduling was a means of promoting student learning, the
researcher concurs, but conditionally. It is the other declaration in that
report, concerning the effective use of instructional time, that obviously
promotes student learning. Block scheduling though does at least provide the
teacher with more minutes available for effective use.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Adams, D., &
Salvaterra, M. (1997). Structural and teacher changes: Necessities for successful
block scheduling. High School Journal, 81, 98-106.
Canady, R.L., & Rettig,
M.D. (1995). Block scheduling: A catalyst for change in high schools.
Princeton, NJ: Eye on Education.
DiBiase, W.J., & Queen,
A. (1999). Middle school social studies on the block. The Clearing House,
72, 377-384.
National Commission on Time
and Learning. (1994). Prisoners of time. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Education.
National Middle School
Association. (1996). NMSA research summary #2: Flexible scheduling. Waterfield,
OH.
Queen, J.A. (November
2000). Block scheduling revisited. Phi Delta Kappan, 214-222.
Rikard, G.L., &
Banville, D. (2005). High school physical education teacher perceptions of block
scheduling. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Walker, G. (2000). The
effect of block scheduling on mathematics achievement in high and low SES
secondary schools. Ph.D. dis., University of Kansas.
The concept of good
governance
as a practical guide in education for public administration
Linea Partners, Gouda, the Netherlands
BAZN,
Academy for Public Administration, the Netherlands
Open University, the Netherlands
r.paulussen@lineapartners.nl
Introduction
The concept of ‘good
governance’ is on the run. Recent global and national developments make the
concept nice to use, for example when we speak of the (changing or
disappearing) boundaries between the public and private sector, the integrity
of organization, politics and private sector companies. These developments make
it obvious that questions of accountability, integrity, control and steering
are relevant. More fundamentally, the concept of good governance seems to be an
ambitious answer to what Castells states when he writes about the negative
consequences of globalization.[45] Facing the disappearing of government control
and welfare state and the rise of global organized crime, good governance
implies an ambition to re-examine what values we think are important in our (local)
society and to translate them in the way we control and manage organizations in
the public and private sector.
Although challenging and
relevant, the concept is too diffuse and broad to use it in a more practical
and ambitious way. The aim of this article is to explore the concept of good
governance in a way we can use it as a practical guide in reforming public
sector and the political arena[46]. The focus of this article is therefore not
limited to the concept of good governance in developing countries, but it
reaches also the practice of governing in Western countries. Further on, we
will explore good governance by looking at two key elements, namely democracy
in practice and accountability.[47]
We will end this article
with a reflection on the meaning of good governance for educational programmes
in the science of public administration. The conclusions we shall draw will be
somewhat of a questionnaire kind: it will provide the focus for further
research and practical experiences.
Good governance and democracy
Democracy in practice: making concrete policy
choices leading to balancing arguments and political choice
On the global (political)
scale, ‘democracy’ sometimes seems to be a formal system of representatives
which is an export product that has to be sold throughout the world,
disregarding the possible advantages of other formal systems of governance.
When I use the concept of ‘democracy’ in relation to the concept of good governance
I mean the actual amount of influence that civilians and organizations have on
concrete policy choices leading to balancing arguments and political choice.[48] This definition has therefore not much to do
with the actual institutional and formal setting of governance. For instance,
you can have formally appointed representatives that spend a lot of time
discussion and gathering, but not in a way that leads to decision making.
|
Good governance in a democratic perspective: making clear
political choices based on contradictory interests in society Democracy in
practice has a lot to do with politicians knowing what happens in society and
translating this into political choices placed on the political agenda. ‘Knowing
what happens in society’ is not always the case when we look at concrete
political decision making processes. I remember a representative in a local
city council saying to me: ‘we don’t have to make political choices in our
city, everybody agrees on important issues like for instance youth policy and
zone planning’. My reaction was a question: ‘If that’s really the case, then
you could say we don’t need a city council, local politicians and debate.’
Further inquiries on the examples revealed many political choices and the
awareness on the part of the representative that until now it has not been
him who had made political decisions, but civil servants. After this
conversation he agreed on the argument that in the future civil servants
better suggest what political decisions can be made, based on a clear insight
of what happens in society (problems) and an overview of related
contradictory interests. Besides
knowing what contradictory interests there are in society, democracy in
practice has to lead to balancing arguments and interests. For instance, in
the state of California a system of direct democracy is introduced by
impeachment. This leads to many proposals that suggest further decrease of
tax rates and other proposals to increase the budget for public services and
policy. As a result of not making any political choice based on the scarcity
of means, the State of California is bankrupted. Although formally a
democratic system, the system in practice seems undemocratic: there is no
balancing and real decision making in the political arena. |
When we look at actual
democracies, we see that formally democratically constituted arenas are not
necessarily democratic in practice. It is the concrete decision making process
that we will have to study to say something about how democratic practice is.
Relevant questions are, for instance: Have groups of civilians that have an
interest in youth policy been heard? Was there a concrete question relating to
one or more recognizable societal problems at the heart of an open debate and
did the political arena really make a choice? Or were they satisfied with
saying, for instance, that ‘the youth are the future and they must be the
objective of the policies that we want our civil servants to work out’?
The relevance of looking at
democracy in practice for the concept of good governance is an argument against
those who argue exclusively in terms of ‘running government like businesses.’
Many policy objectives in the public sector are surrounded by conflicting
interests in society. This means that the quality of democratic practices,
debate, and decision-making take on great importance in regard to the concept
of good governance. Neglecting this perspective by, for instance, only looking
at internal checks and balances, managerial quality, or customer satisfaction
narrows our view of what is good and bad in governance concerning government.
The process of balancing arguments and the use of knowledge in political debate
are important measurements.
Good governance and accountability
Accountability in practice: internalizing
accountability in day-to-day work
Besides democracy in
practice, I will also pay some attention to ‘accountability’ as a key element
of good governance. Already with the introduction of New Public Management
(NPM), ever since the 80s, accountability has become an important phenomenon
and a central concept in reforming government. Most authors on good governance
use accountability as a central concept of governance; still, some remarks,
taken from important lessons learned by implementing elements of NPM, are now
in place.
Important to me seems the
lesson that accountability, by creating formal systems, procedures, and
organizational structures, has only a small effect. Controllers, managers, and
politicians in many governmental organizations have constructed an imposing
system that should ensure politicians and the public that employees in
governmental organizations are accountable for their efforts in formulating and
implementing policy; for instance, concerning the construction of planning and
control cycles, new organizational structures, and systems of time-writing by
civil servants. The constructers of these systems and structures and the
controllers of those systems have only partially reached more – and in many
cases even less – accountability in their organization.[49] Some important negative side effects of
reforming government with NPM in mind can be the cause. For instance, the
different worlds of, on the one hand, speaking/writing in terms of the formal
system of planning and control towards politicians and managers and, on the
other hand, of acting in terms of what should be done considering reality on
the work floor.[50] Another example is the single-sided attention
for quantitative measurements of policy objectives. In many cases, reaching
quantitative objectives does not contribute to a solution of what the public
originally thought as being a problem. Reaction of management tends to be
refining and examining the system, and again more efforts in controlling and
steering the organization by new additional rules, structures and procedures.
This results in an overload of formal instruments and rules that have no real
value for those who are supposed to be implementing policy, which leaves
managers surprised that again reorganization has not met its objectives.[51]
Many authors suggest
another approach that I – in the same line as when we spoke of democracy –
refer to as ‘accountability in practice.’ Instead of a single formal approach
to asking how accountability is embedded and carried out in an organization,
managers and researchers should look more to what actually happens in the
organization, how efforts to organize accountability fit the reality of the
work floor, and how ideas of accountability can be internalized by the members
of the organization.[52] This means that civil servants will consider
it an important value to be explicit about the quantitative and qualitative
objectives of policy. Stimulating the political arena to make political choices
(as described in the first section) also contributes to being explicit about
objectives because an important cause of the existence of vague policy
objectives is the absence of political choice. For instance, a policy objective
like ‘our local community must be a safe harbour for all civilians’ is vague
and there will not be disagreement in society or even in the political arena on
this ‘beautiful’ statement. Consequently, politicians and civil servants are
not accountable for its implementation. It would be better to choose between
different ideas and interests in society. Does a majority of representatives
choose for surveillance-cameras or does the majority feel that this will have
too much impact on privacy (‘big brother is watching you’)? These difficult
decisions render the policymakers accountable for their efforts.
The use of the normative framework in education
In table 1 I summarize the
indicators of good governance that we have described in the previous sections.
In this one, I will offer some reflections on the meaning of these indicators
for educational programmes for Public Administration. These reflections are
still very limited and superficial; further comments on this paper will be used
to work them out.
Good (government) governance
|
|
|
Characteristics |
Indicators / criteria
|
|
Democracy |
An actual amount of influence civilians / societal
organizations / ngo’s have on concrete policy choices |
|
|
Making actual political choices by balancing
arguments based on contradictionary interests in society |
|
|
Use of knowledge in political debate |
|
|
|
|
Accountability |
Formal systems of accountability more or less
fits the reality of the work floor |
|
|
Internalization of accountability by civil
servants and politicians |
Practice of analyzing the political dimension
in societal problems
Traditionally, educational
programmes relevant for Public Administration (such as law, economics,
environmental studies, etc.) concentrate on a law or cost-effectiveness
orientation. Professionalism is taught by working with students on analyzing
societal problems by following a certain discipline. For instance, considering
a new road, the engineer learns what the shortest route between A and B is and
the student in environmental studies calculates and chooses the route with the
lowest environmental costs. Those analyses are mainly the basic ingredients for
advice (do this, or do that). Our section on democracy in practice shows that
another orientation is needed. Instead of single-sided advice, good governance
includes civil servants that can reveal the political dimension within a
societal problem. What are the interests in society and what political choices
can be made? This perspective for the analysis of societal problems should be
an important ingredient in education for Public Administration.
|
Example:
tourism-tax in St. Maarten In the
classroom there were civil servants of different bureaus arguing how tourism
should be considered. Should there be taxes for each tourist visiting the
Island or not? Arguments were many: ‘it will harm our economy’, or ‘tourism
has also negative side effects for which we cannot pay’. We came to the
conclusion that the advice of civil servants to politicians on this matter
was contradictory and based on different views of different problems. The
lecturer asked questions about the precise interests present in society and
whether the overview was produced for political decision making before a
decision was made—which was not the case. Everyone
concluded that it should not be the debate between civil servants that should
lead to a certain decision, but the debate between politicians based on the
overview mentioned. And the challenge for civil servants should be to
facilitate the decision making process so that politicians be able to use as
much relevant knowledge as possible for carefully balancing different
interests in society. For most civil servants this was a complete new
orientation on their day-to-day practice in advising the political arena. |
Involvement of politicians
Educational programs aiming
at better advice towards the political arena have more success when
participants are able to see the other point of view, namely that of
politicians. In many educational programmes, politicians and civil servants
point their fingers to each other when they are explaining worst-practice in
political decision. Institutional boundaries within organizations stimulate
this practice of pointing fingers. Educational programmes where representatives
of the political arena are involved can break through this mechanism. Understanding
each other’s position can be the start of clear thinking about better
preparation for political decision-making.
Empowerment and professionalism of civil
servants
In many educational
programmes, civil servants tend to consider themselves as a victim of their
political leaders[53]. Despite their hard work and good arguments,
they will find that politicians do not follow their advice. In some cases, the
reaction of civil servants is advising exactly what a (political) decision-maker
wants to hear. Or worse: an attitude of waiting until the political arena gives
them a clear idea of what their advice should be.
In educational programmes,
we must pay attention to the professionalism of the advisor: he or she has a
fundamentally different role from the (political) decision-maker. Deciding not
to follow a piece of advice is as legitimate as deciding to follow it. And
taking the freedom to advise to do or not do something contrary to the
intention of a decision-maker contributes to good governance. This does not
harm the loyalty of a civil servant. Once a decision is made, civil servants
can show their loyalty by implementing a decision they would not have made.
Organizing criticism and ideas
Within the normal setting
of organization much remains unspoken of. Creating a ‘safe’ environment in the
education program (‘nothing you say can and will be used against you’) makes it
possible for people to critique the formal system of accountability and, at the
same time, develop ideas on how to change the formal system fitting the
individual rationality of participants in the programme. Where Aardema (2002)
suggests a participative method of doing research, working in educational
programmes for Public Administration are also good instruments for knowing what
really happens within the organization.
Remaining questions
In this paper I have tried
to bring out the relevance of a political orientation in civil servants, thus
making the concept of good governance a bit more practical. Therefore, I have
presented a normative framework which, if employed, —I believe— could
contribute to good governance.
Further research and
practical experiences are needed to find more relevant ingredients for educational
programmes for Public Administration. Until then, I think the next pertinent
questions are important:
· How
can we build a (better) bridge between participants having gained the knowledge
about the quality of decision making processes and a lack of knowledge seen in
the rest of the organization / political arena?
·
What specific features in educational programmes contribute to critical
thinking about the formal system of accountability among civil servants?
·
What specific features in educational programmes contribute to more creative
thinking about how to improve the formal system of accountability and the
day-to-day reality of (not) being accountable for concrete policy choices?
References and/or complementary bibliography
Aardema, H. (2002).
Bedrijfsmatige schijnbewegingen, over BBI, verstaffing en
waarde-interactionisme. Leusden.
Bossert, J. (2003). Public
Governance, Leidraad voor goed bestuur en management. Publication of
Universiteit Nijenrode.
Behn, R.D. (2001). Rethinking
Democratic Accountability. Brookings Institution Press.
Castells, M. (1997). The
Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume II: The Power of
Identity. Blackwell Publishers.
Farnetti, F. & T.
Bestebreur (2004). Accountability in local governments: trends, initiatives
and effects of the implementation of result-oriented accounting, Paper
presented at the Annual conference of the European Group of Public
Administration, Ljubljana, Slovenia 1-4 September.
Kluvers (2003).
Accountability for Performance in Local Government, Australian Journal of
Public Administration, 62, 1, pp. 57-69.
Pröpper, I.M.A.M. &
Paulussen, R.J.F. (2004). Dualisme is ingevoerd maar nog geen praktijk,
in: Openbaar bestuur (maart).
Pröpper, I.M.A.M.,
Paulussen, R.J.F. & Steenbeek, D. (2003). Dualisme: een kwestie van doen,
eindrapportage Project Duale Provincies. IPO-publicatie, Den Haag.
Wilson, J.Q. (1989). What
Government Agencies Do And Why They Do It. Basic Books.
Social and Emotional
Learning:
Is it
the missing piece in our schools?
Caribbean
Institute For Research and Professional Education, Ltd., Trinidad and Tobago.
joyfulplace@yahoo.com
Introduction
The education system in the
Caribbean is no exception in the global education reform trend. Rising violence
in the schools, decreasing motivation of students, delinquency, teacher
burn-out are all common issues. Like other parts of the world, the Caribbean
countries have been seeking solutions to these problems. These solutions have
included changes in the curriculum, improving pedagogical strategies, etc. One
piece that is still not receiving enough attention is Social and Emotional
Learning (SEL), or what Maurice Elias refers to as the “missing piece” in
educational change.
Education is no longer only
about the academics and cognitive skills. Social and Emotional Learning skills
are becoming as integral a part of education as cognitive skills. Teachers are
being asked to create safe environments for learning and to teach SEL skills.
However, in order to teach these skills and create this safe environment
teachers themselves must have been taught these skills, have had opportunities
to practise these skills and have a certain level of attention and emotional
well-being themselves.
The majority of teachers in
our classrooms have been out of school for more than fifteen years. As students
therefore they were not taught SEL skills. Emphasis in our education system was
heavily on the academic subjects and training for examinations, such as the
Common Entrance, (recently re-named the Secondary Entrance Assessment, SEA in
Trinidad and Tobago), School Leaving, G.C.E., CXC, CAPE. As the saying goes,
‘you can’t teach what you didn’t learn”. Therefore before the teacher enters
the classroom he should:
- Have had a comprehensive training
programme which includes learning these SEL skills to be taught.
- Have had opportunities to practice and
develop these skills to have the necessary competence to support the
student to develop these skills.
- Be able to demonstrate a capacity for
teaching these skills and creating the positive environment in the
classroom.
This paper looks at the
state of SEL in Trinidad and Tobago schools in two main areas a) the emotional
well-being and needs of teachers and its effect on their teaching, and b) their
preparedness for teaching SEL skills, with the aim of highlighting the need for
including SEL in our teaching training programmes.
The development of SEL
Paying attention to the
affective domain in education is not a new concept. What may be more recent is
the use of the terms Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Emotional Intelligence
and their importance in teaching and learning.
In the 1930s Robert
Thorndike wrote about “social intelligence”. He defined it as “the ability to
understand and manage men and women, boys and girls- to act wisely in human
relations”. (Kaufhold and Johnson, 2005). The concept of social intelligence
developed through many phases over the years- through the 1980s with Howard
Gardner’s interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences as part of his theory
of Multiple Intelligences. The term “emotional intelligence” was first
introduced in the 1990s by Mayer and Salovey. The concept was popularized in
Daniel Goleman’s book, “Emotional Intelligence. Why it matters more than IQ”,
published in 1995.
Along with this development
in the significance of emotional intelligence in the classroom came a greater
awareness of the concept of emotions and the role they play in teaching and
learning. Hargreaves (1998) states that “emotions are at the heart of
teaching”. And Slywester (1995. Quoted in Kovalik and Olsen, 1998) says
“emotion drives attention and attention drives learning and memory”. Several
reports emphasised the importance of SEL activities in the classroom. (Elias et
al, 1997, Payton et al ,2000, Sylwester,1994.). Frey (1999) makes a strong case
for SEL’s place in the classroom and presents research to substantiate the
following points:
- Attention, learning, memory and
decision-making capabilities are all intimately connected with emotions.
- Children with highly-developed social
skills perform better academically than their peers who lack such skills
(ability to interpret emotional cues, empathy, impulse control, ability to
regulate emotions).
- Students who believe that teachers support
and care about them are more emotionally engaged with their work.
Educational reform efforts
have since been heading in the direction of including SEL skills as a very
crucial part of the school curriculum. To date there are hundreds of effective
programmes designed to teach SEL skills at all levels in the classroom. The
Collaborative for the Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (www.casel.org)
conducted an extensive review of eighty available programmes in the US and
presents guidelines for choosing the most appropriate programme to suit
educational needs.
Teachers’ emotional needs
One of the challenges faced
by teachers in trying to incorporate SEL into their daily teaching is the
feeling of added responsibility and work load. Teachers are already suffering
from stress and burn out caused by several common factors. There is additional
pressure on teachers to cope with situations that previously were not a routine
part of a teacher’s daily life. In addition to the demands in increased
academic performance by students, there seems to be an increase in the need for
special education services in the general classroom. Teachers are also being
called upon to manage more and more behavioural issues in the school. Lack of
parental support and responsibility for addressing the ills in society add to
the burden of responsibility on teachers.
One hundred percent of the
teachers surveyed in this pilot study indicated that they felt stressed (mildly
or very) at some time. Only one teacher was not aware of his emotional needs.
The most common factors cited as causing stress in the classroom were
disruptive students and levels of indiscipline .High levels of noise, difficult
parents and unsupportive administrators also appear to be stress causing.
In addition to the stress at school, family responsibilities (household chores,
parenting, and maintaining marital harmony) were common additional stressors.
These stressors are having
serious effects on teachers including lack of motivation, absenteeism, illness,
aggressive behaviour. This was expressed in the following comments:
“ I am not able to prepare
my work to the standards I have set for myself as an educator which sometimes
leads to feelings of guilt”
“Sometimes I neglect to
plan lessons properly”.
“Sometimes I may unfairly
vent my frustration on my students”.
“It has caused me to become
seriously ill at times”.
“Often don’t feel to work;
feel demoralised and burnt out”.
The effects of the stress
are also experienced in their personal life:
“I do not have a personal
life that I enjoy”.
“I often feel sad, lonely
and alone”.
“It puts me in a rut”.
“That has been put on hold.
I can’t seem to find time to enjoy myself for a long time”.
How do teachers deal
with their stress? They talk with a friend (50%) or read books (50 %).
Twenty five percent said they had a programme in place but this was not
investigated further to determine the type of programmes, the effectiveness
etc.
There is the issue of
emotional well-being of teachers to be addressed before they are asked to
include SEL in their training and teaching. The issue is more than about stress
in the classroom-: it is about preparing the teacher for the emotional demands
in the classroom; how to respond to and cope with the emotional needs of the
students; how these demands affect the teacher’s own emotional well-being and
what is in place for teachers to maintain their own emotional well-being.
Teaching social and emotional skills
In order for SEL to be
effective in the classroom, the focus cannot only be on the student. The
teacher’s emotional well-being must also be taken into account. Weare (2002)
working on a project entitled ‘What works in relation to promoting children’s
social and emotional competence’ finds that “one of the strongest themes
emerging from our investigation is that it is not sensible to focus only on the
students themselves; work on emotional and social competence needs also to
focus on teachers and carers if it is to be successful”. She also reports that
“large scale reviews of research have consistently shown that approaches to
emotional and social competence which include staff development and education
are more likely to have an impact on pupil behaviour than those that focus only
on the students”.
The National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards (USA) recommend as one of the standards for
teaching competencies: “The teacher is an empathetic person who understands the
feelings of students and responds appropriately to those feelings”. (Olson
& Wyett, 2000). Training teachers for SEL is therefore necessary, since as
Olson & Wyett (2000) state, “it should not be taken for granted that
teachers have the affective competencies necessary for good teaching”.
Self-concept of students is
one of the priorities of SEL skills, so too should self-concept of teachers be
a priority. The increasing emotional demands on teachers and the resulting
stress are eroding the self-concept of teachers. LoVette (1997) proposes that
educational reform efforts should change the focus to the self-concept of
teachers, since “in order to build positive self-concept in others, one must
possess this attribute”. He also advocates for “teacher training institutions
to give special emphasis to preparing new teachers who can provide positive
learning environments for children, while focusing on the esteem needs of
future teachers”.
Teacher training has to
include not just how to teach SEL skills to students, but perhaps more
importantly pre-service and on-going programmes for teachers to develop and
maintain their own social and emotional well-being. Elias, in an interview with
the George Lucas Educational Foundation (2005) remarks that it is a “mystery
why it is not part of what teachers have to get before they go into the
classroom”. He contends that a major reason why teachers leave teaching is
because they don’t know how to manage the social and emotional needs of the
students. Elias et al. (1997) reported that administrators they had talked to
expressed a need for better pre-service training for teachers in the SEL.
According to the administrators, “most teachers have received neither
systematic training in these skills when they were students themselves nor
extensive training in these methods in their teacher preparation program”.
The results of this pilot
study indicate this need for training of our teachers. Eighty five percent
(85%) of the teachers have been teaching for more than ten years and fifty
percent (50%) have a Teachers’ Diploma. Yet only thirteen percent (13%) have
indicated some training in SEL- one had more than 30 contact hours, one less
than thirty contact hours, two attended 2-day workshops. Thirty three percent
(33%) said that they had learned about SEL by reading books.
Despite the lack of
training, sixty percent (60%) are teaching SEL in their classrooms, with fifty
percent (50%) incorporating it into their daily activities. One of the most
interesting results was that forty percent (40%) of those who are teaching SEL answered
that they had heard about SEL but were not sure what it means. Further, fifty
two percent (52%) of the respondents were confident of their competence in
teaching SEL. One said that she was very confident but had also answered that
she had heard about SEL but was not sure what it meant.
In the absence of
structured training as a teacher of SEL, the learning opportunities offered by
Life Skills and associated programmes can be an asset in teaching SEL. However,
only thirty six percent (36%) have attended Life Skills/ Morals and Ethics/
Health and Family Life classes in secondary school where they may have been
exposed to some aspects of SEL.
Conclusions and reccommendations
The progress of including
SEL in the classroom in many education systems and the results of this pilot
study lead to the following conclusions and implications for improving teacher
training in the Caribbean.
- The teachers in our education system
suffer appreciable levels of stress not only in the classroom, but also in
their personal lives and have not had the resources to deal adequately
with their own emotional needs.
- Teachers in our education system have not
been exposed to enough teaching in areas such as Life Skills, Morals and
Ethics, Health and Family Life in order to be able to teach these in the
classroom.
- Teachers’ understanding of the term SEL
and how to incorporate it into the curriculum and their daily teaching is
woefully inadequate. There is a danger of them thinking that they are
doing it without adequate training.
- There is an urgent need to examine the
teacher training programmes to ensure that SEL is fully included in the
programme. There needs to be a full semester course on SEL in addition to
a practical course of application. This must be followed by on-going professional
development through-out the teacher’s life.
- The development of teachers in SEL
training takes time, more than one year and on-going support and training.
There is a great learning curve to be accomplished. And we must be patient
as the effects of successful implementation of SEL in our schools may not
be completely obvious for another 5- 10 years.
Further research
Teacher training is an
on-going process. So too is educational reform. These must keep up with the
technological and other advances in the society. Research must be continuous to
provide awareness of how emotional stress affects teaching and how teachers are
dealing with their stress. There is additional work to be done to improve
teachers’ understanding of the connection between emotions and teaching, and to
ensure that Social and Emotional Learning is at all times effectively included
in the curriculum.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Elias, M.J. et
al. (1997). Promoting Social and Emotional learning. Guidelines for Educators.
ASCD Alexandria. Va.
Elias, M.J. et
al (1997). How to launch a Social and Emotional Learning Programme. Educational
Leadership. Vol. 54. pp.15-19
Frey, K.
(1999). Social and Emotional Learning: A foundation for academic success.
Committee for Children Prevention Update. 1-3.
George Lucas
Educational Foundation (2005). Maurice Elias on Emotional Intelligence and the
Family. An Interview. World Wide Web http://www.edutopia.org/php/interview.php?id=Art_701
Hargreaves, A.
(1998). The emotional practice of teaching. Teaching and Teacher
Education. Vol.14. pp.835-854.
Kaufhold, J.A.
& Johnson, L.R. (2005). The analysis of emotional intelligence skills and
potential problem areas of elementary educators. Education. Vol. 125.
pp.615-627.
Kovalik, S.
& Olson, K.D. (1998). How emotions run us, our Students, and our
classrooms. NASSP Bulletin. Vol. 82. pp.29-37.
LoVette, O.K.
(1997). To achieve social reform education leaders must focus on teacher self-concept.
Education. Vol. 118. pp.303-307.
Olson, C.O.
& Wyett. J.L. (2000). Teachers need affective competencies. Education.
Vol.120. pp.741-744.
Payton, J.W. et
al (2000). Social and Emotional learning: A framework for promoting mental
health and reducing risk behaviour in children and youth. Journal of School
health. Vol. 70. p.179.
Slywester, R.
(1994). How emotions affect learning. Educational leadership. Vol. 52.
pp.60-65.
Weare, K. (2002).
Don’t shoot the piano player: Why we need to do more to promote the mental
health and emotional and social competence of teachers. Health Education. Vol.
102. pp. 269-270.
Understanding Linguistic
Diversity in Caribbean Classrooms:
Ethnographic Methods for Teachers
Christopher
Newport University, USA
Children’s
intellectual development cannot be understood without reference to the social
milieu in which the children are embedded.
Turtle Haul, Old Bank, Panama
I. Introduction
Early in the morning, in the
pre-dawn darkness, you can hear the outboard motors starting up. Punctuated by
shouts and barking dogs and the occasional burst of laughter, the boats slowly
cross the cove. The sound of the motors fades as the boats head out and around
the point through the breaking waves and towards the open sea. When the boats
return they are running low in the water. The men tie up at docks around the
cove where they are met by groups of young boys and the same barking
dogs. The men heave the turtles up onto the dock and flip them over in
one fluid motion. Ropes are attached behind the turtles’ flapping fins
and the boys help the men drag them down the dock and through the yards to a
shady place where they can be butchered. As word gets out that the men
have returned, women and girls with buckets and basins make their way to the
mango tree where machetes are used to carve up the meat. A scale is hung
from a branch and the turtles’ innards are weighed out and sold. Soon,
the only thing that remains of the turtles are the shells and even these are
stripped clean by the dogs before getting tossed back into the sea.
II. What are Ethnographic Methods?
Duranti (1997: 84-85)
defines ethnographic methods as data-collection techniques and analytical
procedures utilized by anthropologists to document and describe the social
organization, symbolic and material resources, and interpretive practices
characteristic of a particular group of people. Such a description is typically
produced by prolonged and direct participation in the social life of a
community and implies two apparently contradictory qualities: (1) an ability to
step back and distance oneself from one’s own culturally biased reactions so as
to achieve an acceptable degree of ‘objectivity,’ and (2) the propensity to
achieve sufficient empathy for the members of the group in order to provide an
insider’s (‘emic’) perspective.
The cornerstone of
ethnography and the ethnographic method most relevant to the present discussion
is participant-observation. Participant-observation refers to a method
of data collection that requires researchers to participate in the activities
they are observing, to be with others and observe them at the same time.
Through community participant-observation, teachers can learn how to think ethnographically
- to suspend judgment so that they can 1. learn how to see learning in
the actions of participants, 2. acquire insider knowledge of teaching and
learning processes in linguistically diverse classrooms, and 3. act in
professionally competent ways.
III. What is Activity Theory?
Activity theory is a unit
of analysis that enables researchers to analyze and understand interactions,
relationships, and goal-driven action. Activity theory allows researchers
to systematically analyze children’s participation in various types of learning
activities.
According to Vygotsky
(1978), a child’s individual mental functioning develops through experience
with cultural tools in joint problem solving with more skilled partners. In
addition, cognitive development occurs during - and is situated within -
socioculturally organized activities in which children are active in learning
and in managing their social partners, and their partners are active in
structuring situations that provide children with access to observe and
participate in culturally valued skills and perspectives.
According to the apprenticeship
model (see Rogoff 1990), children should be viewed as active learners in a
community of people who support, challenge, and guide them as they increasingly
participate in skilled, valued socio-cultural activity.
The application of activity
theory to children’s language socialization experiences both outside of school
and in school suggests that some children are socialized outside of school to
participate in certain types of learning activities (e.g. apprenticeship
learning) using certain language varieties (e.g. Creole) and that the structure
of these activities and languages do not match up with school expectations
(e.g. rote learning in Spanish). This mismatch between home socialization
activities/language varieties and school socialization activities/language
varieties frequently results in failure for these students.
IV. How can educators use ethnographic methods
to understand the sociocultural context of language use and cognitive activity?
Old Bank is a Panamanian
village on the southwest coast of the island of Bastimentos in the Western
Caribbean Sea. The vast majority (perhaps 96 percent) of the approximately 950
residents of Old Bank are Creole English-speaking Afro-Panamanians of West
Indian descent. The official national language in Panama is Spanish, however,
and all schooling is conducted in Spanish as if it were the children’s first
language. Ethnographic observation suggests that the community is diglossic.
In other words, language use in the community is compartmentalized by
function/activity and the level of formality/informality of the various
activities (see Snow 2000).
Table 1. A comparison of
language varieties and activities
Activity/Domain
Language Variety
|
School
(formal) |
Spanish |
|
Government (formal) |
Spanish |
|
Literacy (formal) |
Spanish |
|
Community (informal) |
Creole English |
|
Home (informal) |
Creole English |
By observing activities
ethnographically, it becomes quite clear that in Old Bank children
participate in informal/Creole/apprenticeship-learning activities that are
valued by the community outside of school and in
formal/Spanish/rote-learning activities that are not valued by the community
in school.
V. How can educators apply ethnographic
understandings of language and learning to classroom activities?
In Old Bank, the
home/school mismatch between 1. the structure of learning activities and 2. the
language varieties used during learning activities is setting children up for
failure.
Teachers can employ
ethnographic observation to:
1. Observe learning activities and language varieties in school and
community
2. Interpret the meaning and value of activities /languages in the lives
of their students
3. Build bridges between communities and classrooms
The cognitive and social
benefits of thinking ethnographically include: improved enthusiasm and
motivation for schoolwork, increased parental involvement, improved self image
(especially for boys), and an increased diversity of opportunities for
displaying knowledge and skills.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Duranti, A. (1997). Linguistic
anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rogoff, B.
(1990). Apprenticeship in thinking. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Snow, P.
(2000). The case for diglossia on
the Panamanian island of Bastimentos. Journal of Pidgin and Creole
Languages, 15: 165-169.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind
in society: The development of higher psychological processes, ed. Cole, M., V.
John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Decolonizing the Educational
System on St. Martin,
or How to Teach Globalization
under the Flamboyant Tree
University of
St. Martin, Netherlands
Antilles
educonsult@caribserve.net
I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation.
Derek Walcott, The Schooner Flight
Introduction
Education has a dual
function. Throughout history its purpose has been, and still is today, to help
maintain the status quo. At the same time the liberating function of education
has been acknowledged by many. In her book “Teaching to Transgress:
Education as the Practice to Freedom” (1994), bell hooks speaks of what I
personally consider the ideal rationale for education: a liberating praxis that
encourages learners to challenge and change the world, instead of uncritically
adapt themselves to it. In one of the essays hooks mentions the emphasis placed
on education by black people “. . . as necessary for liberation in slavery .
. . “[54]
Though she is speaking about the United States the same applies to the
Caribbean. In the Pre-emancipation period many free coloureds as well as their
fellow enslaved Africans were looking for education as a means to improve their
lives and their status in society. The plantocracy, however, did everything
within their power to prevent the enslaved from receiving any kind of education
for fear of uprisings and the realisation “that reading provokes thinking
and this was dangerous in a slave society.”[55] Liberating the minds of the
oppressed by the plantation system would lead to subversion, destabilisation
and rebellion.
With the approach of Emancipation
many colonial administrations opted for the introduction of some form of
education. The British allowed the Moravians and the London Missionary Society
(LMS) to establish educational facilities throughout the Lesser Antilles and
Guiana since the end of the 18th century. Four years after the
abolition of slavery, in 1867, the Dutch introduced compulsory education in
Suriname. Deeming its other possessions in the Caribbean region
inconsequential, the compulsory aspect was never enforced in “Curaçao and its
dependencies”.[56]
The Netherlands itself had to wait until 1901 before compulsory education was
introduced there. This begs the question as to why the colonial powers deemed
it necessary to change their mind about the usefulness of education for the
former slave population. Once slavery was abolished it became essential to
control the ‘freed’ women and men with new methods. Where before, education had
been considered a threat to the plantation system, it was now considered a tool
– together with religion – for social stability. From now on racial inferiority
would no longer be “proven to the inferior with a whip, but with a textbook.”[57] Education became an intellectual
and ideological control mechanism aimed at educating people into dependency,
glorifying the superior status of white culture. It created “white wo(men) in
black skins”, or “black makamba’s” as they are called on St. Maarten and
“roasted breadfruit (black on the outside and white on the inside) in Jamaica.
This paper is an attempt to
address the legacy of colonial education on St. Maarten and how it continues to
influence – the educator and the educated – by holding “the soul prisoner” (as
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o calls the mind control of subjugated peoples). How has it
coloured our image of the world? Of ourselves? I say our, because this paper is
written from multiple perspectives and identities. As its author I will speak
with many different voices: as historian and researcher, as educator, as
insider, and as outsider.
After presenting a short
overview of schooling on St. Maarten, its legacy will be analysed in connection
to feelings of identity and belonging and I will conclude with some suggestions
on how to “emancipate from mental slavery”.
Schooling and education on St. Maarten
By 1841, the Methodist and
Catholic Church had established schools on the Windward Islands of St. Maarten,
St. Eustatius and Saba. The primary objective was to spread “Christian
civilization” and the Dutch language.[58]
In 1850, the first
government teacher was sent to St. Maarten. Five years later a private school
was opened by the widow Kolff and within a year she had more paying students
than the government school. After Emancipation three more government schools
were opened on 1 January 1864, in Cul de Sac, Princess Quarter and Simpson Bay.
In general school visit was irregular and the level of schooling was considered
“primitive” and “abominable”.[59]
Knowledge of the Dutch language was rudimentary and colonial officials visiting
the island often complained about the lack of it.[60] Being a small nation the Dutch had never
been interested in establishing colonial settlements. Their possessions
overseas were mainly geared towards trade. On St. Maarten this resulted in the
settlement of more British than Dutch nationals, and as a consequence the
language of communication was English for both the Dutch and French side. Until
1932, English was the language of instruction and Dutch was taught as a foreign
language from form four and up. From 1933 onwards Dutch language classes were
introduced in all forms and from the fourth form upward instruction would be
mainly in Dutch. In the fourth form new concepts would be introduced in English
followed by a Dutch translation. According to Hartog all students would receive
one hour of instruction daily in the English language. In all catholic schools
religious instruction would be in English only.[61]
Throughout the 19th
century the Catholics and Methodists had been vying with each others for
members. When St. Maarten came back under Dutch rule after the Napoleonic Era,
in 1816, many members of the Catholic Church had gone over to the Methodists.[62] The main reason might have been that the
Methodists had already established free education for the children of slaves
and the free coloureds. The 3R’s, reading, writing and arithmetic were taught
in English. This led to the strange situation that many young slaves could read
and write while the majority of white youngsters remained illiterate. According
to Hartog most of the Catholics flocked back after Emancipation, because
contrary to the practices of the Methodists and Anglicans the Catholics allowed
marriages between persons of “unequal skin colour.”[63] To counteract the growing
influence of the Methodists, the Catholic Church felt compelled to send its own
missionaries to the Windward Islands. This endeavour became very successful
with the arrival of the Dominican Sisters of Voorschoten in May 1890.
Today, at the elementary
education level, St. Maarten has five different institutions: Catholic,
Methodist, Seven Day Adventists, Christian Reformed and a public one. At
secondary level there are three mixed private/public institutions. The fact
that the organizational structure of education has been in the hands of both
private and public institutions has, according to a UNESCO report of 1976,
contributed to “extraordinarily complicated decision-making processes.”
The consequence of this situation has also been that “responsibility for
making decisions is divided in such a way that no body, governmental or
non-governmental, is fully responsible for any sort of school.”[64]
The legacy of colonial education
Analysing the history of
education on St. Maarten it becomes clear that the pattern of pillarisation (verzuiling),[65] which has been a feature of Dutch
culture and society throughout the first part of the 20th century,
has also become a part of St. Maarten’s educational praxis. Besides the
pillarisation of education the Netherlands Antilles has adapted an educational
system mirrored on the Dutch system. The combination of the two creates the
potentially dangerous situation of a future division into ‘clear-skinned/
good/Dutch/ private’ schools and ‘dark-skinned/bad/English/public’ schools,
which division can be witnessed increasingly today in the Netherlands. It needs
to be remarked here that the preference by many parents for Dutch language
education has its roots in the fact that their children are eligible for study
financing when studying in the Netherlands. Furthermore, Dutch tertiary
education is not that expensive – yet! – as in the United States.
In following the Dutch
educational system, the Netherlands Antilles have adopted streaming into
academic and vocational education at an early age. The current innovations in
education try to address the negative consequences of this phenomenon. However,
one wonders why Dutch development aid is made available for elementary and secondary
vocational education, but neither for secondary academic nor tertiary
education. Over the past eight years the number of students in secondary
vocational education has surpassed those in the academic section. Uncontrolled
immigration practices might be credited for this, yet again one speculates
about the dominant pedagogical practices. Since tourism is the main industry of
St. Maarten are we therefore educating this nation to be the best service
station in the world? Do we want ‘drawers of water and hewers of wood” or do we
want independent, critical thinkers, ready to challenge the colonial heritage
and determined to construct their own future?
Another problematic issue
that is part of the colonial legacy is the language question. As indicated before
the Dutch language has always been a language imposed from above by the
colonizer. The fact that a foreign language functioned and in certain
institutions still functions as the medium of instruction has its own problems
that have been studied extensively. Instruction in the mother tongue no longer
needs to be defended; however, the question for St. Maarten has now become
“whose mother tongue?” I do not want to elaborate here on the advantages
and disadvantages of Dutch versus English, or any other language, as language
of instruction. I want to look at language as a tool of empowerment or
disempowerment and its influence on the formation of identity.
Identity and belonging
In the introduction of
“Anti-Colonialism and Education: the Politics of Resistance” (2006) George Sefa
Dei asserts that: “Language is very important not only in the process of
identity formation, but also in the process of learning and for the
psychological, spiritual, mental, and cognitive development of the self.
Language is also very central when it comes to notions of exclusions. . .
. Language is the substantive technology through which social exclusion is
built around power and hegemony. It operates to silence certain histories,
experiences and identities.”[66]
Back in the 1960s Frantz
Fanon argued that “the mastery of language affords remarkable power.”[67] If one loses one’s language – or is not encouraged
to look upon it as a suitable means of communicating – then one looses a way of
life and one’s cultural identity. Much of the cultural, spiritual, and
intellectual life of a people is experienced through language. This ranges from
prayers, myths, ceremonies, poetry, oratory, and technical vocabulary, to
everyday greetings, leave-takings, conversational styles, humor, ways of
speaking to children, and unique terms for habits, behavior, and
emotions.
A recent publication by
Valdemar Marcha and Paul Verweel – supported by the University of the
Netherlands Antilles (UNA) – talks about the ‘culture of fear’ (de cultuur
van angst). The subtitle reads “paradoxical chains of fear and silence on
Curaçao.” In the introduction ‘culture of fear’ is explained as “lack of
self-confidence to function adequately” or “uncertainty about own performance
or identity”.[68]
Religion, the educational system and historic forces, such as slavery and
colonialism, are identified as the main sources for this fear. In their
conclusion the authors assert that the fear of not performing well depends on
the language that is being used. When speaking Papiamentu instead of Dutch,
Curaçaolaneans speak out more and dare to voice their opinions among each
other. When confronted with the Dutch, or forced to speak in Dutch they retreat
into silence.[69]
St. Maarten is more solidly
rooted and geographically situated in an English-speaking region. Contrary to
the Papiamentu language spoken on Curaçao both Dutch and English are originally
languages of the colonizer. Although the English on St. Maarten is creolized,
and today is still considered “bad or broken English” by many of its speakers,
I have never experienced the extent of the “silence and fear” as described by
Marcha and Verweel.[70]
However, a large percentage of all the persons on St. Maarten, in positions of
power and responsibility, have been shaped and fashioned in the image of the
colonizer. Although they are bi- and multilingual, their main analytical and
conceptual frames of reference are Eurocentric, which makes them subject to the
either/or complex. As a matter of fact most of us, trained and educated in
Western Europe or North America, are affected by this complex which creates a
world of binaries and falsely demarcated boundaries. Because of this, language
remains a tool of power. But also a tool of exclusion or “duality of existence”
as expressed by Austin Clarke in Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack.
One afternoon I
tried out my new language on my mother. She had just told me, “Boy, come and
drink this little warm chocolate-tea before it get cold. I put some flour drops
in it to help cloid you. Times still hard boy. The war on. But where there’s a
will, there’s a way, praise God.”
“I
would prefer a cuppa toy, Ma” I told her
“Boy, you gone mad?”
I
preferred a cuppa toy, for I was a Combermere boy, trained to be a snob,
coached to be discriminating. A cuppa toy was better than a cup of rich
chocolate. England drank toy, and little England should too.[71]
Globalization under the flamboyant tree or how
to de-colonize the mind
Various
scholars and writers[72] today are using the concept of
creolisation within a global context, meaning: a mutual exchange or cultural
interchange and adaptation. Creolisation in the Caribbean region can be traced
back to the 16th century when persons from the Americas, Europe and
Africa collided.[73] Out of this collision the plantation
society was born. A society that, according to C.L.R. James and Eric Williams,
had the most advanced industrial formations in the world at the onset of the
Industrial Revolution.[74] A society that was creolized, and thus
globalized, before the rest of the world took cognition of the concept and made
it their own (the www suggests Ulf Hannerz, a Swedish anthropologist, as the
inventor of the concept).
On the verge of
constitutional change, St. Maarten needs to realize that it is part of the
Caribbean region and as such privy to its legacy. We need to resist and
challenge the Eurocentric norms and formulate our own guiding principles for
education. We need to find authentic and viable solutions to our own problems.
Others do not know, nor understand, us better than we understand ourselves.
What is needed is a Caribbean Renaissance that will assist us in changing our
attitudes from dependency to self-dependence, from feelings of inferiority to
self-pride. We have to leave behind bad faith and false consciousness and
recognize the intellectual debt to those ancestors that sat under the
flamboyant tree.[75]
The Caribbean has a rich
history and culture; we only need to chant, dance, paint, rap, sculpt, sing,
weave, wrap and write it according to our own images and likeness.[76] Championing the flamboyant tree –
native to Madagascar – as a symbol of freedom and resistance, Lasana Sekou set
the tone in 1990 with National Symbols of St. Martin.[77] Since then many publications have
followed. They all need to be incorporated into our educational canon so that
the future citizens of St. Martin[78]
will develop a true self-knowledge that is grounded in its own historical context.
Only by knowing our own culture and history will we be able to recognize our
common humanity with all other persons. And only by recognizing our common
humanity will we be able to adopt a philosophy of universal inclusion or a new
global civilization.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Bacchus,
Kassion M. (1991). “Education in the Pre-emancipation Period (With Special
Reference to the Colonies who later became British Guiana)”, in: Barrow,
Christine & Rhoda Reddock, eds. Caribbean Sociology: Introductory
Reader. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2001.
Bor, W. van den (1981). Island
Adrift. The Social Organization of a small Caribbean Community: The Case of
St. Eustatius. The Hague, n.p.
Crane, Julia G. (1971). Educated
to Emigrate, the Social Organization of Saba. Assen: Van Gorcum &
Comp.N.V.
Fanon, Frantz (1952,
translated 1967). Black Skins, White Masks. New York: Grove Press.
George, Milton (2004). Trans-Planting
Catholic Education On Sint Maarten Soil. A research into The educational work
of the Dominican Sisters of Voorschoten on the Island of Sint Maarten, The
Dutch Antilles. Unpublished M.A. thesis at the Faculty of Psychology and
Educational Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
Hartog, Johan (1964). De
Bovenwindse Eilanden. Sint Maarten, Saba, Sint Eustatius. Aruba: De Wit
N.V.
hooks, bell (1994). Teaching
to Trangress. Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York:
Routledge.
Kempf, Arlo (2006).
“Anti-Colonial Historiography: Interrogating colonial education”, in: Sefa Dei,
G.J. & A.Kempf, eds. Anti-Colonial Education: The Politics of
Resistance. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Marcha, Valdemar & Paul
Verweel (2003). De cultuur van angst. Paradoxale ketenen van angst en
zwijgen op Curaçao. Amsterdam: B.V Uitgeverij SWP.
Menkman, W.R. (1942). De
Nederlanders in het Caribische Zeegebied, waarin vervat de Geschiedenis der
Nederlandsche Antillen. Amsterdam: P.N. van Kampen & Zoon N.V.
Richards, Dona (1979). “The
Ideology of European Dominance”, in: Présence Africaine, no.111, pp.3-18.
Sefa Dei, George J. (2006).
“Introduction: Mapping the terrain – Towards a new politics of Resistance”, in:
Sefa Dei, G.J. & A.Kempf, eds. Anti-Colonial Education: The Politics of
Resistance. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Sekou, Lasana, ed.(1990). National
Symbols of St. Martin. A Primer. House of Nehesi Publishers: Philipsburg,
St. Maarten.
Wa Thiong’o, Ngugi (1986). Decolonising
the mind. Heinemann.
Walcott, Derek (1986). “The
Schooner Flight”, in: Collected Poems 1948-84, New York: Farrar, Straus
& Giroux Inc., lines 40-43.
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Progressive Education: an
alternative or an illusion?
About the implementation of educational innovations in Belgium and elsewhere
(PowerPoint Presentation)
Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven-Kortrijk,
Belgium
Marc.Depaepe@kuleuven-kortrijk.be
See: http://ppw.kuleuven.be/histped/mdpubl.doc
Planning and Leading Change:
Creating a New Change Model for the implementation of a Teacher Education
Program on St. Maarten
University of
St. Martin, Netherlands
Antilles
usmdirector@sintmaarten.net
The Ministry of Education
of the Netherlands Antilles launched a new Teacher Education Program (TEP),
which will be adopted by the University of St. Martin (USM) and the University
of the Netherlands Antilles (UNA) in 2006. For many years teacher education
programs have been challenged by the lack of renewal and reform and yet it is
expected that teachers perform miracles in classrooms. This is no longer the
case for USM and UNA. Both universities have implemented new approaches to
teaching and learning. This innovation and reform is a major change in approach
to teaching for beginning teachers and teachers in the field who will be
certified.
In this paper, I will
design an innovative model for the implementation of the TEP, and describe the
challenges this change effort caused, the steps and strategies utilized in
dealing with the process, the implementation plan, an evaluation plan that will
sustain its effectiveness, and conclude with strategies for future successes
and implications of the change efforts.
Describing the change
In a document entitled Fundamentals
of Foundation Based Education, the Ministry of Education stated, “One of
the most important objectives of Foundation Based Education is to lay a
foundation for all Antillean children in education so that they can fully
participate in a modern Antillean, Caribbean, and global society. To achieve
this, a change process has been initiated which will eventually change the
traditional curriculum oriented education into a developmental, child-centered
education” (p.3).
Foundation Based Education
(FBE) is not a new idea, but it is a new approach in education for the
Netherlands Antilles. It is known as the three cycle process in education,
which has its roots in compulsory education, ensuring that children go to
school from 4-15 years and within that period they receive adequate education.
The first cycle is for children 4-8 years old, the second cycle is from 8-12
years, and the third cycle is from 12-15 years. This is also known as early
childhood, primary school and middle school in the United States. The Teacher
Education Program used to prepare Kindergarten teachers, Elementary school
teachers and Secondary school teachers. The Kindergarten teacher was prepared
for children ages 4-6, the elementary teacher dealt with 6-12 year olds and the
Secondary school teachers specialized in a particular subject area.
It is evident that in
the TEP new model there are some structural changes to be made. Teachers will
be trained to master two of the three cycles, or if they wish all three cycles.
This will allow them to be more flexible. In addition the old curriculum has
been changed and includes eight domains aimed at a broader and more integral
development of the child. It is the intention that not only the cognitive
areas, but also the emotional, physical, and cultural, artistic areas will be
developed. In the new system teachers play a vital and different role.
Upgrading the Teacher Education Program is the intervention that is going to be
made, in order to give teachers the preparation necessary to function competently
as Foundation Based Education teachers
Imposing change and meeting resistance
A few months ago the
government informed the universities that they needed to launch the TEP program
in August 2006. This caused an uproar, because of the unpreparedness of both
institutions, the University of the Netherlands Antilles and the University of
St. Martin. The most important reason for the concern was funding of the
project. Although there was funding available, the monies were not released so
that preparation for this innovation could take place prior to the announcement
that the TEP should start in August 2006. The preparation entailed so much,
which included sharing the vision and good communication plan, the building of
class rooms, the preparation of professors, the writing of the curriculum, the
recruitment of teachers, the hiring of staff. There were lots of loose
ends and much work needed to be done prior to the commencement of the program.
Of course there was resistance
from the staff, teachers and also the dean, as the quality of the TEP was at
stake as well. Resistance has been unavoidable and understandable. Although
everyone understands the need for change, it was an unexpected call from the
ministry of education to get the TEP started in August. According to Henry
(1997), “Resistance to change is not just inevitable, it’s a natural reaction
to unsettling changes in the status quo. Remember that everyone, even the most
forward thinking person, has some difficulty handling change. Because
resistance is natural, expect it and don’t be intimidated by it. Provide
clarity, time, support, and stability of a persistent message” (p. 149). Bolman
and Deal (1999) confirmed that “Changing invariably creates conflict… from a
political perspective, conflicts are natural” (p. 8). “Change is a part
of life…change has become synonymous with upheaval and chaos…it has become
critical for companies to understand how to better manage and cope with change”
(Szamosi and Duxbury, 2002, p. 1). So must the University of St. Martin collect
its energies to support a very much needed program for St. Maarten Teachers.
Getting the right people in the right places means finding leaders who can
energize the workforce and win some commitment to change (Stern, 2005).
Designing an innovative model for
implementing change
Models for practice, work
or activity have in their make up ideas, beliefs, knowledge and other less
tangible building blocks. A model provides direction for practice, work or
activity and forms the framework through which change may be managed and
evaluated. If a model is used to guide change, consistency in approach can be
achieved, with the model serving to direct, guide and make sense of the change
process (Pearson et al. 1996).
The innovative model for
the change process for the TEP is modeled after the five building components of
Carney’s Change management model to which one component is added. The principal
components of the model are: critical success factors for change; the
communication process; acceptance or resistance to change; the implementation
process, the evaluation process, and the integration of lessons learned.
Component I: Critical success factors of change
Critical success factors
are factors that must be in place before any successes can be guaranteed. The
success factors identified as critical are: commitment levels amongst managers
and staff involved in the change process: level of understanding of the need
for change demonstrated by the staff; use of professional judgment in decision
making throughout the process; level of understanding of the need for change
demonstrated by staff; identifiable communication skills, and the recognition
of the need for high quality outcome of the change. Sharing the vision is a
major part in the communication process.
It is during this
period that the leaders will try to persuade the constituents of the vision. It
is during this communication period that participants will be convinced to buy
in to the vision and the change idea will become part of those who choose to
become advocates of the change. The change leader and team will show their
passion for the change by modeling it and living it.
Component II: the communication process
The components include the
importance of consultation, education, and participation during the processes;
the needs of staff and students are recognized through assertiveness;
negotiation with no evidence of coercion taking place; an understanding that
the change dynamics exists, and democratic decision making to assist in
managing the change process. According to Moran & Brightman (2001), “The
whole organization must be pulling in the same direction to achieve the change
initiative goals it has set”(p. 3). People don’t change unless they have ownership
in the change
Component III: Acceptance or resistance to
change
The key variables are: the
level of acceptance to the change, the involvement and understanding of the
need for change; the likely impact of the proposed change on the social and
cultural lives of the individuals concerned; a project team to assist with the
change process. Resistance to change is caused by many factors including
anxiety, uncertainty, and feelings of loss of control in relation to direction
and pace of the change process. Therefore, it is important that leaders of
change are grounded in “management skills necessary for understanding the
theories and processes of change management (Post 1989). While change must be well managed - it must be planned,
organized, directed and controlled - it also requires effective leadership to
introduce change successfully: it is leadership that makes the difference
(Gill, 2003).
Component IV: The implementation Process
The key variables
are: the need for prior research, with a team interacting and working well
together; the use of the process tools such as strategy development and
planning with clear inputs and outputs identified; recognition and management
of the transition state, with provision of the required education programs for
staff to facilitate successful implementation.
The implementation plan
will include specific goals and provide detailed and clear responsibilities for
strategists, implementers and recipients. A proper balance will be evident
between specificity and flexibility, which is key. Too much specificity can
lead to a plan that does not mesh well with evolving organizational needs. The
plan will be tailored to the approach of the frame of reference of the
participants. A change requires the efforts of people at many levels in the
organization. Listening to and actively seeking their involvement in the change
will prove fruitful in performing many steps in the process. Getting
participants to see a future return on their personal investment is a
successful method in getting our teachers to buy-in to the change effort (Mento
et al.2002).
Component V: The Evaluation process.
The evaluation process is
one of final elements in the model and it includes recognition of the need to
evaluate the process at various stages, and take necessary action; the
provision of feedback and recognition and acknowledgement of the contribution
of staff.
Component VI: Integrating lessons learned.
Generating the lessons
learned through reflection is a crucial aspect of the change process. This section
is often omitted or taken for granted. At the root of lessons learned is
reflection. Reflection is the personal cognitive activity that requires
stepping back from an experience to think carefully and persistently about its
meaning through the creation of inferences (Baird et al, 1997; Kleinert and
Roth, 1997; Seibert, 1999). Reflection brings to light insights and learning
themes by directing and guiding change strategists and implementers to think
actively about the learning that is going on during the change process.
Reflection is an extremely powerful way to learn from experience. It is the
major component of individual learning, and individual learning is the building
block for organizational learning. During the change process the reflection on
the development lines and progress of teachers will be very critical. Change
agents and Team should be granted ample time for reflection before, during and
after the program for the integration of lessons learned.
Evaluation plan
Change progress needs to be
measured at all stages of the program, and not merely at the end. The TEP will
be evaluated through a quality assurance plan. This plan is important for
ongoing evaluation at all levels of performance.
The evaluation will include
both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to provide information for both
formative and summative purposes. The overall goals of the evaluation will be
to (1) determine project accountability by assessing progress whether or
not goals and objectives identified by the project were met, (2) measure
perceptions about the effectiveness of the implementation of the vision, (3)
measure the impact of the implementation on stakeholder groups and policies, (4)
determine the organizational factors and policies that hinder and/or enhance
success of the project, and (5) identify the unanticipated outcomes of the
project.
Implications for future change efforts
·
Provide space for reflection and dialogue despite pressure crisis.
·
Rely on one’s strength in dealing with the change.
·
There is intensive personal learning by the management.
· Be
the manager of the denominator and the numerator. Create sustaining binds with
different stakeholders.
·
Change processes need to be supported by solid performance management systems
· Do
not forget the platform for emotional mobilization and reflection of action.
(Butler Scott, and Edwards, 2003).
Conclusion
At the center of many
processes of organizational change is the key role of change agents, which are
the individuals or teams that are going to initiate, lead, and direct in order
to make things happen. “Understanding the complexity of change, and the agents’
roles within the organizations and finding new ways of managing change
processes in an integrated and coherent manner to affect successful and lasting
change” count (Caldwell, 2003, p. 141).
An innovative change model
was designed for the implementation of the TEP and a description provided of
the challenges this change effort could cause, the steps and strategies
utilized in dealing with the process, the implementation and an evaluation plan
discussed that will sustain its effectiveness, and a final description of the
strategies for future successes and implications of the change efforts have
been provided..
References and/or complementary bibliography
Baird, L. Henderson, J. and
Watts, S. (1997). Learning from action: An Analysis of the Center for the Army
Lessons learned. Human Resources management, 36(4), 385-395.
Bolman, L. G. & Deal,
T. E. (1999, May/June). 4 steps to keeping change efforts heading in the right
direction. Journal for Quality & Participation, 22(3), 6-11.
Bruch, H. &
Sattelberger, T. (2001, June). The turnaround at Lufthansa: Learning from the
change process. Journal of Change Management, 1(4), 344.363.
Gill, R. (2003, May).
Change management or change leadership? Journal of Change Management.
3(4), 307-319.
Henry, P. K. (1997,
October). Overcoming resistance to organizational change. Journal Dietetic
Association, 97(10), 145-149.
Kleinert, A. & Roth,
G.(1997). How to Make Experience your Company’s Best Teacher. Harvard Business
Review, 75(5), Reprint No. 97506.
Mento, A. J., Jones, R. M.,
& Dirndorfer, W. (2002, August). A change management process: grounded in
both Theory and practice. Journal of Change Management, 3(1), 45-59.
Moran, J. W. &
Brightman, B. K. (2001). Leading organizational change. Career Development
International, 6(2/3), 111.
Pearson, A., Vaughn, B.
& Fitzgerald, M. (1996). Nursing models for Practice. (2nd
ed.). UK: Butterworth Heinemann.
Post, N. (1989). Managing
human energy: an ancient tool for change experts. Managing change: the
leadership challenge of the 1999s. Seminars for Nurse Managers, 2,
203-208
Sebert, K. W. (19999). The
role of Reflection in Managerial Learning: Theory, Research, Practice. London:
Quorum.
Stern, S. (2005, February).
Forever changing. Management Today, 40-43.
Szamosi, L. T. &
Duxbury, L. (2002). Development of a measure to assess organizational change. Journal
of Organizational Change Management, 15(2), 184-202.
Getting the Job done! Let
the Sisters speak
Historical
development of Catholic Education on Sint Maarten (1890-1990): an oral history
account
Phd candidate, Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
milgeorge@yahoo.com
This
article aims to offer a bird’s eye view of the history of Catholic education on
the Dutch Caribbean island territory of Sint Maarten, the Netherlands Antilles.
Given that “Catholic Education” on Sint Maarten is essentially related to the
presence of the Dominican Sisters of Voorschoten on the Island, we shall take
their arrival (1890) and departure (1990) as the parameters for our article.
Our account is based on the interview that we held with two Dominican Sisters
of Voorschoten, Sr. Marie Laurence Teeuwen and Sr. Costance Gödden, on 10th
December 2003, the answers to questionnaires sent to Henri Brookson (a former
Sint Maarten’s Deputy Minister Plenipotentiary), and Harry Schaminee and Peggy Plet
(former teachers on the Island), as well as on written primary and secondary
sources. We shall approach the issue from a strictly historical viewpoint.
Sint Maarten in context
The current
Caribbean societies essentially resulted from the 15th century
European expansion movement (one of the many precursors of today’s
globalization). This explains their similarities, as well as their lack of
uniformity. With the passage of time, the Caribbean became a collection of
small nations, colonies, and territories struggling to forge their social,
economic, and political identities. They all have in common an astonishingly
diverse configuration and possess a remarkable and often tragic history
(George, 2000:6; Schwab, 1996:19). Schwab sums it all up by saying that: “[The
Caribbean represents] a wonderful analogy for a history and culture produced by
startling combinations. Begin with two remarkable primitive Indian societies,
add the influence of the 16th-century gold-seeking Spaniards, and
their European rivals: the French, English, Dutch, even the knight of Malta;
add pirates, religious and political refugees, and a huge African slave
culture, then stir in Hindus, Jews, and Rastafarians and you have the dizzying
recipe that makes up these islands” (Schwab, 1996:19). One could safely say
that the colonizers made the Caribbean, as we know it today. It is in
that sense that some Caribbean theologians have described the Caribbean as a forced
context (Boodoo, 1996:3-19).
Immigrants
arrive in large amounts on the islands with a positive economic growth, while
islands with less economic growth see their population decrease (Bakker &
Veer, 1999:55). Indeed, besides colonial expansion, migration has also been an
essential component in the social evolution of the Caribbean Islands, including
the Netherlands Antilles. The Caribbean Sea which separates the islands from
one another also links them with one another. Much of the regional population
(perhaps the majority thereof) is truly “Caribbean,” having ancestors who have
lived, worked, studied, got married, or even been born in islands which are not
the one where they are currently residing.
Sint Maarten within the Kingdom of the
Netherlands
The Kingdom of
The Netherlands consists of three constitutive entities: the Netherlands (in
the European mainland) and the two insular territories of Aruba and the
Netherlands Antilles (in the Caribbean basin). The Netherlands Antilles are
made up of five island territories, subdivided into two groups: the Leeward
Islands (Curaçao and Bonaire) situated about 50 km north of Venezuela, and the
Windward Islands (Sint Maarten, Sint Eustatius or “Statia,” and Saba), some 160
km east of Puerto Rico.
The Netherlands
Antilles and Aruba, respectively, have full autonomy in internal affairs. It is
a parliamentary democracy and is politically stable. The government of The
Netherlands, in the European mainland, is responsible for defense and foreign
affairs (Williams, 1970:499). The legal system is based on Dutch civil law but
includes some elements from English Common Law. Appeals from the Netherlands
Antilles courts are to the Netherlands Supreme Court in The Hague.
The Queen (or
King) of the Netherlands is the head of state (Statuut,
Art. 2.1.). She appoints the Governor General of the
Netherlands Antilles for a six-year term (Statuut, Art. 2.2.), whose office is
based in Curaçao. Each island territory has a Lieutenant Governor who is also
appointed by the Dutch Queen for a six-year term to chair his own Island
Council and the Executive Council, which is appointed by the elected Island
Council. While the central government situated in Curaçao deals with tax,
communications, public health, education, banking, law and order, company
registration and economic control, the island government deals with local
affairs.
However, the
Netherlands Antilles is currently going through a period of constitutional
dismantling. All things being equal, the two larger territories (Curaçao and
St. Maarten) will become “countries” within the Kingdom (comparable to the
Netherlands and Aruba), while the three smaller territories (Bonaire, Saba, and
St. Eustatius) will become special, offshore municipalities of the Netherlands.
Area,
population density and capital
|
|
Area in square kilometres |
Population
Density per square kilometre, December 2004 |
Capital |
|
Netherlands Antilles |
800 |
232 |
Willemstad |
|
Leeward Islands |
|
|
|
|
Bonaire |
288 |
37 |
Kralendijk |
|
Curaçao |
444 |
306 |
Willemstad |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Windward Islands |
|
|
|
|
Saba |
13 |
110 |
The Bottom |
|
St. Eustatius |
21 |
123 |
Oranjestad |
|
St. Maarten |
34 |
1030 |
Philipsburg |
Source:
Office of Land Registry, Island Civil Registry Offices and CBS -
http://www.cbs.an/area_climate/area_a1.asp
Population per
island, 1st January 2006
|
Year |
Netherlands Antilles |
Bonaire |
Curaçao |
Saba |
St. Eustatius |
St. Maarten |
|
1991 |
188,164 |
10,190 |
144,844 |
1,102 |
1,844 |
30,184 |
|
1995 |
189,767 |
11,903 |
144,522 |
1,264 |
1,981 |
30,097 |
|
2000 |
182,746 |
11,561 |
136,969 |
1,367 |
2,250 |
30,599 |
|
2005 |
185,513 |
10,638 |
135,822 |
1,434 |
2,584 |
35,035 |
Source: Estimations CBS -
http://www.cbs.an/population/population_b2.asp
The income of
the Dutch Antilles and Aruba proceeds mostly from tourism, the oil refinery,
and development aid. Because of this, the small islands are strongly dependent
on the external foreign market. Furthermore, due to the fact that Aruba and the
Netherlands Antilles do not have many raw materials and that they hardly have
an agrarian sector almost everything needs to be imported: the beef comes from
e.g. Argentina, the fridges from the USA, and the oil from Venezuela. The
economy is open and vulnerable and the Islands can hardly influence the
developments on the world market (Bakker & Veer, 1999:50).
The Dominican Sisters of
Voorschoten: 1841
The religious congregation
of the Dominican Sisters of Voorschoten has its roots in the spiritual
patrimony of the Italian Dominican tertiary, Saint Catherine of Siena, and was
founded on 24th May of 1841. The congregation began when Sr.
Catharina Pinkers and other sisters moved into het Liefdesgesticht at
the Schie in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The motherhouse was officially
seated in Voorschoten in 1888, hence the name “Dominican Sisters of
Voorschoten.” The congregation expanded slowly but surely, and different convents
were founded elsewhere.
The sisters
devoted themselves to the community in which they lived and saw their work as
an indispensable part of their religious duty. Without their religious
dedication, providing education and the exercise of services in the care sector
would not have been possible. Their convents became overtime increasingly
accessible to the public, precisely because of their capacity to reach out
(Voges, 1990:16).
To do
missionary work on St. Maarten: 1869
The Dominican
Fathers were assigned to the Dutch colonial mission of Curaçao in 1868 by
decree of the Congregation of the Propaganda Fidei. It appears that
around 1890 there were some lay people who were sponsored by priests to provide
education at a given number of localities in the Windward Islands. This
situation does not seem to have been very satisfactory, for which reason Fr.
Niewenhuys decided to start a Sunday school, although this initiative did not
work out either. To make matters worse, the lack of capital meant at the time that
the Vicariate could not afford to found a proper school. “In fact, the Catholic
presence appears to have been reduced, even minimal. The whole social picture
was a source of concern for the church leaders, and not only for education. The
financial situation of the Catholic Church made it difficult for it to sponsor
own initiatives; assistance from abroad and from other broader church
associations was needed” (Voges, 1990:16; Hart, 1992:43).
Our secondary
sources mention that in 1875 Fr. Nieuwenhuys sent a request to Sr. Dominica
Wamsteeker, the General Superior of the Dominican sisters, to send sisters to
assist in education. However, she refused because she could not miss any
sisters at that time. In his will after his death in 1888, Fr. Nieuwenhuys left
two houses, a piece of land, and ten thousand guilders to be used for the
foundation of a school under supervision of religious sisters. His successor
Fr. Jordanus Onderwater again asked the General Superior, Sr. Catharina
Walraven, implying that with the bequeathed money schools could be built and
the fares of the sisters to come to Sint Maarten be paid. Six sisters out of
the announced thirty-seven were then sent, namely Sisters Regina Egelie,
Catharina Dankelmann, Helena Jacobs, Gonzales Eijkenbroek, Raymunda Reijgers,
and Huberta Hakkenberg.
These sisters
were supposed to fulfill the wish of Father Nieuwenhuys. After saying goodbye
to their family and fatherland for life, they started their journey by boat on
15th April of 1890, setting off from Rotterdam in the direction of a
far, unknown country with its own culture and, for them, tiring climate. After
a journey through Southampton, Barbados, and St. Kitts, they arrived on Sint
Maarten on 3rd May 1890. They moved into the St. Joseph’s Convent
and Sr. Regina became the first prioress of the convent and, at the same time,
headmistress of the new school (Voges, 1990:17-18; Hart, 1992:43-44). With
these events, the stage was set for the Dominican Sisters of Voorschoten to
play their part in the island’s life. Despite the emphasis placed by the
secondary sources on their educative tasks, when I asked Sr. Marie
Laurence about the reason why the sisters were sent to Sint Maarten and
specifically whether they had been called exclusively to set up schools, she replied
that it had been so only “in general,” since they also did a lot in nursing at
the local hospital.
Preparation
for the mission: 1890, 1952/3 and 1968
One would
expect that before the sisters were sent on a mission to a far and unknown
country, their superiors would have made the due preparations to equip them
with the necessary psychological and professional luggage to confront their new
home and tasks. That would have been the ideal. However, the secondary sources
tell a different story. Apparently, almost nothing was done except make sure
that they had a teaching degree (Hart, 1992:44). Most of them were not familiar
with English, the language commonly spoken on the island, and had to learn it
upon arrival at their new destination. Interestingly enough, the question of
the language of instruction —an ever present, controversial issue on St.
Maarten— was already mentioned at the start of the first school in 1890 (Voges,
1990:19). Englih was chosen, and this remained unchanged till 1933.
The sisters were
informed only that they had been chosen to go to the mission. Knowing little,
or actually nothing at all, about the island, they boarded the boat that would
take them to the Antilles, first to Curaçao and then “we will see were we will
arrive,” as Sr. Constance put it. Our primary sources bear out that sixty years
after the departure of the first sisters the situation had not changed much.
The above means
that the mission in the Dutch Antilles was receiving sisters who were unprepared
for their work, not because they were not interested in their future work field
but because the necessary structures and the adequate ecclesial, intellectual
framework were lacking. The superiors were apparently oblivious of the fact
that mission work must be prepared, which testifies to a certain
institutionalized disregard for the individuality of the sisters and of the
people with whom they were going to be working. All that fitted, of course,
with the theology of the time. If indeed, there was any internal preparation in
the congregation prior to the Sisters’ departure, it does not transpire from
the documentary evidence or the interviews that I have conducted, neither is it
mentioned by the first group of sisters who left the Netherlands in 1890.
The fact that
the Dominican Sisters of Voorschoten were a religious congregation may rightly
give rise to the question whether there has been a noticeable religious
influence on the education on St. Maarten, for instance, through preparation
for the sacraments. Was catechesis also part of the Sisters’ work as in other
colonial missions, e.g. in the Belgian Congo, where besides teaching, the
Sisters were also intent on “saving and winning souls” (Depaepe,
1991-1992:137-156)?
Founding Catholic Education on Sint Maarten
The schools
In the hundred
years that the Sisters were on St. Maarten, they worked mainly, although not
exclusively— as Sr Marie Laurence told us— as schoolteachers. It is to
their schools that we shall now turn our attention under the headings of
education in Philipsburg, in Simpsonbay, and Kindergarten. Besides this, we
shall also look into the issue of funding and subsidies.
a) Education
in Philipsburg
In order to be
able to fulfill their mission, the Sisters needed buildings. From 2nd
June of 1890 on, they started teaching in a school they founded in their
convent with a mixture of Catholic and non-Catholic boys and girls, the
non-Catholic pupils being in the majority. 132 children attended school and the
infant classes started with 62 toddlers. In 1934, this convent school became
the U.L.O, with a 7th and an 8th class. At this time,
there were no subsidies for education and the income from the school was
supposed to cover the expenses of both convent and school.
At the start of
this project, the Sisters had to make provisions also for clothing because most
of the children did not have the proper attire to attend school. To the rescue
of the Sisters came Gussy Stephens, Juliette Stephens, and Anna Richardson, who
helped them with their work. Classes were taught in English, and from the
fourth study-year upwards, the pupils were taught Dutch as foreign language. As
said above, the Sisters needed, on their part, to learn English since only two
of them could speak it (Voges, 1990:20-43; Hart, 1992:44).
In 1923, the
Sisters started the “Maria Boarding School,” which was meant for girls from the
island of St. Bartholomew or St Barths, which lacked good educative
institutions. Soon thereafter, girls from both sides of the island of St.
Maarten/St. Martin started coming to this school. In 1926, the school moved to
a new building and, when St. Bartholomew managed to set up a better school in
1930, the “Maria Boarding School” was closed. The boarding school then became a
day school and was renamed St. Joseph’s College (Voges, 1990:20-43).
One of the
staff at St. Joseph’s College School was Sr. Constance, one of our
interviewees. According to Mr. Voges, Sr. Constance came to St. Maarten in 1953
and then became the headmistress of St. Joseph’s College; yet, in
Sr. Constance’s own words, she arrived in 1952. Sr. Constance was in
charge of the mail for the schools and the convent, collected stamps and for
years did the administration for the Catholic School Board, the foundation of
continued education, and the Milton Peters College. Sint‑Maarteners who
still remember her told us in informal conversations that she was always ready
to assist others. She remained the headmistress of St Joseph’s College until
1960, during which period there was a noticeable improvement in the
administration of the College. It is said that Sr. Constance did the
bookkeeping in a perfect manner (Voges, 1990:29). Next to her administrative
tasks, she also taught arithmetic and bookkeeping, being very precise in her
teaching (Voges, 1990:34).
It was from
this point onwards that our second interviewee, Sr. Marie Laurence, can
provide us with information. In 1965, a school of domestic economy was founded,
which started with sewing courses for 33 pupils; this took place once the
old house for the elderly Old Sweet Repose closed down and two classes
of St. Joseph’s College were seated there. Our secondary sources corroborate
Sr. Marie Laurence’s account. In 1968, an empty building in Cul-de-Sac,
previously a Sewing factory annex printery, was lent to the school.
There was also a class for salesmanship, which started in the same building.
The formal opening of the Sundial School (i.e. the school of domestic economy)
took place in 1974, which remained under the supervision of the Catholic School
Board up until 1976 (Voges, 1990:36). Yet, according to Sr. Marie Laurence,
even before the opening of what was going to be the Sundial School, students
were already being taught in a hotel.
The idea of
founding a school of domestic economy arose among the Sisters because of the
difference in IQ among the pupils and the need to provide alternative education
for these pupils, especially with a view to the present and the future.
Sr. Marie Laurence and Sr. Constance told us of how the ULO and the
MAVO were set up, namely the St. Joseph’s School in 1968 with an eighth grade.
The secondary sources corroborate the story. In 1968, St. Joseph’s College was
split up in two. On the one hand, there was the Pastoor Niewenhuys MAVO, and,
on the other, St. Joseph’s school, where the sisters were, which remained in
the centre and kept its name (Voges, 1990:41).
After that, a
series of changes took place in the education landscape, and much had to do
with development aid funds from the Netherlands. More schools were built in the
years to come, namely a technical school, a school of domestic economy, a MULO,
and a school for simple tourist administration education (e.t.a.o.). The
Sisters tell us that with the creation of the Milton Peters College in 1976,
there was an increase in the educative possibilities of the island since the
MAVO, L.t.s. and E.t.a.o. students could now further their education at Milton
Peters.
In 1978, the Sewing
factory annex printery and the later school of domestic economy and B.B.O.
became the springboard for the foundation of Sr. Magda’s Primary. At the same
time, the Old Pondside School was founded in the Old Sweet Repose
building, which is now called the Sr. Borgia’s Elementary (Voges, 1990:42). On
27th January 1989, the St. Dominic’s Primary was officially opened
in South Reward. This school was named after the Founder of the Dominican
family, St. Dominic of Guzmán (1170‑1221) (Voges, 1990:42-43).
b) Education
in Simpsonbay
In 1894, a
wooden building was built to be used as church, sleeping quarters for the
priest and Sisters, and school. On 8th March 1898, the school was
opened in Simpsonbay, even though this, in fact, was the re‑opening of
the school since it had originally been started by Minister De Weever in
1893. It functioned first as a Sunday school, in 1897, and later as a day
school. This wooden school was closed later when a school bus service started
in 1945 from Simpsonbay to Philipsburg and the children were able to travel to
other locations. Church services continued, however, until a new church was
ready in 1961.
In 1967, the
building was once again used for the three lower classes of the primary school.
The toddlers were housed in a wooden classroom that was occasionally used also
as voting booth. In December 1967, Minister J. Korthals visited St. Maarten and
laid the first stone of the new school, which had been built with development
aid funds from the Netherlands and was named after Sister Regina. That is how
on 10th August of 1970, after a long time, there finally was a permanent
Catholic school in Simpsonbay (Voges, 1990:20-43).
c) Kindergarten
The first
Kindergarten on St. Maarten was inaugurated in 1925, initially called Bewaarschool
or Guardian School. The first infants were accommodated in a wooden classroom
in the vicinity of the convent. In 1956, a second wooden classroom was added.
However, when in 1963 both these rooms were needed for the primary school, the
kindergarten had to be moved to a clubhouse that had only one toilet for 125
infants. It became then abundantly clear that a new kindergarten was needed.
Due to the fact that the Dutch Antilles did not have a kindergarten education
law, the Sisters could not count on governmental subsidies. Eventually, the
congregation itself had to finance the building of a four‑classed
kindergarten, which opened its doors in 1964 under the name of Imelda
kleurterschool. In 1968, an unfinished barn was repaired and 28 toddlers
were hosted in it, which became the Sunbeam Kindergarten. However, this was a
short-lived experience since the place was closed in 1970. With the passage of
time, new kindergartens were set up, e.g. the Butterflies Kindergarten in
Simpsonbay with 23 toddlers, and the Sunbeam with 35 toddlers. The former was
blessed in 1974 by Mgr. W. Ellis, the Catholic bishop of the Dutch Antilles,
residing in Curaçao. The year 1986 saw the birth of yet another kindergarten,
the Jolly Dwarfs Kindergarten in South Reward (Voges, 1990:20-43).
The teachers
By school
regulation of 1907 teachers were divided into 4 levels or types, from 1 to 4.
The Sisters of Roosendaal and the Brothers of Tilburg gave the training for the
lower levels, for pupil-teacher and assistant teachers. Boys and girls from the
age of 16 years were admitted to all schools as pupil-teachers, under supervision,
to learn the practice or exercise of teaching. As far as teachers were
concerned, in the Dutch Antilles there were not so many candidates to choose
from, that is why teachers were recruited in the Netherlands and Suriname
(another Western Dutch colony at the time).
Once the
pupil-teacher had completed the course, he or she was able to do the exam
before the Inspector of Education. The certificate of qualification included
ten subjects, one of which was pedagogy. The level of examination was comparable
to that of MULO exams. To become a 3rd level teacher one had to have
a Curaçao teaching degree or a comparable one from the Netherlands, Suriname,
or the Netherlands Indies (a Dutch colony in the East at the time, or Indonesia
at present). The level of examination on Curaçao was the same as that in the
Netherlands. A 2nd level teacher was at the same time a 3rd
level teacher with two additional degrees. With another degree, one could get
promoted to 1st degree teacher. The exam for head-teacher or headmaster
was only possible in 1944. With a Headmaster Certificate, one could teach all
grades, including the first grade. It was not until 1918 that girls from
Curaçao and other islands were admitted to stay as boarders at the Sint‑Martinusgesticht
in order to study for a teacher’s degree. Sometimes, they had to stay the whole
week there, and go home on weekends because of transportation.
During the
First World War (1914-1918), it became impossible to send more Sisters from the
Netherlands to the mission, which forced the local schools to recruit their
personnel from the parish or neighbourhood (Hart, 1992:48-53). Most of the
Sisters sent to the mission were assistant teachers or pupil-teachers. By the
School Law of 1908 the Sisters that had been for a longer period of time in
education obtained qualification for the 4th level. It is worth
mentioning at this point that Henri Brookson, another one of our interviewees,
was encouraged by one of the Sisters, Sr. Borgia, to follow the teacher
training course, precisely because she found that St. Maarten would need its own
teachers in the future (Voges, 1990:34). Other youngsters were given similar
opportunities to study abroad.
An interesting
turn of events took place in 1959 when the Curaçao government thought that the
teacher training course ought to be brought to completion in the Netherlands
since —they argued— this was a task for the Country (read: the Kingdom) and not
for the island. The first part of the training would be done in Curaçao, and
the rest in the Netherlands. However, in the end, the decision was taken to
conduct the whole training in Curaçao. In 1972, the Institute for Pedagogical
and Social Training or IPSO (Instituut voor Pedagogische en Sociale
opleidingen) was founded. Furthermore, in 1985, the Pedagogical
Academy for Basic Education or PABO (Pedagogische Akademie Basis Onderwijs)
started a four‑year teacher training program (Hart, 1992:77-78). This
innovation entailed that local teachers could get a teaching degree in the
region, and then return to their own island to teach.
An important
development in the field of education on St. Maarten has been the rather recent
foundation of the University of Saint Martin or USM (this is not French Saint
Martin, but an English rendition of the Dutch Sint Maarten). One of
the programmes offered at the USM is a Masters of Arts in Education.[79]
The two Sisters that we have interviewed have also mentioned the university,
adding that they had not been part of this establishment.
The
Courses
It has not been
possible for us to obtain the curriculum for the schools on St. Maarten, and we
must leave it for future research. What we have indeed been able to establish
is that the report of the Educational Department of the Dutch Antilles
mentioned in its supervision of the education the curriculum, the timetable,
the list of absentees, and the students’ marks (DvO, 1960:89-97).
The
implementation and structure of the education in the Netherlands Antilles was
practically the same as the study programme in the Netherlands. This implies
that educators on St. Maarten automatically took over the methods and study
books used in the Colonial Motherland and transplanted them (most of the time)
without any radical adaptation to the local context. Nonetheless, eventually
some local teachers, stimulated by government subsidies and financing,
developed some methods and schoolbooks for the Leeward Islands, especially for
Curaçao (e.g. Zonnig Nederlands. Methode voor de Nederlandse taal voor
het R.K. lager onderwijs in de Nederlandse Antillen, samengesteld door Fr.
Anton Mej; and Nos Tera. Methode voor het aardrijkskunde-onderwijs door
Fr. M. Walterus en Drs. H. J. Jansen; DvO, 1960:83).
Besides the school
curriculum, the Sisters also taught piano, typing, sewing, commercial
correspondence, business administration and assistant salesmanship.
From 1915 up to
the Second World War, the subject of hoeden vlechten or hat‑making
was taught in the schools of St. Maarten. In 1913, four girls and Sister Agnes
Roosen obtained their D-diploma in the Hoedenvlechtschool of Curaçao.
After that, they taught these classes on St. Maarten, which were very popular
because of the income that they promised. In 1918, they started an innovative
correspondence training for hoofdvlechters or hair‑braiders (Hart,
1992:46). Apart from this training which was manifestly aimed at tackling the
local needs, the Sisters also gave a training towards a certificate in nuttige
handwerken or useful manual labour from 1936 to 1954 (Hart, 1992:53). In
1930, the Sisters of Voorschoten started their own teacher training school for
the 4th level of assistant teachers. In 1948, all the six candidates
completed the training satisfactorily. This teacher training school existed
until 1959.
Course
Materials
The course
materials needed for teaching are never clearly mentioned in the documents.
Given that books were necessary for the different subjects taught at school, we
could ask what the Sisters used in their schools and whether they developed
their own course material. According to Harry Schaminee, a Dutch educator on
St. Maarten and one of our interviewees, this was not the case. This confirms
what other sources indicate. Most schoolbooks were Dutch books imported from
the Netherlands, and when this was not the case, they were books developed by
the Fraters of Tilburg in Curaçao. Nonetheless, Sr. Constance did mention that
she did develop some of her own books.
For Geography,
they used Nos Tera, which was verified and confirmed by Harry
Schaminee. He also recalled Zonnig Nederlands. Peggy Plet, a Surinamese
teacher who worked on St. Maarten and is another one of our interviewees,
mentioned in a previous undocumented interview to have worked with these books.
We have been able to locate the said books in the Archive of the Fraters van
Tilburg in the Netherlands. Our interviewees agree that at times these books
did not fit in with the reality on St. Maarten because they had been designed
to meet the needs of Curaçao (the different location of the islands has
important consequences for the contours of their geographical, biological, and
social environment).
Language
of instruction
Even though the
official language of St. Maarten is Dutch, English is by far the spoken
language, even in government offices. The language issue has always been a
puzzling and controversial one. Will Johnson words it admirably well when he
says that: “What divides us most and makes us a strange peculiarity in the
history of the Dutch Kingdom is the fact that we have always been and still are
an English speaking people. Throughout the centuries Dutch historians,
administrators and religious leaders have all lamented the fact that they could
not get us to abandon the English language and to become proper Dutch speaking
law abiding citizens” (Johnson 1995,
1).
St. Maarten’s
first language has always been English. Even nowadays, English remains the main
lingua franca used when the English-, Spanish-, Haitian Patois-, Hindi-,
Chinese-, Arabic-, and Dutch-speaking residents of the island want to
communicate across the language divide. However, Fleming-Rogers warns that even
though English is proposed to be the national language, it is not the mother
tongue of the people of the Windward Islands. Their actual mother tongue is a
variant of English (Fleming-Rogers, 1990:46). Sint-Maarteners speak
a language that is neither Received Standard English, as this is spoken and
written in the UK or the USA, nor Dutch, the official language of the Kingdom
of the Netherlands.
When the
Sisters started their mission on St. Maarten in 1890, the language of
instruction in the schools was English. At that time, only two sisters knew
English, but after a while the others succeeded in learning the language so as
to teach. This went on until 1933, when in all the school years Dutch lessons
were introduced. In the 4th grade, almost everything was in Dutch,
whereas in the 5th and the 6th grades all lessons were
taught in Dutch (Hart, 1992:44). Sr. Marie Laurence and Sr. Constance mentioned
the language situation several times as well as the shift from one language to
the other. This had been an important issue in their lives, especially
considering that Received Standard English was already a problem for them, let
alone St. Maarten English. The shift from English to Dutch and vice versa has
been and still is a debated topic (even at the language colloquium of all the
Dutch‑speaking parts of the world, namely The Netherlands, Flanders (Belgium),
Suriname, The Dutch Antilles and Aruba).[80]
The more
specialized private schools (such as Montessori or Learning Unlimited) have
always used English as language of instruction. As far as the rest of schools
is concerned, an evolution has recently taken place whereby most of them use
English as language of instruction (keeping Dutch as foreign language), while a
given number of other schools are given permission to use Dutch (teaching
English as second language).
School
attendance
In the initial
period of the Sisters, school attendance was low because most children had to
pick cotton or look for salt. Although there was no compulsory education up to
1991, education was valued by parents and by most children who went to school.
In the law of 1991, compulsory education was finally instituted at the federal
level, even though it has not yet been implemented at the island level on St.
Maarten. The age of the children that fall under this law is not mentioned
(Hart, 1992:63; Voges, 1990:20). It would appear that despite the lack of a
legal duty to go to school, the church promoted the feeling among Catholics
that education was a compulsory aspect of both parenting and childhood.
Timetable
We have not
been able to find any report on school timetables. However, one of our primary
sources did give us a glimpse into the structure of an ordinary school day.
Harry Schaminee told us: “I disagreed with the timetable from 7.30 till 8.30
arithmetic, from 8.30 till 9.30 Dutch language (“Zonnig Nederlands”), 9.30 up
to 10 reading skills, from 10 to 10.15 break, from 10.15 up to 11 once more
Dutch language, from 11 to 12 geography or history, and from 12 up to 1.00
drawing or music or needlepoint work for the little girls. No gymnastics! That
was not possible according to the prioress, who was also on the school
governing Board. When the inspector of Curaçao came in November and I asked him
as to why gymnastics was not given, he was very astonished. He discussed it
with the Sisters and from that day onwards I gave gymnastics on an area about a
kilometer from the school to three different classes, approximately once a week
for 3 hours, each hour another class, and as material, only a tennis ball”. Sr.
Constance told us about the timetable, at an earlier period, as follows: “we
had grades 8 and 9 together in one class. It was almost impossible to handle.
We worked from 8 am to 1 pm in the morning and started at noon at
2 o’clock to 4.30 pm. At a given moment we had 54 lessons.”
Examination
The available
documents do not give any indications about how the exams or evaluations were
conducted. In the report of 1960, the inspectorate mentioned why marks were
important and how they should be given. It was argued that marks could
stimulate students (also giving stamps), determining their exact efforts
throughout the trimester and the whole year. Furthermore, marks had to be given
for oral exams, homework, tests, repetitions, and the neatness of the work.
We asked the
Sisters how they had examined their pupils, but they could not recall much.
However, they were able to tell us something about the school of domestic
economics: “I think it depended on the teachers and the family. You showed the
parents the grades and discussed it with them”.
In the case of
primary schools, the grading of the pupils went according to the official
system, yet the discussion with the parents mentioned by the Sisters still
played an important role. An important given was that the exams on St. Maarten
were on a par with those in the Netherlands. Keeping up the Dutch standards of
education, when possible, was one of the Sisters’ aims.
Continued
education
Besides the
possibilities for continued education in Curaçao, St. Maarteners could also
continue their study in the Netherlands. Nonetheless, in order to be awarded a
scholarship to study in Europe, the candidates had to choose programmes that
were not available in the Netherlands Antilles. In fact, between 1946 and 1960,
only eight students of the Windward Islands were awarded a scholarship. Judging
from the documents, after 1960 there was a considerable increase in the number
of students that went to study abroad, one of the reasons being the efforts of
the Sisters who encouraged students to do so and tried to find funds for them.
Brookson himself was an example of someone who went to study in the Netherlands
thanks to the assistance of one of the Sisters.
The subsidies
Without
funding, it would have been impossible to keep the schools and other facilities
running as they should in the Dutch Antilles. Where did the money come from? We
already mentioned the paying classes from the students from St. Bartholomew. At
the beginning of the 20th century, the subsidies from the government
were very low. Public schools occupied a privileged position. Increases of the
subsidies were often not allowed because, e.g. in 1899, not all schools for
special education were “neutral.” The law of 1905 made allowances for Catholic
schools concerning subsidies provided that they took a series of points
into account (Hart, 1992:46).
In the case of
Catholic schools, it was the diocese alone that in the main paid for the costs
of education, which included the travel expenses of the teaching staff, the
salaries of school personnel, the purchases of land, building and maintenance
of the schools. The parish priests and the motherhouses of the religious
congregations assisted with all the above. Expenditures were kept to a minimum
by employing religious Sisters and Brothers, and thanks to the contributions received
from family and acquaintances back in the Motherland. Two main contributors
were the annual support of an association based in Paris, the Propagation de
la Foi and another one in the Netherlands, the Associatie ter
bevordering van het onderwijs der katholieke jeugd, bijzonder voor de
behoeftigen in Nederlandse Overzeese Bezittingen. The aim of the latter was
to expand the teaching personal, facilitate classroom improvement, and supply
school attributes, etc. (Hart, 1992:46).
On St. Maarten,
the appreciation for the work done by the Sisters was made manifest when they
were granted an increase of governmental subsidies from 600 guilders a year in
1910 to 1,150 guilders in 1914 (Voges, 1990:20). The subsidies for the Convent
school and the Simpsonbay School together were 1,000 guilders in 1900. This
enabled them to expand and have a new classroom in March of 1900. In 1911, the
subsidies for the Convent school amounted to 950 guilders, which increased in
1914 to 2,183 guilders a year. Another 180 guilders were added to this for the
maintenance of the school. More money meant better school management. The
sister school in Philipsburg counted 172 pupils in 1915, while the kindergarten
had 29 toddlers. One third of these pupils received subsidies for clothing and
food. The school received 5 guilders per pupil a year for clothing, to buy
a simple suit or dress, and 10 guilders per pupil a year for food. By “food” it
was meant bread of 2 1/2 cent and 2 1/2 cent sugar or molasses per pupil a day
(Voges, 1990:20.22.37).
The subsidies
became equal for all schools only in 1946. Despite this, the subsidies per
student in 1957, in special education, were 272.47 guilders over against 404.03
guilders per student, in public education (Hart, 1992:57). However, this amount
might have been applicable only to the Leeward Islands, given that in the 1960
Report for the Windward Islands the subsidies for a student a year were
16 guilders, and 20 guilders per classroom a month. We can now visualize
the climate of the time.
Conclusions
It is an
undeniable fact that the Dominican Sisters of Voorschoten have shaped Catholic
Education on St. Maarten. Moreover, their influence has gone way beyond the
confinements of the Catholic educational setting. During the hundred years that
they were on the mission of St. Maarten (1890‑1990), they started
different schools and projects geared towards instructing and educating the
youth. Despite their being ill‑prepared for their mission, they had their
orders to be teachers and their vocation to keep them going in their new
setting.
We can honestly
say that, from a historical viewpoint, they have done a tremendous job in
establishing the educational infrastructure of Catholic education on the
island, especially considering the local situation and the lack of financial
backing. The names of many of the local schools still make clear reference to
the Sisters’ past presence and work on St. Maarten. In future publications, we
shall go beyond the present descriptive, historical account in order to analyze
their work from an educational, ideological‑critical perspective.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Badejo, Fabian
(1990). Sint Maarten: The Dutch half in future perspective. In Betty
Sedoc-Dahlberg (ed.), The Dutch Caribbean: Prospects for Democracy. New
York: Gordon and Breach, pp. 119-50.
Bakker, J.
& Veer, van der R. (1999). Nederlandse Antillen en Aruba: Mensen,
Politiek, Economie, Cultuur, Milieu. Boskoop: Macula bv.
Boodoo, Gerald
(1996). Gospel and Culture in a Forced Theological context. Caribbean
Journal of Religious Studies 17, nr. 2: 3-19.
Braudel,
Fernand (1972). The Mediterranean, vol. 1. Great Brittain: Wim Collings
Sons Ltd. & Harper & Row Pub. Inc.
Depaepe, Marc
(1991-1992). Levensverhaal van moeder Marie Adonia Depaepe, missie-zuster uit
het Kortrijkse in Belgisch Kongo 1906-1961, gereconstrueerd op basis van
brieven aan haar familie. Handelingen van de Koninklijke Geschied- en
Oudheidkundige Kring van Kortrijk (nieuwe reeks), LVII-LVIII: 137-56.
DvO (1960). Het onderwijs in de Nederlandse Antillen:
verslag over het jaar 1960.
Departement van Onderwijs.
Encyclopedia
international. Volume 4
(1963).
George, Milton
A. (2000). Caribbean Theology in the making: Idris Hamid, Kortridge Davis
and the ongoing challenges. M.A. dissertation, KULeuven.
Hart, J.
(1992). 150 jaar Rooms Katholiek Onderwijs op de Nederlandse Antillen: Een
gedenkboek ter herinnering aan de komst der Zusters 150 jaar geleden op de
Nederlandse Antillen. Scherpenheuvel: Imprenta.
Hartog, J.
(1981). History of Sint Maarten and Saint Martin. Sint Maarten: The Sint
Maarten Jaycees.
Johnson, Will (1995). The
history of the Windward Islands. Stichting ABC Advies, 78: 1-9.
Kingdom of the
Netherlands (2002). Statuut voor het
Koninkrijk der Nederland, in
“Kluwer College Bundel 2002-2003 Wetteksten”. Deventer: Uitgeverij Kluwer BV.
Nettleford, Rex
(1994). The Caribbean: Crossroads of the Americas. In Alan Cobley (ed.),
Crossroads of Empire, The Europe-Caribbean Connection 1492-1992. Barbados:
Stephonson’s Lithopress Ltd., pp. 15-23.
NEB (1995). The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. Volume 29. Macropaedia.
Schwab, D.
(ed.) (1996). Insight Guides: Caribbean, The Lesser Antilles. Great
Britain: APA Publications.
Sypkens Smith,
M. (1995). Beyond the tourist trap: A study of Sint Maarten culture. Amsterdam:
s.n.
Thompson, A.
(1997). The Haunting Past. Politics, Economics and Race in Caribbean life. Kingston:
Ian Randle Publishers.
Voges, M.
(1990). De zusters Dominicanessen van Voorschoten: 100 jaar op St. Maarten,
Nederlandse Antillen, 1890-1990. S.I.: De Couraçaosche Courant N.V.
Williams, Eric
(1970). From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492-1969. Great
Britain: St. Edmunsbury Press Limited.
Doing
Theology in a Caribbean Context:
The
Caribbean and the challenges of becoming oneself
PhD candidate, Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
milgeorge@yahoo.com
At the current moment of
the development of a theology or theologies of and for the
Caribbean, we would have to define more than one word. “Theology” itself and
its methodology need to be re‑defined and re‑examined in the
context of the religious experience of the people of this region.[81] There is a need for an explicitly and
relevantly Caribbean paradigm to bring about change, not only to define
the kind of change required, but also to help give a sense of coherence and
direction to efforts for bringing about change.[82]
In this contribution, we
shall look at some of the elements of the Christian theological reflection
conducted on the British and Dutch sides of the Caribbean. We shall start with
Idris Hamid and Kortright Davis, two men who attempted to articulate the
coordinates that should steer regional change in times when black societies
around the world sought emancipation and a clear sense of coherence was being
called for.
1. Laying down the foundations
1.1. The problem of definitions
The Caribbean (basin) has
become a broader term than the Antilles; the difference between the two is that
while the latter points only to a group of islands, the former includes
countries which are on the Central and South American mainland, e.g. parts
of Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, (French) Guiana, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia,
Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico.[83]
The decade of the 1970s
constitutes an important milestone in the process of decolonization, homecoming,
and regional integration, in general, and in the development of a truly
Caribbean theological method, in particular. Within this context there are two
theologians that deserve special mention: Idris Hamid and Kortright Davis.
Their personal contributions led to the birth and growth of a truly Caribbean
Christian theological methodology.
1.2. Idris Hamid and Kortright Davis
i) Idris Hamid
Idris Hamid was a married
ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church in Trinidad and Grenada, and
father of four. Hamid edited the Caribbean Lenten Booklet, wrote
the seminal paper called In Search of New Perspectives (1971) for
the historic Caribbean Ecumenical Consultation on Development in 1971, edited
an earlier work on theological exploration called Troubling of the Waters (1973),
and Out of the Depths[84]
(1977). The latter work was a collection of papers presented at four
Missiology Conferences held in Antigua, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad in 1975.
Reverend Idris Hamid died in the late seventies.
ii) Kortright Davis
Kortright Davis was born on
the Island of Antigua, in the West Indies. He is an Anglican clergyman, trained
for his ministry at Codrington College in Barbados. Relevant is his work with
the Caribbean Conference of Churches between 1971‑1978. He coordinated
several important ecumenical gatherings including the two Assemblies of the CCC
in 1973 and 1977, respectively.
Davis has published a
number of articles and papers, contributed to collections of essays on
Caribbean Christianity, and edited a few books including Moving Into Freedom
(Barbados, 1977). Some other important works of his are: Mission For
Caribbean Change: Caribbean Development as Theological Enterprise (1982)[85], Cross and crown in Barbados:
Caribbean politics. Religion in the late 19th Century (1983)[86], and Emancipation Still Comin’,
Explorations in Caribbean Emancipatory Theology (1990)[87].
iii) The search
for a new theological method
Idris Hamid’s contribution
to the development of Caribbean theology has been seminal. He sustained that
the Caribbean churches were in need of a new theological method: any truly
Caribbean theology must be framed within the coordinates of contextualization.
Theology and theologians must thus embark upon a homecoming process. This
ideological movement towards the free and creative establishment of one’s
identity would include a number of elements: decolonization, a new reading of
history, a missiological and ecumenical thrust, and a direct link to or
translation into development and education.
a. Decolonizing theology
Colonization is the
historical context of the Caribbean. The colonizers made the Caribbean
that we now know; moreover, they forced[88] it into existence. Hamid
interpreted the incident whereby the Black Power movement blackened a crucifix
as a clear example of the regional need for decolonizing theology and religious
life, as well as their symbols. For him, the theology of the churches was the
last bastion of colonialism. The mother countries had allowed their Caribbean
subjects to become more or less autonomous or even independent states, yet the
old colonies were still ideologically and religiously dependent. The trappings
of the old European empires had to be removed from Caribbean societies and
religiosity.
What Hamid called decolonization
appears in Davis as the two‑dimensional principle or dynamic of emancipation‑indigenization.
For him, emancipation was in fact the keyword referring to the
change that mediates all other changes in the Caribbean human condition.
“‘Emancipation’ links us existentially with the struggle of our slave
ancestors, since we are the inheritors of that struggle; it also keeps before
us the strongest warning away from the bondage to which God wills that we
should never return. In Caribbean terms, ‘emancipation’ is the word that tells
us and the world ‘Massa day done.’ Slavemasters are no more, nor are there to
be slaves anymore.”[89]
It is at this point that
Caribbean theology and the neighboring Latin‑American liberation theology
both come together and part ways. In fact, emancipation is the Caribbean word
for liberation, not only because it denotes the major Caribbean aspiration, but
also because it evokes a sense of accountability to the Caribbean forebears in
slavery and to their descendants in freedom.[90] Davis was in favour of an “emancipatory
theology,” instead of a “liberation theology.” There is nobody to liberate in
this process other than the Caribbean devalued self. Such an
emancipatory theology cannot remain on the surface, at the level of appearances
and show only. It should plunge deeper and aim at more comprehensive levels.
Davis argued that the history of religion in the Caribbean and the history of
the church in the region are not identical. Religion has extended far beyond
the reaches of the church.
Indigenization represents one of the dimensions of emancipation.
Davis cannot see in which way self‑identity, dignity, and negritude can
be measured either in economic or religious terms. It encapsulates the
religious surplus that transcends the churches and which they have missed.
b. A new reading of history
Hamid’s second great
contribution towards the development of Caribbean theology is to be found in
his book Out of the Depths from 1977. Indeed, out of the depths of
history the new theology must arise. Or, in his words, “The church in the
Caribbean cannot reflect on its Mission to-day without first seriously coming
to terms with its own history. Its historical experience will yield insights
into its own present posture and suggest clues for the future.”
Christianity was one of the
elements whereby the mind of the colonized was shaped, as Hamid had already
emphasized in his paper In Search of New Perspectives. In fact, both the
foregoing gospel proclamation and the churches wherein it subsisted were
radically double‑edged socio‑historical realities. In Hamid’s own
words, “The gospel came to us on the back of Colonialism. The assumptions of
colonialism concerning the colonized, their potential and destiny; and the
value-system of colonialism have penetrated and often perverted that Gospel. It
was too easily made, or tailor made, to serve the ends and ideals of
colonialism. What was produced in the process was a colonial Church.”[91]
c. Re‑examining the
gospel
If history itself is to be
re‑read, then the Gospel proclamation done in the past must also come
under scrutiny. That is why Hamid suggests that the gospel has to be re‑examined.
This re‑examination will be an open one: with a missiological,
ecumenical, and dialogical thrust especially aware of the (new) religious
traditions native to the Caribbean.
During the colonial period,
life happened on two fronts: the official and the domestic. The culture of the
colonizer and that of the colonized co‑existed, but not always coincided.
There has always been an official language and a Creole language, the official
religion (Christianity) and the neo‑traditional religions (Voodoo,
Santería, Winti, etc.). The dynamic of cultural negotiation whereby some
elements are borrowed and others are refused, as spoken of by Ferdinand
Braudel, also played their part in the religious arena. Hamid was aware that
the Caribbean people often picked and chose what was suitable for their
survival. Theologians must therefore get in touch with those undercurrents that
preserve the creative selectivity, on the one hand, of the people and,
on the other hand, of the teachings of and the opportunities provided by the
Church.[92]
Davis, too, believes that
the gospel has to be re‑examined. He is aware that theology exists at
three different levels: (a) at the level of the hierarchy, (b) at the
level of academic theologians, and (c) at the level of the people in the
pews. Everybody at each one of these levels has his or her own methodological
preferences and re‑interpretation of the faith, and therefore draws
different conclusions for the praxis.
The Caribbean contextual
theology is (a) a clear inclination, and (b) it has already been undertaken
by the people, which Davis sees as fulfilled, to a certain extent, in Vodun or
Voodoo in Haiti, Shango in Trinidad and Tobago, and Rastafarianism in Jamaica.
In these Caribbean religious traditions, a clear inclination in favour of the
poorer and socially weaker classes is manifest, as well as the agency and
reception thereof on the part of the people. These are essentially grass‑roots
religious movements.
Where can Caribbean
theology start then? Which paths must it tread in order to elicit from within
the Caribbean reality a truly faith‑filled Caribbean response to reality?
Davis suggests some pointers. Theology must involve an exploration into the
identity of a largely “ancestorless” people since in the Caribbean it is easier
to see in which ways new ancestral lines have been initiated than to trace back
one’s roots. Theology must analyze the ways in which the subordination
experienced in slavery, indentureship, and colonialism has brought about
dysfunctional social structures. Theology must be concerned with the
bipolarities of human existence, e.g. the tension between pain and possibility.
Theology must highlight the unbreakable experience of God of the Caribbean
people who never doubted of the Divine presence even amidst the most horrendous
conditions. Theology must engage in creative action in the community.[93]
By re‑examining the
Gospel and as a radical part thereof, theology must try to become a narrative
theology. A renewed regional and local religious story is needed; one that
integrates the Caribbean people’s belief with their experiences for others to
hear, feel, and remember.
d. A direct link to or
translation into development & education
The contextualization and
decolonization of theology must undoubtedly also include a re‑interpretation
not only of history and the Gospel, but also of the systematization of the
faith. In other words, Caribbean theology must be praxis (reflective
engagement in action) rather than doxa (mere mental search for the
truth). Davis stated that theological education is more needed than ministerial
formation; hereby he was taking theology beyond the clergy. He also pointed out
that the re‑structuring of this aspect of church life had not taken place
yet. The mission of the church in the Caribbean is to proclaim in word,
sacrament, and action that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is Good News for today
and tomorrow, and not merely about the past or history. He argued that
the theological education offered to the Caribbean people is still an image of
the North American ideas and influences. The USA is now perhaps the strongest
“imperialistic” cultural influence in the Caribbean, from which the region must
be emancipated.
One part of the Caribbean
reality that has played a central role and often been ignored is “women.” As
for the priorities of the position of the Caribbean woman, Davis favoured their
leadership. According to him, they have been the major preservers of the
Caribbean cultural foundation—he would thus seem to adhere to the ordination of
women. It is clear that he pleaded for the recognition by the church of “the
significance of motherhood and feminine strength.” Furthermore, the church
ought to struggle “to secure the rights and privileges of women.”[94] And all this is also part and parcel of
education and development.
Liberation theology as
known in Latin America is, according to Davis, not generally understood or
admired in the region because in the English‑speaking Caribbean only a
few people can speak and read Spanish and Portuguese and because most pastors
and church leaders have not read much on this topic.
Political emancipation has
taken place. The rise of a third way between American Capitalism and Russian
Communism came and went in Grenada, Guyana, and Suriname. Only Cuba remains as
a unique exception. In light of this, Davis offered four pointers for future
praxis: 1) poverty is still there, 2) the only interest is survival, 3) people do
not read (which makes Christianity as a religion of the book not so popular in
this region; furthermore, the few theological scholars do not know much about
each other’s work, perhaps as a result of insularity), and 4) the prevailing
regional tradition is the oral tradition (the theologizing, too, is done as a
narrative enterprise, orally, and informally, rather than in writing).[95]
iv) Some remarks
Hamid and Davis agreed that
a Caribbean Christian theological method must be found: a path for
reflecting theologically, one that would do justice to the Caribbean social,
cultural, and religious configuration. A path is, however, a functional element
towards a goal. Paths are made, re‑made, and sometimes declared obsolete
and replaced by newer ones. The Caribbean people must pluck up the courage to
think theologically from within the place and time where they are (not
where they were). The task of becoming oneself is not easy, especially
in societies that have lived in patronizing, inhumane, forced political
contexts. Emancipation has taken place at the political level, but not yet
fully in the areas of economics, education, and theology. Decolonization and
indigenization remain a promise of a future yet to come.
2. Building on the foundations
Caribbean Christian
theology remained somewhat still during the great part of the 80s Even though
Hamid and Davis had indicated the way forward towards a truly contextual,
regional, theological reflection, more time was needed to strengthen the
process of decolonization of the intellect. In the 90s, however, a new
generation of theologians picked up the torch and ventured new ideas, assigning
a central role to the search for Caribbean hermeneutics, i.e. categories and
strategies that would help re‑think the Caribbean context. We shall now
briefly present some of their suggestions.
2.1. The “forced context”
Gerald Boodoo, a Trinidadian lecturer of theology at Xavier
University, Louisiana (USA), takes up Hamid’s basic points once again. He underlines
the “need to recall the religious intuitions of our people and to subject these
to scrutiny for the purpose of articulating them through the symbols of faith
and life.”[96]
Boodoo has repeatedly
spoken in terms of forced‑ness[97] and space of confrontation[98], pointing to the forced nature of
past and present oppression. He has also pleaded for a distinction between survival
and salvation.
That survival is not equal
to salvation ─as the latter is understood by the Christian tradition─
becomes evident since salvation may at times even ask for the sacrifice of the
self in the cause of dreams/values. In this dynamic, theology has a key role to
play. It could give venues of expression to the painful space between dreams
and reality, between the unconditioned God and the limitedness of Caribbean
life. Dreams are in this sense the voice that reminds a society that “reality
bites.” Theology could and ought to mediate the society’s homecoming to its own
“clarity” ─one that lies in its unthematic spontaneity. The Caribbean
must find its “own parables” that can encapsulate that space. This remark
shares Davis’s view on ideologies and takes it to newer heights.
Finally, Boodoo has
suggested that the realization of freedom and liberation[99] are the goals of a theology that is done
in a forced context, which might imply that for Boodoo, unlike for Davis, there
can be some common ground between Latin‑American liberation theology and
Caribbean theology.
Theresa Lowe‑Ching, a lecturer of Systematic Theology at the Saint
Michael’s Theological Centre in Jamaica, has openly acknowledged her debt
to the pioneers of the 70’s.[100]
She has taken up the issue of decolonization once again, re‑interpreting
it in light of the present situation of cultural and economic imperialism and
neo‑colonization. Caribbean theology must aim at emancipation from the
oppressive forces that subdue Caribbean life. It must free itself from the
straightjacket of foreign cultural and economic dominance, what Boodoo would
describe as its new forced context.
2.2. A new reading of Caribbean history
The Hamid‑Davis
tradition has been revisited by Hyacinth I. Boothe, a Jamaican‑trained
Methodist pastor. She focuses, however, on the relationship between gospel,
culture, and Caribbean hermeneutics. She has once again challenged Caribbean
Christian theologians “to expound an indigenous theology.”[101]
Jason Gordon, a Trinidadian, has been particularly active
in the field of history. Based on the fact that colonization, slavery, and the
plantation system served the financial needs of the colonizers, he employs the
analysis of the economic context as a valid and significant factor to approach
and assess Caribbean history. He has also suggested that not only the social
scientist should provide the tools to mediate and analyze Caribbean reality,
but also the artists and their works of literature and literary critique.
2.3. Re‑examining the gospel
The “re‑examination
of the gospel” project launched by Hamid involves much more than the mere re‑assessment
of the validity of the four gospels or the Greek‑Latin Christian dogmas;
it is about finding what the good news actually is and re‑translating
it into Caribbean Creole Christian theological language. It is about
understanding the gospel in and through one’s own words. This approach
espouses neither a Christology from above nor one from below but, instead, one from
within.
Martin Shade, a naturalized Jamaican, has delved into the
Rastafarian tradition and its implicit and explicit contribution to and
critique of the colonial Christ‑image. Shade carries on thus with the re‑examination
of the gospel that Hamid and Davis advocated. He represents a clear example of
the new Caribbean Christian theological methodology.
Shade attempts to integrate
Hebrew thought patterns, high and low christologies, Karl Rahner’s
transcendental theology, Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary
cosmology-christology, and Rastafarianism in order to discover the ways in
which Rastafarianism unveils the relevance of Christ for Caribbean subjects.
Shade expresses all this in a very telling manner: “A sermon attributed to
St. Augustine asserts: ‘But already then [in Genesis] Mary was included
in Eve; yet it was only when Mary came that we knew who Eve was.’ In a
similar way for Rastas, Haile Selassie and Christ this statement can be
restated: ‘But already then [Haile Selassie] was included in [Christ]; yet
it was only when [Haile Selassie] came that [the Rastas] knew who [Christ]
was.’ Hopefully, now the Rastas of the world will have discovered ‘Christ
the Alpha … the way and the truth and the life’ through Haile
Selassie. ‘Jah!!! Ras Tafari!!!’ Amen !!!!”[102]
2.4. Indigenization
Duncan Wielzen, from Suriname, has been working in the last
ten years on an indigenization project both in Suriname and in the Netherlands,
in the Caribbean diaspora. He is interested in the inculturation process of the
liturgy. He has paid particular attention to Winti, the Afro‑Surinamese
traditional religion, its symbols and healing rituals, seeking to integrate
them into the ritual life of Afro‑Surinamese Catholics, both at home and
in the Netherlands.[103]
For Wielzen, the process of
inculturation has broad dimensions, some of which lie hidden in the subconscious
or unconscious undercurrents of the Surinamese cultural make‑up. He
supports, for instance, the use of sranantongo (the main Afro‑Surinamese
language) in the liturgy, arguing that this would (1) strengthen the
identity of the people, (2) increase the respect for one’s own national
Creole language, and (3) help emancipate the collective unconscious of the
people with its social inferiority complexes.[104]
3. New developments
Even though Caribbean
Christian theologians have dealt with the issues brought to the fore by Hamid
and Davis, they have also started to bring in new elements representative of
the 90’s.
Inter-culturality
and multi-culturality: the
difference lies in the inter‑relational dimension of the former. The fact
is that the Caribbean multi‑cultural society can be a collection of
ghettos, failing to be an integrated whole where differences not only coexist,
but also influence one another leading up to ever‑new syntheses and to a
common national and regional identity beyond race or religion.
Feminist
theology and gender studies: women
are demanding their own space where they can deal with and plead for their own
agenda. This space has called for new contributions to the Caribbean
theological reflection which were not there before. Theresa Lowe-Ching has
rightly pointed out that the almost complete lack of references to the
experience of women and women’s contribution in the regional theological
reflections up until now is remarkable, coupled with the dearth of women
theologians in our region.[105] According to Schneiders, patriarchy is not
only one example of classism, but the root of all hierarchical relationships including
sexism, classism, clericalism, colonialism, racism, ageism, and hetero‑sexism.[106]
Ethnicity and
identity: even though ethnicity has
always been a powerful social reality in the Caribbean, it has not always been
pondered theologically what “Caribbeanness” means. Premdas classifies four
types of identity: the ethno‑national or ethnological identity, the ethno‑national
universal identity, a national identity, and the Trans-Caribbean identity.
Considering the large Caribbean diaspora, it could be said that the Caribbean
is wherever Caribbean people are in the global village. Moreover, Caribbean
people are themselves carriers of multiple identities, not only linguistically
and culturally, but also genetically speaking since most of the Caribbean
people are partly European, black, Asian, and indigenous.
4. Final
remarks
Even though our separate
Caribbean societies have already started their journey towards regional
integration (e.g. in the CARICOM), we cannot as yet speak of an integrated
theological discourse. The colonial roots of each portion of the Caribbean
continue to play an important role. Martinique, Guadeloupe, (northern) St.
Martin, St. Barthes, and French Guiana are French overseas territories. Aruba,
Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, St. Eustatius, and (southern) St. Martin are
constituent parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Puerto Rico belongs to the
USA Commonwealth. Due to the colonial past, language remains a barrier whereby
not all theologians can read each other’s work. Despite having so much in
common, we —British, French, Spanish, and Dutch Caribbean Christians— have not
yet managed to coordinate our efforts, exchanging insights, experiences, and
tools for conducting our theological reflection. We are much more dependant on
our former metropolitan motherlands and the current world superpower (the USA),
and their theological discourses, than on our neighbors’.
The Amerindian and black
bush population in Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana remain voiceless in the
theological spectrum. They are the voiceless among the voiceless.
Caribbean cultures are not
“book cultures,” as Davis pointed out. Ideas are transmitted through the spoken
or sung word and often in the context of festivity. Caribbean theologians should
continue with their experiments into new models of narrative theology and
Gospel enactment (e.g. preaching is sometimes done in Trinidad and Tobago in a
Calypso format and in Suriname as theater plays).
The place of historical
studies in exegesis and the evolution of dogmas, liturgy, and (Christian)
ethics could still be highlighted. A re‑translation of the Christological
faith is at this point a necessity. Questions could be asked about: the role of
the historical Jesus within the Caribbean religious reality (Christianity «
traditional religions), the role of the church over against regionalism,
rebellion against imperialism, mimicry of American styles, drugs, the economy,
etc.
An aspect of human life
that is crying out for attention is that of sexuality, including gender issues
concerning men and women, hetero‑, homo‑ and bi‑sexuality,
marriage, cohabitation, single parenthood, and the extended family.
Intra-ecclesial
relationships could also be looked into, such as church management,
clericalism, new lay ministries, and the option for the poor. Unlike their
Latin America neighbours, the Caribbean Christian communities are conspicuously
silent on the issue of poverty. The tourist sights shown in brochures of the
Caribbean do not present the whole picture. Our societies fall prey to the
appearance mentality.
Another area that must be
examined further is that of celebration, including the study of the
relationship between Christian sacraments and the healing rituals of
traditional religions. Do the biblical and traditional Afro‑Caribbean
cosmologies clash or merge into a new worldview?
The role of the Caribbean
diaspora in the shaping of Caribbean consciousness and expectations ought also
to be analyzed.
It is important for the
Caribbean theological methodology to realize that the Caribbean religious
experience has been and still is a bilingual one. [107] In the same way as the people switch
back and forth between their official (colonial) language and the local
dialects or versions thereof, so too do most Caribbean men and women show a
religious bilingual disposition —or a Creole second nature— towards the usage
of Christian, African, or Asian religious concepts, rituals, and symbols. This
remains still a venue to be explored by the Caribbean churches.
Finally, Caribbean
societies are radically plural ones. Current theological reflection cannot
therefore fail to give ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue its due place.
Making sense of the Afro‑Caribbean
concubinage
from a canon law perspective
PhD candidate, Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
milgeorge@yahoo.com
0 Introduction
In 1993, Bishop Anthony
Dickson of Barbados (now emeritus) opened the Antillean Canon Law Society
convention and called its members to have "an attitude towards the
law which will enable us to use the law in the service of our people, in all
our social and cultural realities",[108] and to enter into dialogue with the Holy See
so that "the Holy See will be aware of our particular cultural and social
reality".[109] This is the spirit that informs the
suggestions put forward in this paper.
The aim of this
presentation is to present the church’s teaching on concubinage and its
legislation on marriage in a nutshell, and to compare and adapt them to the
Caribbean reality of concubinage among the Afro‑Caribbean population.
What follows is based on a previous study of mine on this subject.[110] The core of my suggestion is based on three
convictions. (1) The Afro‑Caribbean institution of purposive or
faithful concubinage cannot be equated with what the later teaching of the
church understands by "concubinage". (2) The relationship
between marriage and the Afro‑Caribbean purposive or faithful concubinage
can be compared to that between sacraments and sacramentals. (3) The
institutionalised Afro‑Caribbean purposive or faithful concubinage could
be declared to be a regional custom and celebrated by the creation of a
sacramental blessing for the partners.
The pointers towards a
solution suggested in this paper differ thus from the ones presented by Michael
Lewis in a short paper of his entitled Canonical Response to Common Law Unions
or Faithful Concubinage. The essence of his argument is founded on the
principle that: “A process for determining the existence of naturally
sufficient consent might be similar to the process employed in determining the
nullity of marriages. However, instead of trying to prove that matrimonial
consent was fundamentally flawed and so rebut the presumption of validity
enshrined in canon 1060, this process would attempt to determine whether
there is sufficient evidence of the existence and perdurance of true marital
consent between the partners to a common‑law union to conclude that the
consent was truly marital.” [111]
He considers then how the strategies
of simple convalidation, radical sanation and dispensation from the observance
of the canonical form can be applied to the case of common law unions.
The suggestions in this
paper do not intend to counter Michael Lewis's suggestion. They take a different
point of departure and arrive at a different picture, where marriage and the
other six canonised sacraments remain the basic ecclesial models of graced
interactions, yet definitely not the only ones.
Whatever is said here about
the Afro-Caribbean concubinage might perhaps not be fully applicable to all
Caribbean societies. These data must therefore be interpreted and applied mutatis
mutandis in light of each contextual situation.
1 The “Code of Canon Law” on
marriage
1. 1 “Code of Canon Law”
Not many people know that,
next to its Scriptures, dogmatic and social writings, the Catholic Church also
has a legislative corpus: the Code of Canon Law. The 1752 canons of the
Code promulgated in 1983 regulate the whole life and functioning of the Catholic
Church of Latin rite: the rights and duties of its members, its offices, its
sanctifying acts (sacraments [among which marriage] and sacramentals), its
courts and penal processes etc.
Mariage is the only
relationship pattern between a man and a woman, involving sexual activity and
the procreation of children, dealt with in detail in the Code. Concubinage is
mentioned only once.
1. 2 Church legislation on marriage
The word marriage
connotes a series of different realities. Marriage is a contract (a
legal act), a covenant (an initial interpersonal relationship), a partnership
of life and love (a growing process), an institution (a social
state) and a sacrament (a sanctifying reality) ‑‑all of them
being inaugurated publicly by the consent voiced at the wedding
ceremony.
In the 60s there was much
discussion whether marriage was a covenant or an institution, i.e. whether it
was a personal pact or a social legal entity. Gaudium et spes (= GS) 47‑52
set then the tone of the debate on the family and marriage. In fact, GS
48 encapsulated all the above-mentioned elements, albeit opting for the
personalistic approach. “The intimate partnership of life and love which
constitutes the married state has been established by the creator and endowed
by him with its own proper laws: it is rooted in the contract of its partners,
that is, in their irrevocable personal consent. It is an institution confirmed
by the divine law and receiving its stability, even in the eyes of society,
from the human act by which the partners mutually surrender themselves to each
other; for the good of the partners, of the children, and of society this
sacred bond no longer depends on human decision alone. (...) Just as of old God
encountered his people with a covenant of love and fidelity, so our Saviour,
the spouse of the Church, now encounters Christian spouses through the
sacrament of marriage.”[112]
The 1983 Code of Canon Law
dedicated more than a hundred canons to marriage (cf. cann. 1055‑1165).
Canon 1055 ushers in the legislation on marriage as follows: Ҥ1. The
marriage covenant (matrimoniale foedus), by which a man and a woman
establish between themselves a partnership of their whole life (totius vitae
consortium), and which of its own very nature is ordered to the well‑being
of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of children, has, between
the baptised, been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament (ad
sacramenti dignitatem). §2. Consequently, a valid marriage contract (matrimonialis
contractus) cannot exist between baptised persons without its being by that
very fact a sacrament.”
Canon 1056 defines the
essential properties of marriage: unity and indissolubility. This
means that the Catholic marriage, as conceived by the Code of Canon Law,
excludes both polygamy and divorce. People can be married only one at a time
and they remain married until one of them dies.
A marriage starts when the consent
to a common life of partnership is expressed. The partners’ mutual yes‑word
founds their marriage. This means, that the validity of the marriage stands or
falls on the quality of their yes‑word (can. 1101), which is both
internal and external.
The internal consent refers
to the intention of the partners. This means that they fully and freely accept
the tria bona matrimonialia (i.e. the three goods of Catholic marriage):
fidelity (“you and only you”), openness to procreation (“yes to
children”) and indissolubility (“till death do us part”).[113]
The external consent refers
basically to the acts that embody the partner’s intention to be married in
social and corporeal terms. Their consent must thus be expressed first before
the community according to the canonical form and then in the intimacy
of the sexual encounter (consummation). This means that, if the partners did
not mean either to be faithful or to be open to receiving children or to being
together up to death, or that if the consent was not witnessed by anyone in the
name of the church (canonical form), then in the eyes of the church, they have
married invalidly. There has never been a marriage. The union can
therefore be declared null, i.e. non‑existent. If they have not
consummated their consent in a sexual manner (a so‑called matrimonium
ratum tantum), their marriage can be dissolved (cann. 1061 and 1142).[114]
It is the canonical form
that ensures the public and social nature of marriage. This is stipulated by
can. 1108: Ҥ1. Only those marriages are valid which are contracted in the
presence of the local Ordinary or parish priest or of the priest or deacon
delegated by either of them, who, in the presence of two witnesses, assists, in
accordance however with the rules set out in the following canons, and without
prejudice to the exceptions mentioned in cann. 144, 1112 §2, 1116 and
1127 §§1‑2. §2. Only that person who, being present, asks the contracting
parties to manifest their consent and in the name of the Church receives it, is
understood to assist at the marriage.”
Lay people can also be
delegated to witness the exchange of mutual marital consent, cfr.
can. 1112 §1.
In the event that the
canonical form cannot be observed, the Code allows for a matrimonium sine
forma (a marriage without the form) carried out in the presence of the
witnesses alone, in danger of death (cf. can. 1116 §1.1o)
or when the absence of the person competent to assist the marriage will
continue for a month (cf. can. 1116 §1.2o).
In short, one can say that,
according to current Catholic legislation, marriage is considered to be the
paradigmatic relationship pattern between a man and a woman involving sexual
intimacy and the procreation of children. This means that marriage and all its
inherent elements (such as sexual intercourse) are seen as good. Moreover,
marriage is not only a good thing, it is also a sacrament. That is, it is one
of the “(...) signs and means by which faith is expressed and strengthened,
worship is offered to God and our sanctification is brought about.”[115]
The positive legal position
of marriage within Catholic legislation and the fact that concubinage is
mentioned only once and then in negative terms presents theologians and
pastoral agents in the Caribbean with some problems, especially when the law is
read in light of other ecclesiastical writings (e.g. papal statements,
documents and the latest version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church). Yet,
before any conclusion is drawn, the Afro‑Caribbean relationship patterns
must be briefly looked at and then compared with the data from the Catholic
tradition.
2 Relationship patterns in the
Caribbean
The relationship patterns
that exist in the Caribbean and the words used to name them are not different
from those present in other parts of the world. This does not entail, however,
that lexical coincidence implies semantic and social coincidence. In other
words, the fact that the same words are used does not necessitate that their
content and social meaning coincide. The most noticeable patterns of sexual
relationships in the Caribbean are the following:
2. 1 Visiting relationship
The visiting
relationship is the relationship in which a man visits a woman (or vice‑versa)
at her place, at her mother’s or at a place that is rented to that purpose.
That is why they are also called extra‑residential unions,[116]
extra‑residential mating [117] or casual mating [118]. The essential characteristic of a visiting
relationship is that it “(...) is a sexual congress without cohabitation or any
intention to form a permanent relationship.”[119]
On the one hand, the sexual
element distinguishes it from mere friendship; and, on the other hand, the lack
of cohabitation makes it clear that it is not concubinage. This means that this
type of relationship is unstable and lacks a socially perceivable binding
commitment to one another. Having said that, a visiting relationship can, at
times, be recognisable within the social structure. The family of both or of
one of the parties may know of the relationship.[120]
In fact, it can take place
parallel to the relationship that a person has with his or her married partner
or concubine.[121] Visiting relationships are cut out for people
who cannot afford to have a more socially recognised and recognisable committed
relationship, such as people who belong to different social strata, or are
either too young or too old.
From a theological, ethical
and social point of view, visiting relationships can give rise to situations of
single parenthood (read: single motherhood) where the man does not
acknowledge the children born out his “visits,” and to sexual promiscuity or so‑called
fornication.
2. 2 Concubinage
In the English‑speaking
world, concubinage is also called common law marriage or non‑legal
union of living. In reality, more often than not, it is regarded as a
normal relationship pattern. G. Cumper states, “The notion of common‑law
marriage probably established itself so firmly in the West Indies in the days
when it was difficult, and sometimes impossible for slaves to marry. Though it
has been impossible for a long time now to make a legal marriage on the basis
of consent as evidenced by a living together as man and wife, the notion
persisted that some special relationship was created thereby.”[122]
People enter into a
concubinage relationship because of financial, structural and/or psychological
reasons. Not everyone, especially not every male, is capable of meeting all the
needs that come along with the married state. There are also those who are put
off by the bureaucratic side of marriage. In some other cases, there are men
who feel that their loyalty goes out first and foremost to their mother and
that they therefore do not need to be bound to any other woman.[123]
There are roughly two kinds
of concubinage: the consensual or non‑purposive unions and
the faithful or purpose unions.[124]
The first type is made up of those relationships that
do not last any longer than three years. Their positive element lies in that
they constitute a real relationship of love and life between a man and a woman.
Their shortcoming becomes apparent once they are compared to the second type,
i.e. to those relationships that enjoy (certain) permanence. In Clarke’s words,
“The distinguishing features of these non-purposive unions are, therefore, the
fortuitous manner in which they occur, their transitory nature and the inferior
status of the woman. She has little expectation that the arrangement will last
or provide any permanent solution of her economic problems. Moreover, she
cannot claim the man’s exclusive attention though if she were found to be going
with another man she would certainly be turned out.”[125]
It is worth noting that
some consensual or non-purposive unions are at
times the beginning of permanent relationships. Even when some of these unions
cease to exist, it can still be said that the partners had in the beginning
already the intention to remain together. So as Clarke observes: “(...) the
repetition, in one life history after another, of some such phrase as ‘I must
seek a man to be responsible for me’ leads to the conclusion that even the most
casual-seeming concubinage is not without the hope, on the woman’s side, that
it may lead to a permanent domestic establishment.”[126]
In the case of the
so-called faithful or purposive concubinage the partners
have the intention to stay together on a permanent basis and their families
know of this. The community looks at them as though they were married and has
similar expectations from them as they would from a married couple. The actual
consent of the parents is at times asked for, one way or another.[127]
The fact that the
legislation of several countries in the Caribbean, among which Suriname, sets
couples living in concubinage on a par with married couples in several respects
constitutes an important element that speaks in favour of the social and
institutional character of concubinage relationships of the faithful or purposive
type.[128]
2. 3 Marriage
Marriage is not an unknown
social entity among the Afro-Caribbean people. It often is preceded by a
visiting or a concubinage relationship. It is sometimes the children that lead
their parents towards marriage. However, marriage is not always the norm within
the Afro‑Caribbean community.
The institution of marriage
has, in the Caribbean, its own cultural socio-historical connotations that go
back to the plantation days. Marriage is at times perceived as calling for a
certain economic position. O. Lewis remarks, coming from another angle, that:
“People with a culture of poverty are aware of middle-class values, talk about
them and even claim some of them as their own, but on the whole do not live by
them. Thus it is important to distinguish between what they say and what they
do. For example, many will tell you that marriage by law, by the church, or by
both, is the ideal form of marriage, but few will marry.”[129]
This is so because the
black slaves associated marriage with their white masters. Marriage was to
whites, what concubinage was to blacks —in their own separate ways.
3 The problems
The problems for the
theological and canonical assessment of the Afro‑Caribbean concubinage
arise when the legislation on marriage is complemented with the on‑going
teachings of the church on sexuality and relationships. Throughout the
centuries, there have been two clear trends of thought. While one group has had
a positive understanding of concubinage, another group has placed all the emphasis
on marriage and conceived of concubinage only as a sinful situation.
In Roman jurisprudence,
there existed the institution of concubinage, which referred to the bond
between a man and a woman in cases where marriage or connubium was not
possible. If the concubinage was between two free persons, it was called concubinatus.
If it involved slaves, it was called contubernium.[130] The fact that the slaves were not subjects of
the law meant that they did not possess the patrias potestas (whereby a
father has the fatherly rights over a child) and that they could not get
married. Marriage was a legal institution accessible only to those that were
subjects of the law. Having said that, concubinage was considered to be a social
institution, and not just a casual thing.[131]
The fact that the same word
contubernium could be used to refer (a) to the relationship between
slaves, (b) to the loose relationship of a free man with a free woman of a
lower social position or a female slave, and (c) to fornication (stuprum)
may be at the basis of the later evaluation of concubinage.[132]
3. 1 Positive tradition about
concubinage
There are clear signs that
Pope Callystus (217-222), St Augustine (354‑430), the Council of Toledo
(400) and the great legislator Gratian (1140) could think of concubinage as
being similar to marriage in certain circumstances. This school of thought was
in keeping with the old Roman legal tradition that viewed concubinage as a
social institution. The key idea behind this school was worded clearly by the
Council of Toledo, when it decreed that: “Si, qui non habet uxorem, et pro
uxore concubinam habet, a communione non repellatur: tamen ut unius mulieris,
aut uxoris aut concubinae, sit coniunctione contentus.”[133]
This basically means that
whenever concubinage leads to a life of contentment and faithfulness to one
partner only, it cannot be branded as a sinful situation and the partners
cannot be cut off from the life of the church.
The assemblies of the Latin
American Conference of Bishops both at Medellín (1968) and Puebla (1979) have
stressed in their own ways that the family plays a vital role in society and
the church. Medellín has also added that the concept of family ought not
to be understood univocally everywhere. In other words, family cannot be
reduced to marriage.[134] Puebla has highlighted that: “(...) no podemos
desconocer que un gran número de familias de nuestro Continente no ha recibido
el sacramento del matrimonio. Muchas de estas familias, no obstante, viven
en cierta unidad, fidelidad y responsabilidad. Esta situación plantea
interrogantes teológicos y exige un adecuado acompañamiento pastoral.”[135] (underlining ours)
The remark that these
unions still show signs of unity, fidelity and responsibility is a step towards
the acknowledgement that they do share some of the characteristics of marriage.
Even though the Antillean
Bishops’ Conference has highlighted the place of marriage in church life in
1994, it has also pleaded that: “The experience of many couples who live
together in permanent, responsible non-legal unions is that they know their
situation to be incomplete. Many people have become trapped in unions and
relationships from which they seem to have no escape. While we bishops
cannot equate these unions with marriage, we pledge to exercise greater
pastoral care and concern so that those who have entered into these unions will
not lose their dignity or be alienated from the Church community. Let
priests and other pastoral workers offer their help and understand to enable
these couples to make the proper decisions which are in harmony with God’s plan
for the family and their own well-being.”[136] (underline ours)
Even though their position
vis-à-vis concubinage is still (surprisingly?) within the bounds of “orthodox”
Roman Catholic teaching, the Antillean bishops would seem to be aware that
these couples cannot simply be written off as sinners without further comments
and nuances.
3. 2 Negative tradition about
concubinage
Hippolytus of Rome (†235),
Césaire of Arles (470‑543), and the Council of Trent (1563) viewed
concubinage as an instance of obstinate perseverance in a situation of sexual
lewdness. One of Césaire of Arles’ sermons furbishes us with a good summary of
this position. “Thus I beg and exhort your charity, dearly beloved, that those
who intend to marry observe virginity until their wedding. Just as no one wants
to marry a wife that has been violated, so no one should defile himself by
adulterous associations before marriage. What is worse, a great many have
concubines before marriage. Since their number is large, a bishop cannot
excommunicate them all, but he tolerates them with groans and many sighs,
hoping the good and merciful Lord will grant them fruitful repentance, in order
that they may be able to obtain forgiveness. Now because this evil has become
so habitual that it is not even considered a sin, behold I proclaim before
God and His angels that anyone who keeps a concubine either before or after his
marriage commits adultery. Still worse is the adultery of a man who
publicly does it without any shame, as if with sanction, although no reason
permits it. Finally, we realize that considerable sin arises from the fact that
children conceived by concubines are born as slaves, not free men. Therefore,
even if they obtain their liberty, no law or order allows them to receive
inheritance from their father. Consider whether there can be an absence of sin,
when the honor of noble birth is humbled to such an extent that slaves are born
of noble parents. So grave a sin is it that in Rome, if a man wants to marry,
but realizes he is not a virgin, he may not dare to go within to receive the
nuptial blessing. See how serious it is, if he does not merit to receive a
blessing with the one he desires to marry.”[137] [underlining ours]
From the 17th
century onwards, it was the second and more negative school of thought that got
the upper hand. Concubinage was associated with fornication and it often referred
to a relation that a married person had with somebody else other than his or
her spouse.[138]
The 1917 Code of Canon Law
established that people who were living in concubinage had to be excluded from
ecclesiastical acts (cf. can. 2357 §2), functions and offices (cf.
can. 2256 §2). Concubines could not be accepted in church
organisations (cf. can. 693 §1). They could not receive Holy
Communion either (cf. can. 855 §1), with the exception of situations
involving a danger of death, after having gone to confession (cf.
can. 1066). Neither could concubines, once dead, receive a church burial
(cf. can. 1240 §1.6o).
Even though these measures
sound rather harsh, they were still a lesser punishment than the excommunication
that the Council of Trent had stipulated for concubines.
Vatican II consecrated
marriage as the relationship pattern between a man and a woman including
sexual intimacy, especially in GS n. 47, throwing a negative light
upon all other situation involving sexual intimacy.
John Paul II, in Familiaris
consortio (1981), describes de facto free unions as lacking a public
commitment to one another, which would then be one of the essential
characteristics of marriage.[139] Furthermore, for Pope John Paul II, de
facto free unions constitute a (more or less) conscious rejection of
marriage, rather than a positive choice for another pattern of committed love.
The current 1983 Code of
Canon Law decrees no punishment for concubines. Nevertheless, can. 1093
stipulates that notorious or public concubinage constitutes an
impediment for validly marrying: “The impediment of public propriety arises
when a couple live together after an invalid marriage, or from a notorious or
public concubinage. It invalidates marriage in the first degree of the direct
line between the man and those related by consanguinity to the woman, and vice‑versa”.
This would mean that
whenever the concubinage relationship is not public or notorious, it would not
form an impediment to marriage.[140]
The sharpest official
disapproval of concubinage in our times has been stated in the Catechism
of the Catholic Church (1991): “In a so‑called
free union, a man and a woman refuse to give juridical and public form
to a liaison involving sexual intimacy. The expression ‘free union’ is
fallacious: what can ‘union’ mean when the partners make no commitment to one
another, each exhibiting a lack of trust in the other, in himself, or in the
future? The expression covers a number of difficult situations: concubinage,
rejection of marriage as such, or inability to make long‑term
commitments. All these situations offend against the dignity of marriage; they
destroy the very idea of the family; they weaken the sense of fidelity. They
are contrary to the moral law. The sexual act must take place exclusively
within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and
excludes one from sacramental communion.”[141]
3. 3 Partial conclusion
It is a fact that the
assessment of the value of concubinage has not always been the same in the past
within the Roman Catholic Church. Yet, the more the importance of marriage was
emphasised, the more concubinage was depreciated, until the latter became a
synonym of sexual sin.
It is our conviction that
the older view on concubinage within the Roman imperial church, i.e. that
concubinage is a valid and serious relationship pattern, ought to be revived
and applied to the Afro‑Caribbean situation. The obvious common factor
between the two is slavery, which calls for similar pastoral and theological
sensitivity.
The current official
teaching on marriage is by far too European and takes the European concept
of concubinage as being univocal and applicable everywhere regardless of
the socio‑historical developments that have taken place in different
societies. Furthermore, the current thought that concubinage represents an
outright rejection of marriage cannot be applied to the Caribbean in the same
way as to the Western world. Concubinage does often represent a conscious
disregard of the church’s teaching in the Western world, whereas that is not
the main reason why many or even most of the Afro‑Caribbean people enter
into a life of concubinage.
4 Suggestion towards a
solution
4. 1 Some necessary distinctions
The first necessary step
for a realistic understanding of the Afro‑Caribbean concubinage involves
seeing the difference between consensual or non‑purposive
and faithful or purposive concubinage.
The second step implies the
realisation that the Afro‑Caribbean institution of purposive concubinage
cannot be equated to the Western view thereof as fornication (sexual sin) or parallel
relationship (lack of marital faithfulness). Purposive concubinage
entails that the partners take their relationship as being a serious and
permanent one. When people move in together, accept each other as “man” and
“woman,” have children and are recognised by their respective families and
communities as being a stable couple, they can no longer be described as not
being a true union or as being against the moral law, so as the Catechism of
the Catholic Church would have us believe. Such scathing statement by the
Roman teaching authorities is not only inaccurate, but also offensive,
generalising and Europe‑centred.
The Afro‑Caribbean purposive
form of concubinage has become a social institution recognised by the different
Caribbean legislations in varying degrees. In the Caribbean, concubinage does
not constitute a private deed. It is highly social, with increasingly
clear legal and financial consequences.
From a religious point of
view, the Afro‑Caribbean concubinage has become the source of grace and
the space where Christian life has flourished ever since the plantation days.
Even though the slaves were denied the right to marriage, they still found
their way to a common life of love by living together in concubinage. The
current Roman disapproval of concubinage, when translated in Afro‑Caribbean
terms, constitutes a most shocking show of Western ecclesial hypocrisy. After
all, it was the European powers that deprived the slaves of their right to
marry. How can the Roman church voice now such wholesale condemnation of
concubinage, when this relationship pattern has been the very proof of the
slaves’ forbidden wish to commit their life to love? In spite of the radically
dysfunctional character of plantation life and the slave trade, the Afro‑Caribbean
people and their forerunners have developed their own way for a man and a woman
to live together and beget children. This is why Bishop Anthony Dickson
remarked that cultural and social realities must be taken into account in the
interpretation of the law, among which he highlighted the following: “The
forced migration of Africans to the Caribbean as slaves. Members of Tribes,
members of families were violently separated; there was the disruption of
stable family patterns; sex was for breeding. There emerged after the abolition
of slavery "Living together", some persons with the intention of
permanence and fidelity, others only temporarily. Marriage is seen only as a
social event. Canonical Form of Marriage is just not observed.”[142]
We are convinced that both
the Roman Catholic view of marriage and the Afro‑Caribbean concubinage
can live side by side within the church, not as competing social phenomena, but
as analogous social institutions. While marriage remains a sacrament, the Afro‑Caribbean
form of purposive concubinage can also be considered as a way of living
out one’s Christian call to life and love. We only need a paradigm that can
help us visualise both realities next to each other and not opposite to each
other as they are seen nowadays by Rome.
4. 2 In search of a
theological hermeneutic paradigm
The fact that St Augustine
knew of 304 sacraments[143] is an important sign that the church was aware
in its early years of the broadness of the way to sanctity. The Council of
Trent spoke of sacraments and sacramentals (e.g. liturgy of
the hours, blessings, blessed water etc.) ‑‑marriage being one of
the seven canonised sacraments.
Both the sacraments and the
sacramentals have to do with the sanctification of believers.[144] They are both related to the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus. Sacraments and sacramentals exist side by side and both
cooperate to the sanctification of the church. This means that we have here a
model or a paradigm of two realities that are similar, yet not equal, without
confusion, conflict or competition. And no value judgement needs to be made:
each one is good in its own terms. In fact, SC 60 itself declares
that the sacramentals function somewhat in imitation of the sacraments (ad
aliquam sacramentorum imitationem). As far as their origin is concerned,
sacraments are said to stem from Jesus‑Christ, while the church is
believed to have the power to cancel irrelevant sacramentals and to create new
ones.
The Afro‑Caribbean
concubinage contains, in a similar way to marriage, the consensus to enter into
and remain within a partnership of love and life that is meant to be permanent
and is open to procreation. In fact, the purposive form of concubinage
comes very close to a matrimonium sine forma, since the families of the
partners function as witnesses to their wish to live together in partnership.
What concubinage lacks is the presence of the local ordinary or his delegate at
the moment when the partners express their wish to live together. The
relationship between marriage and the Afro‑Caribbean concubinage is
therefore similar to that between sacraments and sacramentals.
4. 3 Towards a canonical
solution
The question is now then:
how can we welcome the marginalized institution of the Afro‑Caribbean
concubinage within the home and family of church teaching and law? The current
1983 Code of Canon Law leaves room open for regional or local adaptations to
the universal law. One of the means whereby this happens is by legislating on
the basis of consuetudo or custom (cf. can. 5). This is a sign that
the universal church subsists only in the particular church.
The conciliar conviction
that the faithful, and not only the bishops, possess the sensus fidei (a
sense or feeling of what the faith is) and that the church is a communio
fidelium (communion of the faithful) is behind the acceptance of custom
as legal principles (cann. 23‑28).[145] That is why can. 27 can say that: “Custom
is the best interpreter of laws.”
Yet, not every local custom
can have the force of law. According to can. 23, “Only a custom introduced
by a community of the faithful has the force of law if it has been approved by
the legislator, in accordance with the following canons.”
It is clear that it is the
community who introduces a custom, but it is the legislator who approves it.
The community alluded to here is one that is complete enough to have people on
both sides of the law: lawmakers and subjects of the law.
Only customs that are not
against divine law can receive approval (can. 24 §1). Those customs
that fall outside of or are against canon law must be reasonable to be able to
be approved (can. 24 §1), they must also have been kept for thirty
continuous years (cann. 26 and 24 §2). The important thing is that
customs that fall outside of or are against canon law can still take on the
force of law if they are centennial or immemorial customs (cann. 5 §1
and 28). Centennial or immemorial customs can be revoked only expressly.
The Afro‑Caribbean
community could then officially ask the Antillean Bishops in their capacity of
local ordinaries to approve purposive concubinage as a consuetudo
centenaria vel immemorabilis. The bishops —if they are to be truthful to
the region— would then have to explain two things to the ecclesial Roman
legislators. First, that the Afro‑Caribbean purposive form of
concubinage cannot be equated with the European idea of concubinage and that it
is about committed love and not just about sin. Second, that purposive
concubinage constitutes a centennial or immemorial regional custom. The fact
that purposive concubinage has been practised by the faithful in the Caribbean
and tolerated by the church since the plantation days up to today is true
beyond any shred of doubt. Once the Afro‑Caribbean concubinage has been
appreciated in its own right, a sacramental, i.e. one or more blessings, could
be created to show that the commitment of the concubines has its own rightful
place along the way to sanctification.
What their modernity can
teach us:
exploring
the linkages between Black Atlantic identity formations in the Caribbean and
consumer capitalism[146]
University of
St. Martin, Netherlands
Antilles
fguadeloupe@diasporainternational.org
***
For every renowned black public
or academic intellectual that produces a seminal work, there are at least a
thousand unrecognised black men and women who toil in obscurity, producing the
modern conveniences and foods that allow that genius to shine. And upon closer
examination the lives that these faceless and nameless persons produce—in the
stories they tell about themselves and the tales others tell about them—are
some of the greatest oral books ever recorded. This essay is one such book.
It recounts the life of the Richardson sisters—Elza, Tica, and Amelia—who were
born in the Dominican Republic, and, who through actual travels and kinship
ties connect the Dutch, English, French, and Spanish Caribbean to Canada,
Western Europe, and the United States of America. Theirs is a Black Atlantic
sojourn of Afro-Caribbean working classes. One of the Richardson sisters, Elza,
is my maternal grandmother and what follows is based upon several
conversations, interviews, and talks, I had with the sisters and other members
of the family.
I hope to demonstrate by
recounting the lives of the Richardson sisters that cultivating black
transnational identities, while accepting ones self as a product of processes
of inter-racial transculturation, is not solely the forte of well-read
and well-fed black intellectuals. Many ordinary black West Indian folk do so in
their own ways. More importantly, and this the main argument I wish to make, as
products and producers of Caribbean based Black Atlantic ecologies—habitats
inhabited by blacks, within the teeth of multinational enterprise, where
consumerism plays a vital role—they signal one of the ways in
which to see beyond race and recognise the power that consumer capitalism has
had in shaping both blacks and whites in the Caribbean and its
Diaspora.
***
Elza, Amelia, and Tica
started out as cocolos, a transnational identity marked by struggle
against white American capitalists in the Dominican Republic with whom they
were nonetheless intricately connected. Ethnically speaking they were cocolo
because they were the children of the black French, Dutch, and British West
Indians who migrated to the Dominican Republic at the turn of the 19th
century to work in the sugar factories. For the cocolos the dominant
language was English because the English speakers formed the numerical
majority, and it gave them an edge with the American plantation owners. Due to
this edge a symbiotic relationship was established between black English
speaking cocolos and white American capitalists; part of a more general
Caribbean pattern.
Wherever wealthy white
Americans and Europeans invested, they attracted black West Indian workers who
created Black Atlantic ecologies. In the Dominican Republic, as was the case in
Panama, Costa Rica, and Cuba, black West Indians founded their own schools,
associations, and businesses, which soon became transnational and
inter-national as they differentiated themselves from the indigenous
population. Many of these endeavours were sponsored by churches and the
multinational enterprises.[147]
Unwittingly, this sponsorship and the self-organisation of these West Indians
led to the formation of radical racialised transnational identities.
For the Richardson sisters,
all cocolos are blak. Blak contained many shades of brown,
and depending on the circumstances they distinguished a potpourri of different
kinds of blak cocolos, but they also told me that they learnt quite
early from the grown ups around them that for the American bosses of the sugar
plantations a drop of “black blood” meant that you were black. Identity is
always self-ascribed as well as ascribed by others. Usually it is a significant
other (a dominant other) that plays a major role in ones identity formation.
Struggles between the
mulattos and the darker brown cocolos were of less consequence in the
face of this white hegemonic American presence; the significant other that all cocolos
had to relate to. Due to the influence of Garveyism and other more mystical ideologies
of black redemption, such as, the black Masonic lodges, of which their mulatto
father was an active member, they had no problems accepting at times that
whoever bore some marks of the stereotypical African phenotype was black. Yes
they had “white blood,” yes they were morenas, but they were blak.
But not all black Africans,
or their plantation born descendants, were blak. Many, in fact most,
were nigger people as they termed it: people who accepted white
superiority. Blaks as opposed to nigger people did not believe
that their natural place was at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid. Blaks
were ambitious; nigger people, complacent. Blaks were cultivated;
nigger people, uncouth. By employing dualisms, the Richardson sisters
sought to instil in all their children and grandchildren that we should be blak.
Of course this distinction
between blaks and nigger people is too rigid to fit real life,
but it contains some grains of truth if looked at from a sociological and
historical point of view. Since the mid 19th century schooling was
compulsory in British, Dutch, and French possessions in the Caribbean.[148]
Decades before that the missionaries had already successfully began founding
and operating schools for blacks.[149] Schooling implemented to control their
minds and bodies, had the indirect effect of creating ambitious and complex
subjectivities; creating blaks with a transnational and revolutionary
outlook.[150]
Blaks were a different kind of Negro if you wish;
one that fiction writers and scholars, devoted to political realism and binary
categorisation, have difficulties describing. Not stereotypical Uncle Tom’s, or
Richard Wright´s Bigger Thomas,’ or even Alex Haley´s Kunta Kente’s, but David
Dabydeen´s Mungos with an attitude.[151] And these Mungos, or blaks if we
stay close to the Richardson sisters’ term, were as much critical and in love
with Europe as they were of Africa. This love/hate relationship made some of
them long to resolve this contradiction of the soul.
The Richardson sisters were
universalist blaks, and chose to see within race beyond race. Racial
consciousness for them was unequivocally secondary to human oneness; this was
how they resolved their double consciousness to evoke W.E. B Dubois famous
concept. I remember growing up hearing my grandmother Elza telling me, and her
other grandchildren that were flirting with the Rasta doctrine of Africa as our
motherland, that our roots began and ended with her; in her womb. Mama Africa
did not feed our mothers and fathers. Mama Elza with God’s help, did. And Mama
Elza’s motto in life was: all people are equal. Unfortunately life taught her,
as it later taught me that we would have to fight everyday to have others
concede this position.
***
Their cross-cultural
outlook, viewing themselves as originating everywhere, while accepting their blak
identity and contesting anti-black racism came in handy as the sisters migrated
to Aruba at the end of the 1920s. The sugar boom in the Dominican Republic was
on a decline and Aruba, a scarcely inhabited island populated by mestizos,
became the place where the Exxon enterprise decided to refine the crude oil of
Gomez’s Venezuela. The island was fast becoming one of the jewels of the
Caribbean; and wherever there were these jewels, Black Atlantic ecologies came
into being.
Blaks were close to the wealthy few of the world and
therefore knew where wealth was heading and followed. They were “wealth’s”
favourite workers because of their discipline and their eagerness to learn.
They were also their most persistent migraine, because of their demand that the
ideologies of equal rights and universal justice be put into practice. They
also mimicked the masters’ consumer habits and lifestyle to such an
extent—within their means—that soon no one knew who started this consumer
thing. More on this later.
In Aruba two thriving Black
ecologies—Sint Nicolaas and Dakota—came into existence. Sint Nicolaas, the
sleepy town, located in the Southeastern part of the country, was transformed
into a thriving black metropolis. Here is where the Exxon enterprise put down
Lago Oil & Transport Company and Eagle Oil —together the world’s largest
refineries from the 1930s until the 1970s. Dakota, in the middle of the
country, was where black migrants resided who worked primarily in the tourist
industry that began to boom at the beginning of the 1960s.
The Richardson sisters
lived in Sint Nicolaas, which was re-christened “Chocolate City.” Adjacent to
this city one encountered the gated community of the North American personnel
ironically called the Colony. The Colony was self-sufficient, a modern day fort
of oil refining conquistadors most of whom hailed from the Southern oil states.
Schools, churches, a well-equipped hospital, shops, and supermarkets; you name
it and the Colony had it. The “colonisers” of the Colony did however venture
into Sint Nicolaas. Larger warehouses were located there that sold luxury
items, and it was an outing for the women bored with colony life. The men came
for the whores and sometimes to have a drink.
Nonetheless Sint Nicolaas
was a black town; a place of blacks and to a lesser extent mestizos. While it
lacked the wealth of Colony, for the Richardson sisters it was an earthly
paradise. In Sint Nicolaas they were the boss. No one could tell black people
what to do. Indigenous Arubans, and other mestizos, did not dare employ any
racial slurs in Sint Nicolaas for they were a minority lacking any clear-cut
class advantage. In addition in the wider scheme of things where the mestizos
were a majority, the Sint Nicolaas blacks simply re-signified the indigenous
mestizo´s leading ideology of Arawakism. The ideology was one where it was
promulgated that the island belonged to the peaceful Arawaks (all this
according to European lore), and since the mestizos claimed Arawak blood, they
were the true belongers. Only those who married to them could claim to truly
belong. This was Aruba’s version of a racial democracy.
The Richardson sisters and
other Sint Nicolaas blacks were not having it, and did not buy into the
ideology. Mestizos were not referred to as Arawaks, but as Apaches. The name
change mattered, for it was a direct reference to the Hollywood Westerns that
were famous at the time. In those days Apaches were depicted as blood thirsty
and uncouth savages. In Sint Nicolaas and Dakota the ideology of Arawakism was
contained. In these Black Atlantic ecologies, blacks could contest the ideology
of Arawakism and white supremacy.
Things were different when
Elza and her sisters went to work as domestics in the Colony, or to clean the
public and private schools, or to housekeep in the hotels. “Yes mam and no mam,
yes sir and no sir,” was the mode of address in these settings. As long as they
knew their place everything was fine. The most severe sanction was being fired,
as the Jim Crow style of racism remained something that solely occurred on
screen. Lynching and manhunts were things they heard about but never
experienced.
In fact the most overt form
of racism got transferred to the realm of love and marriage politics. Americans
and many Apaches never fell in love with a black man or woman. They made
it quite clear that they found such unions unacceptable. Love and marriage was
a way to establish boundaries, where all other boundaries that they were
accustomed to seemed to crumble. Even the boundary of class was as porous as
can be due to the growing importance of consumerism.
***
Over and above racial,
gender, and ethnic difference, consumerism homogenised all Arubans.
Simultaneously a new law was being instituted: to be was to consume.[152]
And to assert one’s difference one was enticed to consume the tailor made
products being brought on the market. Desire, was seduced into finding
temporary satisfaction in the trinkets of capitalism. Through the enormous sign
value attached to their commodities, young and old, male and female, rich and
poor, longed to own the beautifully marketed and glittery wrapped products that
were made in USA. Made in Japan (read Asia or anywhere outside the North-Western
world) stood for lesser quality. In the minutest of ways the law of consumer
capitalism was interiorised. For instance, though a mango was delicious, you
had to have red delicious apples in your fridge if you were a somebody. And
though one could get cheap and unprocessed Trinidad coconut oil for one’s hair,
most people preferred to buy the expensive and chemically treated American name
brands.
The sisters were not exempt
from these selective buying habits. I became aware of this exuberance when they
would speak about their husbands and boyfriends. They described them as men who
were typical men; men who were not always good to them; men who attached a
bunch of strings to the money they gave them…to feed the children they had
fathered; men who wanted to rule them; men who fooled around and had lots of
outside children. Whenever they ranted about the bad manners of their men, it
always contained the idea that their men did not cater sufficiently to their
needs, a synonym for their consumer desires. A recurring theme: they loved nice
things.
Obtaining these things,
however, did not create a feeling that lasted. If it did it would not be
consumer capitalism. The sisters “consoled” themselves by sharing their
longings and temporary satisfaction of their desires amongst themselves and
with their superiors. Commodities of capitalism and the consumption logic that
triggered it, made it possible for the domestics to engage with the white lady
of the house, and the black pipe fitter to engage the white foreman. Colony
residents were in a constant race to outrun their workers, while still wanting
their workers to keep up. Workers had to know how to fix the Cadillac’s and
Oldsmobile’s, and they had to be experts in dealing with the modern
conveniences that the lady of the house bought. Concomitantly money moreover
was the universal colour for the merchants—Chinese, Lebanese, mestizos, whites,
and blacks. If workers had saved enough to buy the new General Electric
appliance, the store owners did not refuse them.
Where the production system
kept the blacks in their place, as all the managerial positions were
exclusively white, consumption broke down this logic. But it did more than that
as well. One of the manners in which the Black ecologies resembled those in other
parts of the wider Caribbean basin, and emerging ones in Western Europe, the
USA, and Canada, was that the blacks that were produced in these habitats were
avid consumers of the latest gadgets of capitalism. Consumption was an
important part of their commonness. As some of the daughters and sons of the
Richardson sisters moved to western metropolises and other Caribbean islands,
they maintained and consolidated ties through the sending and receiving of
brand name clothing, electrical appliances, and money (the transformer of
products into commodities, mediator of other commodities and human
relationships; the ultimate commodity that alerts us to the almost inevitable
commodification of all of life under consumer capitalism).[153]
In addition through their
purchasing power the line between consumption and production got blurred.
Consumption items served as fodder for their creative imagination as blacks
produced songs and dance relating their collective experience and contesting
the ideologies of white supremacy. Carnivals in Trinidad and Aruba got bigger
and better due to the Cadillac that were bought and then adorned to resemble
space ships of aliens that would force whites to recognise the fundamental
humanity of their black workers. Hollywood films and Western comics that
depicted Africans as savage cannibals got re-signified as from the transistor
radios young and old sung along to Sparrow’s Congo Man and congratulated
the African “savages” for eating succulent white women. These and other pop
cultural expressions, never divorced from the consumer logic, travelled
throughout the Atlantic world.[154] Black Atlantic ecologies got connected
and knew about each other’s fortunes and trials.
***
In time two out of the
three Richardson sisters—Tica and Amelia—moved to the Netherlands and the USA.
Most of us, their children and grandchildren have also migrated or were born
elsewhere. Our family extends now to Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, the
Dominican Republic, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and England. Yet the bond
remains and through us these Black Atlantic ecologies in the New and the Old
World are connected to each other. The goods of capitalism travel up and down
strengthening our bond, and for the first time I realise that maybe what binds
the Richardson sisters, what binds me, to all the blacks and whites in the
Caribbean basin and the Caribbean diasporas in the wider North Atlantic world
maybe that we do not yet fully recognise that our contemporary Mother is not
Africa, Asia, or Europe, but actually capitalism that is socialising us all to be
consumers. Consumer capitalism maybe our collective matrix, but it may perhaps
also be our collective way out of the maze of
race.
How to Define St. Maarten
Culture?
The Netherlands
In this era of mass
migration the question of belonging – who belongs more, who belongs less, and
who doesn’t belong – is one of the most debated topics inside and outside the
academia. Processes of migration go hand in hand with the preoccupation over
the authenticity of native cultures and the demarcation and establishment of
clear-cut national (read supra ethnic) or ethnic identities. Sint Maarten
(Dutch) & Saint Martin (French), a bi-national island in the northeast of the
Caribbean Sea, is no exception. Locally, this alternative postcolony still
constitutionally tied to France and the Netherlands, is simply referred to as
St. Marten, or when the inhabitants wish to play with words, the “Little
Apple.” Victor, one of my respondents, phrased the matter thus, “after New
York, the Big Apple, there is no place on earth where you’ll find so many
varieties in cultures on a tiny stroke of land.” Victor was right. Eighty
percent of the population consists of newcomers. St. Marten is multi-multicultural.
From Rwanda to Canada, from Uruguay to Hungary, you name the nationality and
you will find a representative on this Caribbean island. The island’s
population totalling 70.000 multiplied over forty times in the last four
decades and transformed this former backwater into a booming and cosmopolitan
tourist paradise. One-point five million tourists visit annually and they are
catered to by representatives of over one hundred nations.
As with all seeming
anomalies, which make visible our global interdependence, St Marten is often
characterised by residents of less touristy Caribbean islands as a freak show.
Especially the local St. Marteners, those with ancestral ties to the land, are
chided and ridiculed for not having an authentic culture and for being a people
who has lost its identity. St. Marten as a country without a true culture.
Intrigued I spent four months on the island in 2004, and defended my M.A.
thesis in cultural anthropology on the politics of belonging and the question of
culture on St. Marten. The following essay is a condensed version of my
findings.
®®®
“St Marten lacks an
authentic culture. Nothing unites them.” These were the recurring discourses I
heard whenever I spoke to visitors from the less touristy islands that came to
St. Marten to do their shopping or spend their holidays. But what is exactly
this thing we call culture? Conventionally many persons and even some academics
in the spirit of Edward Tylor argue that culture is the specific way of life of
a people; an authentic good with roots in the land where its authentic people
live. During my stay on the island I witnessed a presentation by Jay Haviser,
an American archaeologist. Haviser argued that he saw culture as a good
consisting of many layers. These layers enwrapped the core identity: the
authentic core of culture, rooted in history. According to Haviser, St.
Marteners have to embrace and celebrate their core identity in order to be “one
people” and newcomers have to adjust to this authenticity. Here you see how
specificity and authenticity, two distinct words, are rendered synonyms of each
other. A people can claim a territory because this is where they belong; this
is where their culture is from.
The above is but one
understanding of culture and a problematic one at that. Most academics
disentangle culture from authenticity. Authenticity denies the dynamic change
of everyday life. For instance, Stuart Hall, the eminent social theorist,
conceives culture as translation.[155] Culture is the translation of the ideal
ways, symbolic constructs, a group or a society critically employs in their
day-to-day interactions. Culture is not about roots, but about routes. And
these symbolic constructs cannot be divorced from the economy and the
political, their material base. The base is not the determinant, but it does
determine a lot.
In addition, since all
societies are heterogeneous and produce hybrids, we must recognise Gerd
Baumann’s (1995:730) concept of C-culture which complements Hall’s conception
of culture. C-culture is what Caribbeanists term transculturation: two cultures
A and B meet and change into a new culture, the C-culture. What the concepts of
C-culture or transculturation makes explicit is the idea that there is a common
base culture, a deep symbolic structure of how one should interpret life, that
all persons of given society tap into and negotiate. This is the conception of
culture I employed to understand St. Marten culture.
Following this line of
thought, the question was: What was the deep structure that unites the people
on St. Marten and upon which they have to work? After conducting fieldwork, I
realised that the basis of this unity is intrinsically related to the tourist
economy. 95% of the jobs on the island are tourist related. More concretely, it
is the dollars from the tourists that makes the islanders dependent upon each
other; the dollar glues the nation. All St. Marteners know this and therefore
seek ways to get along. Strife would lead the tourists, their breathing ATM
machines, to stay away. An illustration is in order. All the street
hawkers—women whose job it is to lure tourists inside the plethora of jewellery
shops in the touristy centres—I encountered and observed, tolerated their rival
street hawkers. This was also the case when they knew that their rival was an
illegal resident. They would jokingly tell them to respect their turf. It would
not do to fight in front of the tourists. Moreover, I was told by many that
resident permit or no resident permit, illegal street hawkers were trying to
earn a buck too so they could relate. Money indeed makes possible that various
groups are able to communicate and relate despite the arbitrary social
boundaries that differentiates them (Wallace, 1961).
Money also individualises.
On St. Marten a person is socialised to be an individual first, and thereafter
a member of a particular ethnic group. The raison d’être of this
category of the person is to make money. Money creates money hungry
individuals, who seek to create more money. But at one and the same time I saw
how in a peculiar way money also enriched and enhanced their personality
(Wallace, 1961). They learnt to be tolerant and accepting of the fact that
there is a bond between all St. Marteners that went further that the overt
differences in accent, tongue, food, or dress. Francio Guadeloupe (2005), a
fellow anthropologist who also conducted fieldwork on the island termed this,
following his respondents, the money tie system: “the term used to denote the common
sense that the ultimate ground of most relationships on the island is a quest
for more money and more power. Since one is first and foremost an individual,
one is licensed to maximise one’s gains while interacting with others. It
matters little whether or not they belong to the same ethnic group as oneself.”
(Guadeloupe, 2005:3)
In their efforts to
maximise their gains St. Marteners constantly perform different national and
transnational identities. These national and transnational categories were not considered
primordial in any sense, but more so social positions persons could take up as
means to an end (Guadeloupe, 2005). Let me give an illustration of the many I
encountered on the island. When a St. Marten woman originally from Jamaica has
a business deal with a St. Martener originally from India, she will probably
explain to the ‘Indian’ that she, as a Jamaican, knows what it is to be a
migrant. In a conversation with a St. Martener from Curacao the same woman is a
West Indian and on a birthday party of a Jamaican friend she will perform the
identity of a Jamaican.
The same process of a
shifting of national and transnational identities is discernible among the
locals. Even the staunchest of these in rhetoric, the nationalistas,
succumb to the realities of the money tie system in practice. Their rhetoric of
“localness” gets interpreted by most of their fellow St. Marteners as just
another tactic of the money tie system. This happens regardless of the fact
that the nationalistas may claim that their motives are disinterested.
The frustration they may feel for not being taken seriously is engaged by their
fellow St. Marteners with a joke and a reminder that they too do not practice
sexual or cultural endogamy.
®®®
I would like to end this
essay by taking up the question of joking, for it is also plays a pivotal role
in deflecting the tourists’ awareness that the summum bonum of their
interaction with the St. Marteners is money. Tourist workers create a joking
relationship with their clients. And it works, corroborating the writings of
Henk Driessen (1996) who argues that “humour and laughter create communication,
eases the contact between people, causes cultural differences and tensions to
seem relative, reduces potential hostilities and, naturally, offer amusement”
(Driessen, 1996:23). Let me furnish an illustration. Whilst on the island I
worked in a gift shop and repeatedly saw my colleague, a young man originally
from India, joking with the tourists when he tried to sell them alcohol. With
his jokes and big smile he tried to sell more, but he also joked to let the
transaction seem relative: as a devout Hindu he could not sell this product
seriously.
The joking relationship
displayed during their interaction with the tourists spills over or is a spill
over from the dynamics of everyday life on St Marten. Humour maybe a way of
hiding what all St. Marteners know, and that is that money is the root of their
common culture. Tolerance towards one another, performing different
transnational and national identities, and the creation of the joking
relationship are all ways to deal with this money tie system. These ways define
the transculturation of St. Marten culture; Baumann’s C-culture. What St.
Marten has left me wondering about is whether it is an anomaly or the growing
reality in the rest of the Caribbean?
References and/or complementary bibliography
Baumann, G. (1995).
‘Managing a Polyethnic Milieu: Kinship and Interaction in a London Suburb’, The
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1 (4): 725-741.
Driessen, H. (1996). ‘Do
fieldworkers laugh? Notities over humor in en over het etnografische
veld’, Focaal, 28: 17-27.
Guadeloupe, F. (2005). Chanting
down the New Jerusalem. The politics of belonging on Saint Martin and Sint
Maarten. Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers.
Hagenaars, C. (2006). Saint
Martin: many cultures, many faces, one country, one people? Een zoektocht naar
culturele eenheid op Sint Maarten. M.A. thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen,
The Netherlands.
Paul,
A. (2005). ‘Culture is always a
translation’, Caribbean Beat, 71: 1-3.
Wallace, A.F.C. (1961). Culture
and Personality. New York: Random House.
Educating our teachers in
the Caribbean for the 21st century:
Challenges and prospects
University of
the West Indies, Jamaica
eddevser@cwjamaica.com
Thus in a
typical classroom of 25 students, today’s teacher will serve at least
four or five students with specific educational needs that require
professional expertise previously reserved to a few specialist. In
addition, he or she will need considerable knowledge to develop curriculum and
teaching strategies that address the wide range of of learning approaches,
experiences and prior levels of knowledge the other students bring with
them, and an understanding of how to work within a wide range of family
and community contexts. And he o r she will need to know how
to help these students acquire much more complex skills and
types of knowledge than ever before.
(Darling–Hammond, 1999:223)
Introduction
In
her exploration of what should go into the education of teachers for the 21st
century, Darling-Hammond (1999) maintains that teachers need to be able to
ensure successful learning for students who bring different levels of prior
knowledge and learn in different ways. As teacher educators we need to
provide programmes of powerful teacher education which help
teachers to practice in ways which are learner-centred which
she defines as “ways that are responsive to individual students’ academic
needs, intelligences, talents, cultural and linguistic backgrounds” (p223) and
‘learning centred i.e. “ ways that support in-depth learning that
results in keen thinking and proficient performances” (ibid). She proceeds to
talk about what teaching knowledge matters and I will highlight a few of the
points she makes:
- That
teachers need to understand subject matter in ways that
provide a foundation for pedagogical content knowledge which enables
teachers to represent ideas so that they are accessible to others.
- That
teachers need to teach in ways that connect with students and this
requires an understanding of differences – cultural,
language, socio-economic, gender, etc.
- Teachers
need a command of teaching strategies that address a variety of ways
to learn. She underscores the need “more than ever before in the
past, all teachers need tools to work with the students in their
classrooms who have specific learning disabilities” (p. 226) and bemoans
the fact that it is the special education student who is usually given
such training and not the regular classroom teacher.
- Teachers
need to know about curriculum resources and technologies so
they will be able to connect their students with the world beyond
textbooks and to sources that modern technology makes possible.
- Teachers
need to know about collaboration –“how interaction among
students can be structured to allow more powerful shared learning to
occur” (p226).
While
Darling-Hammond was writing about the American higher education system, all that
she says applies to us in the Caribbean as we strive to educate our teachers
for living in today’s world. But there are other things that we need to take
into consideration in the Caribbean.
At
the 16th Heads of Government Conference held in Jamaica in 1997,
a paper prepared by the Caribbean Community Secretariat entitled
’Towards creative and productive citizens for the 21st century’ was
discussed. They highlighted characteristics of the ideal Caribbean person
-a citizen– worker who, inter alia, should have foreign language skills. They
identified the following areas for urgent attention ; the improvement of
literacy and numeracy; the development of multilingual skills; student-centred
teaching; teaching low achievers with special reference to male underachievement;
the provision of universal quality secondary education(by 2000); and the
application of technology as an aid to teaching and learning. Teacher education
and upgrading were acknowledged as the key to the achievement of these goals (Jennings
2001). It therefore means that in our teacher education programmes we should be
giving attention to the following as well:
·
Teachers should have a foreign language skill
·
Literacy and numeracy
·
Methodology with a focus on learner/student-centredness
·
Special needs (esp. low achieving males)
·
Use of technology(modern) in teaching
Specifically
with regard to the Jamaican situation, I would add another point,
·
Teachers need to know how to deal with aggressive behaviour, violence
in the school and classroom and how to resolve conflicts.
Aims of the paper
While
I will touch on how these areas have been
addressed , I will give particular attention in this paper to how
teacher educators in two training institutions have delivered
training in ways that promote collaboration and foster interaction among
students that allow for more powerful shared learning to occur. The
institutions selected are a contrast not only in terms of their geographical
location and resources available but also in terms of their function. They
pinpoint sharp differences in concerns teacher preparation in the Caribbean.
The institutions are:
i. The
Department of Educational Studies (DES) in the University of the West Indies
(UWI), Mona campus.
ii. The Cyril
Potter College of Education (CPCE) ,Guyana.
The
latter, which is located in the capital city Georgetown deals with initial
teacher training and is the only institution of its kind in Guyana. The DES
deals with professional development to degree level post initial certification.
My focus will be on how these institutions have used distance education and
on-line delivery to respond to the demand for increased training of their
teaching force as well as to respond to concerns some of which are country
specific. I will also discuss the extent to which the content of these
programmes addresses the critical areas highlighted by Darling-Hammond as well
as those areas identified above as especially important in the Caribbean
context. In so doing, particular attention will be given to some of the more
contentious issues in teacher education in the English–speaking Caribbean
today. But first of all I will briefly discuss the context in Guyana and
Jamaica in which teacher education functions.
Background to the problem: contrasting contexts
For CPCE
Guyana, ‘the land of many
waters’, and Jamaica ‘land of wood and water’ , both former British
colonies and both having experimented with socialism during the 1970s and
1980s, are countries which have much in common and yet are different
in many ways. Guyana is situated on the South American continent
,surrounded by Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese speaking neighbours, while
Jamaica is an island in the Caribbean sea whose nearest
Spanish speaking neighbour is Cuba but is much more subject to the influence of
North America due to its proximity to Florida. Guyana, the only
English–speaking country on the South American continent, has always identified
with its Caribbean neighbours and has been a member of the Caribbean Community
(CARICOM) since its inception. Table 1 gives a summary of the main differences
between the two countries which underscore that Guyana faces greater challenges
than Jamaica in terms of its level of poverty, the variety of its ethnic
groups, including an indigenous population scattered over a vast and difficult
terrain for which it has to provide trained teachers. That the Amerindians
are most disadvantaged is evident from this statement from The Government
of Guyana (2002): “Amerindians, the indigenous people of Guyana, represent less
than 10 per cent of the population but account for 17 per cent of the poor
because they live in the geographically isolated and inaccessible rural
interior” (p 13).
As elsewhere, so in Guyana
better educational conditions are provided in the urban/coastal areas,
particularly in the capital city, Georgetown. The geography of the country and
its size has made it difficult to travel to and communicate with the relatively
small and widely dispersed communities in the interior with the result that “
the educational and other services provided to hinterland and deep riverain
regions are clearly below national standards” (Government of Guyana 2002: 4).
These are the areas largely inhabited by the Amerindians. Of particular concern
is the fact that life is so difficult in those areas that few trained teachers
are attracted to work there. The Amerindians form closely knit families and
villages and an integral part of the culture is that the women are never far
from home. Consequently most Amerindian women are
unwilling or cannot afford to leave their homes to go to the city to study, and
so a way had to be found of training the teachers while at the same time
enabling them to remain with or close to their families. Amerindian elders see
this as important in sustaining their culture.
There are however, other
problems that the teacher training institution has to address. Firstly, because
of the inferior standard of education in the hinterland, Amerindians who seek
to enter teaching, tend to have a low entry level. Secondly, due to the
poverty of their circumstances their preparation for teaching needs to be such that
they can be provided with teaching /learning resources which they can
use in their schools. Thirdly, Amerindians tend to live in isolated villages
and because their primary schools tend to be small, it is essential that their
teachers be trained to do multigrade teaching. Linked to the problem of
isolation is the difficulty with transportation. Paddling in dug out
canoes is rapidly giving way to travel in boats powered by engines. This has
increased the cost of river transport considerably, especially in light of
increases in oil prices.
Table 1: Some differences between Jamaica and
Guyana
|
|
Yr Indep. |
Area (Sq.Km) |
Pop. |
Main Ethnic Groups (%) |
Major Econ. Activity |
Below Poverty Line (%) |
|
Jamaica |
1962 |
10,991 |
2,758,000 |
91 Black 7.3 mixed |
Tourism Bauxite |
19.1 |
|
Guyana |
1966 |
24,970 |
730,000 |
51 East Indian 38 African Guyanese 4.5 Amerindian |
Sugar, Rice, Timber, Gold, Diamond mining |
35 |
For the DES
The
context in which the DES has to train its teachers provides a stark contrast to
that in which the CPCE has to function. As a department in the UWI, the Des has
had to address concerns which face the wider university body. These are:
i. Response
to needs of NCCs
The
non-campus countries (NCCs) have been critical of the UWI’s failure
to respond to their needs. In 1984 a major restructuring exercise
took place at UWI which resulted in each campus being given greater
autonomy to respond more to national needs while at the same time meeting the
needs of the NCCs. So the challenge that the DES had was to meet needs as
specified by the Ministry of Education & Youth as well as
respond to the needs of the NCCs.
ii
Competition /collaboration with other tertiary level institutions
offering training in education .
Heads
of Caribbean Governments agreed that by 2005 the percentage of high school
graduates entering university should double to 15%.This doubling of tertiary
saw a variety of tertiary institutions entering the arena to offer degree
programmes at various levels GATS (General Agreement on Trades in Services of
the World trade Organisation (WTO) has led to a liberalisation of ‘trades in
services’, which includes higher education . New local universities were
created (e.g. University of Technology in Jamaica, the Universities
of Trinidad and Tobago and Belize) and a number of external providers entered
the market including those who were able to offer degrees using distance
education delivery methods or on-line delivery. While the range of choices have
increased considerably for students as they are no longer limited to the
fare offered by the UWI there is the view that after over
50 years of virtual monopoly of the tertiary sector, the UWI has a
‘brand’ which makes it competitive Report of the Chancellor’s Task Force on
Governance of the UWI (RCTFG 2006: 12)
iii Pressure on Departments to
generate income
At the same time, the UWI
has to be cognisant of the increasing cost of education at a rate that
governments cannot afford to subsidize and as a result the institution has been
prevailed upon to becoming more entrepreneurial, finding various
means of generating its own income. This has put additional pressures on
departments but at the same time this has resulted in some benefits
to the department and even more so to the students.
Table 2: Summary of concerns
|
Concerns |
DES (Jamaica) |
CPCE (Guyana) |
|
Response to needs
of the country |
√ |
√ |
|
Response to needs
of the REGION |
√ |
|
|
Competition
/collaboration with other TLIU |
√ |
|
|
Financial constraints |
√ |
|
|
Low level of entry of
students |
|
√ |
|
Dearth of teaching/learning
resources in schools |
|
√ |
|
Study costs
(Travel/Residential/Transportation costs/family responsibilities) |
√ |
√ |
Table 2 shows the
differences in the concerns that the two institutions had to address predicated
by the fact that the UWI is a regional institution while CPCE is
not and while CPCE has the monopoly of initial teacher training in
Guyana, the DES has to compete not only with the local Teachers Colleges which
collaborate with foreign universities in offering degree programmes, but with
other local as well as foreign universities which operate in the country. While
the CPCE has financial constraints, the institution is provided for
in the budget of the Ministry of Education and is not under the pressure
that the DES experiences to generate income. What both institutions have in
common is that they have to respond to national needs in
education and they are both faced with prospective students
who increasingly find it difficult to study full time
and so are more interested in opportunities for working and studying part
time so that they can meet their family responsibilities a t the same
time. Over the years the DES has seen a decrease in the number of
students from the NCCs coming to the Mona campus for full time study. This is
not only because new universities have been formed in the region (e.g.
the University of Belize)but also because of the number of foreign universities
operating in the Region. As in the case of many students in Guyana, especially
the Amerindians, many students in the NCCs would prefer to stay
closer to home when doing their degrees.
Distance Education
To address all the concerns
in Table 2, both institutions have introduced distance education programmes.
Distance Education has been
described as an educational process in which a significant proportion of the
teaching is conducted by someone removed in space and/or time from the learner
(Perraton & Tsekoa 1987). It is the process by which educational
interaction occurs between teachers and students some of whom may
be in different geographic locations. In some instances teachers and
students may never meet, their contact being entirely through printed or
written words which are exchanged through the postal or courier services and
sometimes through electronic mail. In other instances, teachers and
students keep in regular contact via the telephone, through teleconferences and
occasionally through face-to-face workshops and summer schools. However it is
organised, a basic assumption underlying distance education is that its
teaching/learning activities take place off campus and involve activities other
than face-to-face interaction. Learner-centredness is a distinctive quality of
distance education in that the technology used has the flexibility to respond
to the learner's needs. The most effective technology is one which is
simple and permits the learners to learn when they want, wherever they want and
how they want. This fosters an independent approach to learning and
resilience in situations which pose fundamental constraints
Models of
distance education
CPCE
The model for the Trained
Teachers Certificate by Distance (TTCD) involved:
·
4 semesters during which the students were involved in independent study using
printed modules developed by lecturers at the College. They meet for face
to face tutorials once per month at the Regional centres and they use this
opportunity to make use of resources at the Resource Centre which is usually
located at the Regional Centre. Students are also encouraged to form
study groups and meet in between at nearest school or a member’s home.
·
3 summers (each approx. 6 weeks between July and August) for face to face
instruction at Regional Centres.
DES
Table 3: Progammes offered by distance and
on-line
1.
Programme offered
2. Year Started
3. Countries
4. Options
offered
5. Funding
6. DE model
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
|
B.Ed (Secondary) distance
|
2001 - 2011 |
Jamaica |
Biology, Chemistry, Physics Computer Science, Linguistics
&Literature, Spanish History, Maths Geography |
Ministry of Education,
Jamaica |
Print materials Teleconference Summer face to face On-line delivery Blended learning |
|
B.Ed(Literacy Studies) |
2006 |
Jamaica ,Grenada, Dominica, St.
Lucia, St Vincent |
Literacy Studies |
Self financed |
On-line delivery Local tutorials |
|
B.Ed (Educational
Administration) |
1999 |
Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and
all the NCCs. |
Educational
Administration |
Centre -funded |
Print
materials Local tutorials Teleconference Blended learning |
Table
3 shows three programmes that the Department is offering by
distance and on-line. The B.Ed Educational Administration is designed for
training educational leaders at the primary and secondary
levels of the Caribbean education systems. It reaches all territories
that contribute to the UWI. While the mode of delivery was initially print
based and by teleconference, in 2004/5 it became part of the UWIDEC
Project on blended learning/asynchronous delivery which enables the
teacher to ‘learn anytime, any place, anywhere’. Central to asynchronous
delivery is the learning resource package (print material, CD-Rom,
website, links to online resources, etc) that provides the content, as
well as the means of interacting with lecturers/tutors and other students so as
to facilitate social and interactive learning (Marshall 2004). Both the B. Ed
Secondary and the Literacy programme adopt a similar format. All blend in
a face to face component. In the Secondary programme, the students from
the various sites in Jamaica converge on the Mona campus for
a summer face to face session where they meet their lecturers, are able to
visit the Library and Documentation Centre and it provides a good
opportunity for the different year groups to meet , interact and learn from
each other. In the Literacy programme face to face contact is with local
programme coordinators and local tutors while the main lecturer and
e-tutors handle the on-line delivery and chat sessions. The Educational
Administration option does not have a summer face to face component, but
students have access to local tutors and each student has a local
supervisor for the Practicum and Study. All the programmes in Table 3
last for 4 semesters and three summers.
An
open source software, “Moodle”, has been adopted as the learning
management software for the development of blended learning courses for the
Literacy Studies and the Educational Administration options. But in the
DES even in the full time face to face programmes, staff use
Moodle to integrate technology in their teaching. Assignments are
put on line, links to readings are made and some staff organise
chat sessions. And some staff are now beginning to accept on-line submission of
assignments. In fact this is a part of the UWIDEC 2004/5 project.
To what extent
has distance education addressed the concerns?
Response to needs of the country
In
this paper we are largely concerned with the extent to which the CPCE has
been able to respond to the need to improve the supply of trained
teachers in the more remote parts of Guyana. The TTCD was
implemented in August 2001 in five of the CPCE’s in-service centres in
five regions. In four of the regions, the students came from remote
areas inhabited by the Amerindians. Of two hundred and fifty
six teacher trainees who sat the final examinations in 2004, 65%
were successful. Prior to 2001, such teachers would have had to go to the
main CPCE campus in the city to be trained and tended to want to
remain in the city and environs after training .Those who graduated from the
TTCD remained where they were trained. The programme therefore has gone
some way in meeting the need for trained teachers in some of the more
disadvantaged areas of the country.
The
B.Ed Secondary distance(B.Ed SecDE) programme was a response to a
specific request by the Ministry of Education and Youth in
Jamaica (MOEY) to train 3000 teachers in the secondary school system over a ten
year period. The programme was specially funded by the MOEY and
therefore was limited to Jamaican teachers. The DES implemented the B.EDSecDE
in January 2003 by part –time delivery. However by the time the
final cohort is admitted in January 2007 , less than one third that number
would have been taken in the programme. While the original estimate by
the Ministry of Education of untrained teachers in the system may not have been
altogether accurate, we became aware that amongst those untrained teachers were
a number of primary trained teachers teaching at the secondary level. There
were also a number of secondary trained teachers teaching at the primary
level. Despite a special upgrading programme being put in place
in the Teachers’ Colleges (paid for by the MOEY) to get the primary
trained teachers up to a level for entry to the programme
this did not help to increase the numbers significantly. Nevertheless the
programme is not only helping to increase the number of trained teachers
in critical areas such as mathematics and English, but it is also
addressing a concern of the MOEY and principals of schools
,namely the practice of teachers having to be granted leave for two
years of full time study at the UWI to do the B.Ed degree and the
difficulty of filling the positions adequately during the period.
Response to regional needs
This
is clearly an area in which the DES has been successful. When the
University of the West Indies Distance Teaching Experiment (UWIDITE) was
initially launched during the 19802 ,the DES was the first department to offer
a Certificate in Education by distance, firstly in the teaching of the Hearing
Impaired and Reading and then later other options were added in Mathematics, Science,
Social Studies and Adult Education. This programme lasted for
nearly 20 years before it was phased out in 2003. The B. Ed
Educational Administration by distance started in 1999. This
programme is designed for training principals and vice principals and senior
teachers in schools. The DES collaborates with colleagues in the
Schools of education on the other two campuses in offering this
programme. In July 2006 the DES commenced offering the B.Ed in Literacy
on-line to four countries in the Eastern Caribbean-Dominica, St. Lucia,
Grenada and St. Vincent. Studies as well as Jamaica. The first batch
attracted over 100 students. While there were a number of logistical and
technical problems, there is no doubt that this programme opened up possibilities
for administrators and teachers which they would not have had
otherwise. This is particularly the case for teachers in the NCCs. While the
Certificate in education was offered only on a full time basis on the Mona
campus, Dominica over a period of 22 years (1962-1984) had 12
teachers trained. In the first two cohorts trained in the distance programme
they had 11 teachers graduate (Jennings 1999). The interaction by
teleconference and the cross fertilisation of ideas amongst teachers from some
eight or nine Caribbean countries provided a richness of experience which at
the time was very novel.
Collaboration with tertiary institutions
While
the DES has to compete with other universities offering degrees in
education in Jamaica (and some of these work in
collaboration with the Teachers Colleges) in the context of existing
diversity of institutions and offerings in the higher education
environment, the UWI sees as crucial “the maintenance of the
existing linkages with tertiary institutions, the formation of new
relationships” (RCTFG 2006:9).
Table 4 : DES collaboration with
tertiary institutions
Institution
Yr
started
B. Ed Programme (Option)
|
Mico College |
|
Special Education |
|
Mico College |
2004 |
Primary Education # |
|
Shortwood Teachers College |
|
Early Childhood Education (Full Time ) |
|
Shortwood Teachers College |
2005 |
Early Childhood Education (part time# |
|
Moneague College |
2004 |
Literacy Studies (part time)# |
|
Schools of Education, Cave Hill, St. Augustine |
1999 |
Educational Administration (UWIDEC) |
# = self financed
The
Department has a long history of collaboration with tertiary level institutions
in the training of teachers and this has resulted in various benefits:
- use of
specialist expertise in the Colleges to offer degrees which
otherwise would not have been possible beginning. For example, with the
Mico College in offering the B. Ed in Special Education since
the 1980s.The collaboration with the Shortwood Teachers’ College
began in the early 1990s in the offering of the specialisation in
Early Childhood Education (ECE)on a full time basis.
- Expanding
capacity. It has also
enabled the institution to address a growing concern in teacher
training –the in ability of many student to pay for
studying on a full time basis. The part time delivery of the B.Ed
(ECE) at both Shortwood has enabled students to study while on
the job and this has helped to relieve the pressure on teachers who
were trying to both study full time and continue with their regular
jobs- a situation which impacted negatively on the students’ performance.
Indeed this is a concern even in developed countries. Hunt et al (2004)
pointed to the growth in term –time employment amongst undergraduates in
the UK, in their effort to keep borrowing down and reduce
commitments of repayment to loan bureaus. But it is a practice, they say,
which has affected the performance of the students, including their class
of degree. Collaborating with the Mico College to offer
the Primary Education option has enabled the DES to expand its
capacity for training primary teachers.
- Enabling
students to study nearer home. The offering of the B. Ed
(Literacy studies) at the Moneague College by part time
delivery not only enables the DES to expand its capacity
to train more teachers in Literacy, but makes this possible
in the more rural areas so every one does not have to
come to the city to study.
Financial Constraints
With
an increased intake and no additional resources in terms of staffing, lecture
rooms, equipment, etc. the DES, like other departments at the UWI, has had to
find ways of generating income. As is evident from tables 3 and 4, the
programmes offered by distance and on-line as well as some of those offered in
collaboration with the tertiary level institutions are self –financed. The
income generated has enabled the DES to purchase air conditioners for
seminar and lecture rooms, computers for administrative purposes and to
target as a more long term goal the building of a Literacy Centre.
Low level of entry of students
This
is a problem faced by the CPCE and is particularly acute amongst the trainees
from the hinterland. The first attempt to address this problem was
in 1985-86 when the Hinterland Upgrading
Programme (HUP) was offered. It involved face to face training in centres in
the regions with lecturers from the CPCE travelling to the various locations to
teach. This programme turned out to be so costly that it was not repeated. The
next attempt did not take place until 1994 when the European Union funded the
Hinterland Teacher Training Project (HTTP). One hundred and fifty students
were trained by distance. The model was print-based and involved the
development of modules in English Language, Mathematics, Social Studies and
Integrated Science. Trainees studied the materials independently and met at
Regional Centres for face to face sessions once per month. Of 122 students who
sat the final examination, only 44% passed (Jennings 1996). The CIDA funded
Guyana Basic Education and Teacher Training Project (GBET) offers a
foundation programme by distance to trainees in the most remote parts
of Guyana inhabited by the Amerindians. This uses a mixed mode delivery
involving independent study using print materials, local tutorials, cluster
group study guided by mentors and face to face summer sessions.
Dearth of teaching learning materials in schools
The
trainee teachers in the TTCD were expected to return the
printed materials to the CPCE on completion of training, so
that t hey could be used by the new cohort. This would avoid having to
reproduce the modules annually and so recurrent
costs could be minimised. However most of the trainees did not return the
modules. They said that during training they did not have
enough time to read the modules thoroughly and this they wanted to
do now that they had graduated. Furthermore, they could use the modules
in their classes as resource materials. This was a particularly
compelling reason for allowing the teachers to
keep the modules especially in the more remote
schools where resource materials are scarce and
teachers have little , if any, access to resource materials to
help with their classes. In the distance programmes delivered
by the DES, students are allowed to keep all print materials.
Undoubtedly,
the use of distance education and on-line delivery has enabled both
institutions to address many of the current concerns in the delivery
of teacher training today. Giving teachers
options in how they are trained in especially important not only in an
increasingly competitive education arena, but in the context of spiralling cost
of education as well as living expenses. As a teacher in
one of the remote regions who did the TTCD said “If
it wasn’t for this programme, I would have to wait till the children grow up
before I could get to train” (Jennings 2005:34).
She is a typical case. Imagine the number of students who would have been
exposed to untrained teachers over those years! But the fact that the
distance programmes are in-service has other spin-offs. What is learnt in
training can be immediately applied. Another trainee in the TTCD
summed this up well: “It helped me to be more selective in attending to
needs. A child in my class was extremely weak. Training helped me to identify
the source of his weakness and to better deal with it” (Jennings ibid:34).
Some Issues
Which is the best mode of delivery for teacher
training in the 21st century?
The
best mode of delivery is dependent on the context in which training
is being done. Because the DES responded to the needs of four Eastern
Caribbean countries and since the expertise was on the UWI campus in
Jamaica, on-line delivery was considered the best way to go. But the DES
had the technological resources and technical expertise of
the UWI Distance Education Centre (UWIDEC) at its disposal and could
afford to pay for the cost of its services, given that the B.Ed Literacy
Studies was a self-financed programme. The DES could also move to on-line
delivery in the B.Ed Secondary distance programme as this was the
expressed wish of its client, the MOEY, which was paying for the programme
anyway. In far more impoverished countries like Guyana, the scenario is
different. Given the vastness of its terrain, on-line delivery would be ideal,
but this does not seem likely in the near future. While some schools on
the coast have computers, those in the hinterland rarely do and
even if a few have, they do not have internet
facilities as they do not have phone lines. In fact, there is no
electricity in the hinterland regions, except for a few areas that have
power generators and can make electricity available for a few hours in
the evenings. Few trainee teachers would have their own personal computers and
access through Internet Cafes is far beyond what their meagre budgets can
afford. On-line delivery of teacher training would therefore require massive
investment in technology on the part of the Ministry of Education in Guyana-a
situation which seems unlikely at this time.
While
the DES can think of putting more and more of its programmes on-line, the CPCE
will have to rely on the print mode for some time to come. This
does not, however, mean that on-line delivery excludes print. Each student in
the on-line programmes gets a printed course guide and a course reader with key
readings in addition to being given linkages to other resources on the
Internet.
Is distance education /on-line delivery learner
–centred and learning-centred ?
But
to return to a point made by Darling-Hammond (1999) earlier in this paper. She
spoke of the need for teacher education programmes to be both learner
centred and ‘learning centred’ if we interpret
learner-centredness in distance education and on-line
delivery as being responsive to the learners in enabling them
to study however, whenever and wherever they want, then we fall short in some
regard. Students have to submit assignments on given dates. They also
have to sit examinations at given times. A rigid and formal
examination system is not conducive to a delivery system which
should allow students to study whenever they want. They are able to
choose when to go on-line and when to read the print materials, but they
cannot choose when to be assessed. We need to put in place not only alternative
modes of assessment but multiple times for assessment thereby enabling
the adult learners to opt in and out of the training within a
reasonable time frame, without prejudice to their assessment.
Likewise,
if we see being ‘learning centred’ as delivering training in “ ways
that support in-depth learning that results in keen thinking and proficient
performances”(Darling –Hammond), we also fall short in this regard.
A common complaint of lecturers and tutors in the distance and on-line
programmes is that the students do not read the printed materials
and so come to the tutorials unprepared (Jennings 2002). Admittedly the
TTCD experienced some difficulty with the print materials. The
modules invariably arrived late and the students complained of not being
given enough time to read before the tutorials (Jennings 2005).This had to do
with communication difficulties due to the geography of the Guyana. The
modules were printed in the capital city, Georgetown, then taken by
air to some regional centres , or by boat to others and
then they had to be transported from there to the teachers in the
individual schools. Sometimes there was a long wait before
transportation further inland became available. Given that thee examination
dates were fixed, the late arrival of the modules meant that greater pressure
was placed on the tutors to ’teach’ at the tutorial sessions with
the result that the trainees wanted more and more tutorials
despite the fact that these sessions were meant to clarify anything not
understood in the modules and provide an opportunity for exchange
of ideas and experiences, based on the readings.
Trainees
in programmes delivered by the DES did not have such problems and yet their
lecturers reported that they were not reading. In some cases this had to do
with poor time management and a difficulty in balancing the demands of home,
work and study, but some students complained that there was too much
reading to be done. Some lecturers, however, blame the semester system which
puts pressure on the students to learn too much in too short a space of
time and because the examinations are pre-set, their learning is
superficial-remembered at the end of thirteen weeks but forgotten soon
after. They yearn for a return to the trimester system when it was felt
that , since the examinations ,were at the end of the year, the student
had months in which to read, think and understand. In other words, much
more meaningful learning took place. Opinions may differ on this
issue, but the bottom line is how and when we examine learning. If we are to
become more ‘learner centred’ and more ‘learning –centred’ we have to revisit
our examination system.
Collaboration
The
DES uses three models of collaboration in offering its
distance and on-line programmes:
Ø
In model A where the tertiary level institution (TLI) is outside the city,
lecturers in the TLI offer some courses in the area of specialisation (e.g.
Literacy Studies) while other courses are offered by lecturers from the UWI who
travel to the TLI. There is no interaction between students in the TLI and
those at the UWI.
Ø
In model B where the TLI is in the city, , lecturers in
the TLI offer all courses in the area of specialisation (e.g. Early Childhood
Education) and students attend the UWI for core education courses as well
as content courses in the disciplines in other Faculties.
Ø
In Model C for on-line delivery, students in the NCCs interact with
·
the lecturer in the area of specialisation on the Mona campus who has
overall responsibility for the course
·
e-tutors who have responsibilities for small groups. These are located
both on the Mona campus and in the NCCs.
·
local tutors in the NCC who organise face to face tutorials
·
a local programme coordinator who liaises with the Project Director
on the Mona campus
·
the Resident Tutor in the local UWIDEC who deal with administrative
matters.
·
Technical assistant from UWIDEC on the Mona campus who troubleshoots problems
with internet connection.
In
collaborative arrangements the teachers who are able to attend classes in two
different institutions benefit from a wider range of interactions with many
different people. Models B and C make this possible and exemplifies –“how
interaction among students can be structured to allow more powerful shared
learning to occur” ( Darling-Hammond 1999, p226). In model C in particular
students benefit from the cross-fertilisation of ideas from peers from many
different countries. Model A is a modification of what was originally agreed
between the TLI and the UWI. According to the agreement all specialist and core
education courses were to be taught by lecturers in the TLI and
students were to travel to the Mona campus to do the content
courses in the disciplines alongside students from other Faculties,
thereby ensuring the kind of interaction that takes place in models B and
C. Financial difficulties militated against this. Neither the TLI nor the
students themselves were prepared to meet the transportation costs.
The Content of Teacher Education
Table 5 : Content of teacher education
CPCE
(Guyana)
DES (Jamaica)
Primary
Primary
Secondary
|
University/College Foundation |
English Proficiency (12) Personal
&Professional Develop. (2) (14) |
English for academic
purposes + one other (6) |
English for academic
purposes + one other (6) |
|
Core Education |
Technology in Education (6) Psychology of
Learning (3) Special Needs (2 Philosophical/Sociological Issues (3) Education & Society (3)
Intro. curriculum (3) Child Devel. (3) Classroom Testing & Measurement
(3) Educational Administration (3) (29) |
Intro. Computers in education (3) Intro.
Curriculum Studies (3) Intro. Learner in Difficulty (3)
+ one other (Research Methods) # (12) |
Intro. Computers in education (3) + one
other (Research Methods) # (6) |
|
Methodology |
Teaching Methods (4) |
|
|
|
Content (Education) |
Reading across the
curriculum(6)Maths/English/ Science/Soc.St. (18 ) Spanish (5)Major Subject (10)
PE(3) Methods in core areas
(4)
(46) |
Courses in Maths, English, social
Studies, Science, Reading, integrated Curriculum music/dance/art/drama (18) |
Area of specialization (e.g. maths,
science, English, History, Spanish) (12) |
|
Content (Disciplines)* |
|
(12) |
(30) |
|
Elective** |
Art & craft/Music /Industrial Arts/Home
Econ. (3) |
(e.g. Conflict &
Aggression in the classroom) (6) |
|
|
Practicum |
(17) |
(9)
|
(9) |
|
Study |
(2) |
(3) |
(3) |
|
Community Project |
(2) |
|
|
|
Total (Credits) |
(113) |
(66)
|
(66) |
*
Done in Faculties other than Education
**
Students could opt to do a co-curricular credit
#
Highly recommended
Increasingly,
teachers have realised that having a B.Ed degree is not the be-all
and end-all of teaching. The education of a teacher falls on a continuum
beginning with school where the would be teacher not
only acquires the pre-requisite knowledge ,attitude and
values but also develops a concept of what ‘teaching ‘is from
observation of his/her teachers and what goes on in
classrooms. At the next stage of initial preparation
(pre-service or in-service) much of what has been learnt has
to be analysed and interrogated. Induction which
is the next stage takes place at university after which the teacher
is involved in continuing professional development over his/her career
(e.g. postgraduate courses at university). Each phase of teacher learning
has essential tasks. In this paper we are only concerned with the
phases of initial preparation (at CPCE) and induction (at
the UWI).It should be noted that the structure outlined in table 5
is of the new CPCE curriculum which was revised in 2000 and
implemented the following year.
Two
of the essential tasks of initial preparation are to
confront early experiences with teaching, analyse initial beliefs, etc
and to develop an understanding of learners and learning and
the understanding of differences to which Darling-Hammond (1999) referred.
This is the purpose of the core education courses in table 5, such as
philosophical and sociological issues and psychology of learning. The
development of subject matter for teaching is another essential task
which the education content and electives in table 5 addresses. A
fourth task is the development of a beginning repertoire of
skills such a s skills in classroom testing and measurement, in
developing curriculum , in addressing special needs and
methods of teaching. A fifth task is the development of professional
ethics. The course on personal and professional development (PPD) was designed
for that purpose.
The
induction phase builds on and reinforces rather than repeats the
stage of initial preparation. Consequently in table 5 we see a much reduced
compulsory educational foundations and theory component but a much
stronger emphasis on the development of subject matter for teaching
in both education content and content from the disciplines, especially at
the secondary level. DES students specialising in history, for
example, do 30 credits of History courses in the Department of History.
Learning to design or adapt responsive curriculum and instruction
which is a task of induction is dealt with in the education
content courses. The Practicum and study for both the primary and
secondary options in the DES is designed so as to enable the teachers to hone
their skills in gaining knowledge of school contexts, the learner and the
curriculum, to create a classroom learning community as well as to develop
skills in reflective teaching (Feraria 2002) which enable them to learn
in and from practice as well as use their practice as a site for
enquiry.
But
table 5 presents not the ideal for the content of teacher education at
either CPCE or the DES, but rather a compromise. Some of the difficulties
which have led to this situation will be discussed.
(i) Language
issues
This
brings us back to the concern about the low level of entry of students to the
TTCD.A major reason for this is the weak language skills of the students.
Students entering the TTCD should have passed the CSEC preferably with a grade
11 at least. But few achieve this. Research in fact has shown that most
countries achieve far below 50% success at grades 1 and 11 with
more countries showing a decline in levels of achievement (Craig,
1998). Research has also shown that whether they are coming from
the Colleges or straight from high school, many students entering the
university are also weak in language skills (Craig ibid). That is
why at the UWI every student has to pass an English Language Proficiency
Test before entry to the UWI and then has to pass a course on
English for Academic Purposes (EAP) before they can be awarded their
degree. Table 5 shows that a considerable amount of time is devoted
to developing the language skills of students in the TTCD and
this is treated in a developmental way in that the courses are
spread over the three years of the programme. Some Faculty members at
UWI consider that the EAP is not enough since many employers
still complain about poor communication skills of university
graduates, and advocate a developmental approach like what applies
at the CPCE. Other members of Faculty feel that the degree programme is
already too packed to accommodate additional courses in English
proficiency.
But
another problem at CPCE relates to the content of modules in some
of the courses which is not appropriate for trainees in the hinterland.
For example, in the Reading across the curriculum reference
is made to ‘bedroom’ and planning a trip to the zoo. While this is
appropriate for the coastal/urban areas of Guyana, it is inappropriate for the
hinterland Amerindians sleep in hammocks slung up in the house. There is
no ‘bedroom’ area as such and they live amongst the animals
that city dwellers would visit in a zoo. Another example is reference
to visit to a supermarket and to buying pizzas and hamburgers. When I
assisted in planning the delivery of the TTCD in the more remote regions
of Guyana, I met with a group of village elders in one of the
remote areas who were fearful of the impact of exposure
to such Western ideas on the indigenous culture. They felt that the
preservation of Amerindian culture needed to be provided for in the
training of the teacher. This underscores why it is essential that
the Amerindians themselves be trained to teach in their own communities.
Prior to the mid-1980s when the HUP was introduced, it was teachers
from the coastal areas who went to the hinterland to teach. Invariably
they found themselves having to teach children in their classes for whom
English was their second (and sometimes their third) language. Their
training programme had not prepared them to deal with this situation. It
was not until 2003 that a programme for teaching English as a second
language was developed for the CPCE ‘s new curriculum.
(ii) Understanding subject matter
Darling-Hammond(1999)
underscores the need for teachers to understand subject
matter in ways that provide a foundation for pedagogical content
knowledge. There is much difference of opinion as to
how this should be done at the degree level, particularly in the preparation of
secondary school teachers. Some are of the view that the training of
secondary school teachers should begin with a first degree in a
discipline, followed by a postgraduate diploma in education. The approach taken
by the DES for many years, however, was for students who had
satisfied the pre-requisite of a three year teachers college
diploma in the teaching of a secondary subject t o proceed to
the B.Ed degree in which they were exposed to at least 27
credits in content (education) and between 15 to 18 credits in
content from the disciplines. The Ministry of Education, based on feedback from
principals of secondary schools, pressed for more content in the disciplines to
improve the teachers’ preparation of students for the CSEC. This was made
a requirement for the B.Ed Sec DE. In the 2002-2003 academic year the
content in the disciplines in the degree programme was increased to 30 credits
and the education content was decreased (see table 5). This was met with much
dissatisfaction from staff in the DES who argued that what was taught in the
disciplines was geared more for persons who wanted to pursue research in the
area rather than for teachers who wanted an understanding of the
subject matter for teaching. The strongest criticism came from the
mathematics educators who proposed that members of the Department of
mathematics should collaborate with the mathematics educators to
develop special content courses for mathematics teachers.
Despite difficulties experienced with the kind of collaboration
envisaged, the mathematics/education (ME) courses were developed and
teaching of these courses began in 2003 in the distance programme. Whether or
not this is a better way of preparing the secondary school teacher cannot be
ascertained since at the time of writing the first batch of
students had not yet completed the programme.
(iii) Integrating technology in the
curriculum
Both
institutions have included in their teacher
preparation courses which train teachers in the use of technology as
an aid to teaching and learning. But this has given rise to different concerns
in each country. The Ministry of Education in Jamaica asked the DES to
ensure that every trained teacher was computer literate and could integrate
technology into t heir teaching. The DES therefore made the Introduction
to Computers in Education (ED20Y) a compulsory course but soon
discovered that the students had a wide ability range. Some students
achieved an ‘A’ grade with little effort, while others seemed afraid even
to touch the computers and struggled through the course. In the August
preceding the beginning of the 2003-2004 academic year, students were given t
he option of doing a ‘challenge examination’ for ED20Y.If they passed it, they
could choose another core education course instead. Not a single
student did the examination, t he excuse being that they were not
prepared to pay the examination fee (less than US$20). However, it
was clear that they had begun to see the course as an ‘easy pass’ that
could raise their grade point average. Because well over 30% of the
students get an ‘A’ grade in ED20Y, a decision has been taken not
to include the course in the list of compulsory core education courses as
of the 2007-2008 academic year, but to retain the challenge examination and
still keep the course as a requirement for the award of the
B.Ed.
Given
the vast contrast in teaching /learning environments in Guyana, two
different courses were designed for the new CPCE curriculum. The course
on Technology in Education was designed for teachers working
in schools in the more coastal areas where electricity was
available and teachers and students had access to computers and the
Internet. For those who would be working in schools in the
hinterland, there was the course on Appropriate Technology for
situations of fundamental constraints. These schools had no
electricity and no access to computers, but had to rely on traditional
technologies such as the chalkboard and charts made from cardboard
and they would need to know what to do when they ran out of chalk.
I visited a school in one of the remote regions of
Guyana where the teacher, on discovering that she had no chalk, sent one of the
children to fetch a particular soft stone from a nearby river bed. The
evaluation of the TTCD revealed that even in situations where computers
were available, so many trainees had to share one computer that it
rendered the Technology in Education course ineffective. Even so,
trainees in the remote regions insisted that they too should be
exposed to this course (Jennings 2005).
(iv) Provision for the holistic development of
the teacher
When the new
curriculum for the CPCE was being developed, the principal
and lecturers of the college bemoaned the type of person that was
being attracted into the profession. They emphasised
the need for courses that would develop desirable attitudes and
values and mould them into role models for the young. The course, Personal
and Professional Development, was designed with this in mind. It was
originally conceived as developmental in that it would be delivered in
modules over the three years of the training programme and would promote
health, wellness and human living. Other areas in the course included ethics,
professionalism, morality and values. However, there were other areas in the
old curriculum taught by influential staff members over many
years who fought hard for the survival of their field in the new
curriculum. One such area was Educational Administration. This area was
not included in the original blueprint not only because the primary option was
designed for preparing classroom teachers but also because it had been
observed that its inclusion encouraged those trained to be classroom
teachers to move into educational administration at the degree
level leading to an over subscription of that area with few
wanting to be trained to return to the primary classroom after the B.Ed
degree. The Educational Administrators, however, won out.
Over
the years at the UWI there has been a movement away from a total focus on
academic learning in a specialised area towards exposure to a
curriculum oriented to a more holistic development of the student. All
UWI students have to do two courses outside their own Faculties to
ensure a much broader development. A student in the Faculty of
Humanities and Education, for example, may do a course in Law
,Governance and Society in the Faculty of Social Sciences while a student
in the Faculty of Medicine may do a course in Caribbean Civilisation. But in
more recent times, some members of the UWI community have argued for
broadening the student’s development even further.
This has been motivated by research that employers
value personal and intellectual skills beyond those traditionally emphasised in
higher education-skills such as communication skills, teamwork and
interpersonal skills, problem –solving and decision-making skills, flexibility
and adaptability , imagination and creativity (Brown and Stewart 2004). Fallow
(2003) highlights different models used by tertiary level institutions
for teaching theses skills. This includes the external model used
by the UWI . Here students develop the needed skills through
co-curricular activity.
Reynolds
(2004/5) underscores the importance of Student Services Divisions (SSD)
in higher education institutions in contributing to the holistic development of
the tertiary level student through offering learning
experiences that enhance the affective development of
the learners She reported, however, that many faculty members of
tertiary level institutions believe that student personal development
programmes should not be their concern (Reynolds 2004/5). Her own
research showed that tertiary level students in Jamaica
attached great importance to services that supported their
affective development, but generally found the delivery of such
services wanting in these institutions. “Serious consideration”,
she maintains “needs to be given to the concept of tertiary
level institutions as learning communities, where the holistic
development of students is not just the concern of an individual department”
(Reynolds 2004/5:24). Reynolds in fact seems to be proposing what Fallows
(2003) calls the totally embedded model. Here skills
development takes place within the general curriculum and across the
range of courses offered. It would then become a shared
responsibility of all Faculty members.
In the 2001-2002 academic
year the SSD at UWI spearheaded the development of co-curricular credits
whereby students could be given three credits towards their degree for
involvement in co-curricular activities such as sports, dramatic society and
leadership programmes. This development has been well supported by
some students. In a recent study, one student said of the Quality
Leadership Programme: “It should be compulsory that every student get involved
in a co-curricular activity. My involvement in the UWI’ s Quality
Leadership programme has helped me improve my academic performance
significantly. During the same semester I joined the programme, my GPA for
the first time in any semester moved from below 3 points to 3.8”
(Jennings 2006).
(vi) Balancing the curriculum
With
the rapid advance of technology, the job of the teacher has become
more complex and demanding and teachers are required to know more and
more in order to cope with these new demands. Universal secondary education,
for example, brings with it students with a wider range of abilities that
the teacher has to cope with. Teachers also have to be able to use
a wider range of assessment techniques. More often than not, they
have to be able to deal with aggressive and violent behaviour in the
classroom, often from children who have real learning difficulties. The
content of their training, it can be argued should prepare them to deal
successfully with all of these things. But the reality is that, given the
limitation of time to complete an initial training certificate or
a degree, difficult choices have to be made. This is evident
in table 5. Secondary teachers need to be exposed to course that
help them deal with conflict and aggressive behaviour but the strong
content input in their area of specialisation leaves no room for electives.
Because the degree programme builds on what was
done at the Teachers college, there are few compulsory
educational foundations and theory courses. This poses dilemmas for
the students. For example, many of the secondary students would like to do the
course on the learner in difficulty, but after graduation most want to
proceed to the Masters degree for which research
methods is a pre-requisite.
But
there are other pressures on the DES curriculum arising from demands in
the wider university. As part of the UWI’s repositioning itself to
be more competitive and produce a more rounded graduate for life
and the working world, Departments have been encouraged to introduce service
learning .The DES has not found room in the curriculum to introduce it , apart
from Educational Administration where it is an integral part of the
design of that option. For their practicum students work in groups
to identify a need in a school or in the community. They develop
a plan to respond to that need, mobilise resources and
implement the plan. These students have done such things as
renovate school libraries, install water tanks in schools, refurbish
classrooms, establish computer rooms, renovate health clinics in the
community. The community project done by students at CPCE is very similar to
this. This project was considered so valuable to
t
he students as well as the communities that benefited that it
was carried over from the old curriculum to the new.
Another
pressure on the DES curriculum is to ensure that every teacher , who does
not have a second language, acquires one during the course of the degree.
Opinions on this vary, even about what should be the second language. While
Spanish is the obvious choice, given that most Caribbean countries are
surrounded by Spanish speaking neighbours, some members of faculty
argue that given the reconfiguration of world powers taking
place, Chinese, Portuguese or Hindi are also strong alternatives. Some are of
the view that the second language requirement should be made at the
school level and not at the university. Others argue that it is all part of the
rounding of the students’ education. The point however is that the DES
has not been able to find room to include this foreign language requirement in
its curriculum. The CPCE was the first teachers college in the English-speaking
Caribbean to make Spanish compulsory in its curriculum. Others followed suit
later because of the current trend for the learning of Spanish to
begin at the primary level. In the original blueprint for the new CPCE
curriculum Spanish was to be taught in the second year of the
programme and given a total of four credits. But it too fell victim
to the pressure for space in the curriculum from other areas considered
more important (e. g Reading across the curriculum) and was given
only 2 credits and “squashed in a concentrated period of
three weeks one summer” (Jennings 2005:11). Spanish was treated in the college
curriculum as it is treated in the schools “as a ‘third-class’ subject
whose time was reduced if extra instructional time was needed for high-status
subjects like the sciences” (Jennings 2001:119).
Conclusion
This
striving for a balanced curriculum in the two institutions studied underscores
the growing tension between the role of higher education as
preparation for employment and that of providing a general
enhancement of knowledge and a cultivation of values and attitudes and
the development of the personality. But a curriculum once developed is not
static. It is constantly kept under review and responds accordingly to
changes not only in the society but in the global world. Both the
DES and the CPCE have attempted to provide ‘programmes of powerful teacher
education ‘ which Darling-Hammond speaks about , but a mix of die-hard
practices, inadequacies of resources prevent them achieving their ideals.
There are innovative ideas in the new CPCE curriculum that the
lecturers have not yet attempted to implement. For example, Special
Needs was originally conceived as being infused in various aspects of the
curriculum (e.g. in courses on Child Development and Psychology of Learning and
Teaching). The Practicum was conceived as development with the module for
each semester having a different focus but all being designed to provide
an opportunity for guidance in implementing ideas learnt and skills
acquired. For example, Practicum 3 in year 2 was designed to provide
opportunities for the trainees to demonstrate skills in catering to
students of differing abilities including those with special needs.
Practicum 5 in the final year reinforced these skills
with particular attention to low achieving males. Such differentiation
required the use of instruments specifically designed to assess the
particular skills. But such differentiation was not done and the
same instrument was used all the time with the result that the
students saw the Practicum as ‘going on too long’ (Jennings 2005:10).
In
the 2005-2006 academic year the DES undertook a review of its core
courses and decided that room had to be found in the curriculum for all
students to do a course in special needs, conflict and aggression in the
classroom and research methods. A review of the Education content courses
revealed that some economy of space could be achieved in the curriculum
if, instead of each option doing its own teaching method course, a
common teaching method course be done and then
reinforced in other courses, as in the CPCE curriculum. All of this
underscores the dynamic nature of the curriculum and the fact that it is
constantly changing and ways are being found of responding to the issues
that have been highlighted in this paper.
References
and/or complementary bibliography
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policy In The Education of Teachers: Ninety Eighth Yearbook of the National
Society for the Study of Education Griffin, G,A, (Ed). Chicago University
of Chicago Press.
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S. (2003) Teaching and learning for student skills development In: Fry, H,
Ketteridge, S, Marshall, S. A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in
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,P (2002) Preparing the teacher as reflective practitioner: some emerging
trends in a professional training programme at the University of the West
Indies, Jamaica. Journal of Education and Development in the Caribbean Vol.
4, No. 2 :107-122.
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Z. (1999) Innovation with Hesitation: Distance Education in Commonwealth
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Caribbean Vol 3 No.2 :115-144.
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Z. (2001). Teacher education in selected countries in the
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Z.(2005). The review and evaluation of the Certificate programme
delivered by CPCE(August 2001-July 2004).Quebec: TECSULT.
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Z (2006). The role of faculty in holistic learning and development. Paper
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Marshall,
S (2004) Blended learning/Asynchronous delivery: A UWIDEC project for
2004/5 UWIDEC.
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H.; Tsekoa, K. (1987). Distance Education in Small Nation States.
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Educational Development in the Small States of the Commonwealth.
London, Commonwealth Secretariat
Reynolds,
T.(2004/5) Affective Teaching and Learning in Tertiary Level Institutions: An
Imperative for the 21st Century. Journal of Education and
Development in the Caribbean Vol. 8. Nos 1&2: 1-27.
A Kingdom identity: mirage,
illusion, or vision?
Some
allochthonous thoughts on the European and Caribbean Dutch, unequal equals with
an elusive common identity
University of
St. Martin, Netherlands
Antilles
silviosergio@yahoo.com
“In the middle of every difficulty lies
opportunity.”
Albert Einstein
Introduction
I would like to start with
one of the points made in 2004 by the so-called Jesurun Report: “Een visie op
het Koninkrijk ontbreekt,” that is, “What is missing is a vision of the
Kingdom” (Werkgroep BFV, 2004:6). Suzanne Römer, one of the former Prime
Ministers of the Netherlands Antilles, pointed in the same direction: “In the
discussion about the status aparte, autonomous St. Martin or Korsou
outonomo, Crown Island, fundamental special bond with the Netherlands,
etc., I miss a discussion about the content of the Kingdom” (Arrindell,
2006:40).
It is precisely this
Kingdom dimension that interests me. Even though the Islands have opted to
request the cessation of the Netherlands Antilles, they want to remain within
the broader partnership of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Netherlands has
shown itself increasingly reluctant to accord with the requested changes, which
incidentally fall under the right to self-determination of the Islands. The
European Dutch are not as aware of the Kingdom reality as are their Caribbean
counterparts. In fact, they have recently been woken up to the common Dutchness
which they share with the other Caribbean Kingdom subjects due to the
discussions and debates to which the multicultural society has given rise. For
instance, whether or not criminal Antillean Dutch youths could be sent away
from the Netherlands back to their Islands. Social integration programs for
newcomers in the Netherlands do not even mention the statutory fact that these
new citizens are entering a whole Kingdom, and not merely “Holland,” as they
would most likely (and inaccurately so) call it in English.
Is there a Dutch Kingdom
identity at all? Is it a sheer mirage, something that vanishes as soon as you
try to examine it more closely? Is it an illusion, cheap make-belief, concocted
by those who drew up the Statuut or Charter for the Kingdom of the
Netherlands, the old Motherland trying to appease its former plantation
“bastard” stepchildren by letting them think that they were being treated
equally, on a par with the Kingdom’s “real” children?
My suggestion is that if
all parties involved are honest and responsible enough, the Kingdom
identity can be redefined so that it becomes a visionary blueprint for
the future. If the Kingdom subjects committed their energy to this
multilingual, multiethnic, multi-religious, and multifaceted project that is
the Kingdom of the Netherlands, both the Caribbean and European Dutch could
become more rather than less. Such a common project of mutual social
enrichment would be an asset in our globalized world where we need to multiply
our potentials rather than reduce them.
Forging identities
Identities are
not the same as identification. Identity is what we choose to become: our life
project. Identification is how society sees and defines us. For instance, when
we identify ourselves with our society’s racial categories we become
racialized. This means that we do no longer look upon ourselves as individuals
endowed with personal characteristics and free choice, but as black, white,
yellow, or mixed, i.e. as an impersonal living sample of a group.
It is at this
point that many ongoing integration or “inburgering” programs overstep the line
that distinguishes the public from the private arenas. When a government claims
the right to determine how people should think or feel about certain issues, it
has gone too far. A government can inform its citizens what the laws and/or
binding customs of the community are; moreover, it must enforce them. However,
it may never force its people to agree with them. Only fascist governments will
claim that their power reaches to the inside of a person’s mind and heart.
Governments are there not to regulate what individuals think or feel, but to
shape and steer the course of interpersonal relations, guaranteeing that they
take place in accordance with the community’s inner agreements that are
crystallized in the law. For the law, in democratic societies, theoretically
expresses the will of the majority: it functions as a social pact which
is made, adapted, and changed by the people through the representatives that
they have elected directly or indirectly.
Nonetheless,
there will be issues such as safety and decency that will extend the presence
of the state deeper into our more private spheres. The state will regulate, for
instance, what types of electronic gadgets are safe and we may therefore buy
and sell, or what clothing is considered dangerous.
Identity is a complex
issue. Human identities share in the human predicament: they are always
relative and changing constructions, never absolute and monolithic. They are hypotheses.
Personal and social
identities are built on some memory of the past as remembered and retold,
and are themselves a project of becoming whose fulfillment lies in
the future. Very often the past we seem to be describing is nothing other than
the future we would like to be able to identify ourselves with: it is not our
roots, but the imaginary ground in which we would like to take roots.
Identities are ideological constructions
Identities are semantic realities: they are products of broader
meaning‑producing processes which encompass language(s), culture(s),
social interaction(s), political relationships, religious tradition(s), the
human habitat etc. For indeed, “every cultural phenomenon is a communication
act that can be understood only in reference to the codes, rules, conventions, structures
that constitute it as such” (De Lauretis, 1981:29).
Things such as language, culture, political relationships,
religious traditions, among other phenomena, are macrostructures built on
presuppositions and conventions born out of lived experience, yet transcending
the singular. They constitute the network within which individuals subsist and
without which we cannot be human. Humans are humanized within the matrix of
such macrostructures. We are initiated into (at least) one culture and one
language, which are therefore not our exclusive possessions, but the signs of
our social dependency.
The fact that we humans are always‑already found within a
broader network of socio‑geographical interactions, with views and
personal positions about the meaning of what happens in and around us,
necessitates the conclusion that we are not disinterested cultural agents. Our
so-called identities are perspectival in a similar way as our consciousness is.
An ideology is a more or less unquestioned, social and personal
default worldview from which and within which we and our identities live.
“Ideology” is therefore not seen here exclusively as a forceful political view,
but as the more or less arbitrary, yet necessary, structuring structure without
which we as humans would not be able to become functional social agents. To be
a human is to define oneself and be defined by others as such, in light of a
set of more or less conscious presuppositions, and to situate oneself and be
situated within the humanized world. Ideologies are part and parcel of the
humanizing processes.
Cultural phenomena take
place within an ideological universe that is made up of various plausible
parallel ideological systems, each with its own central star, black holes,
singularities and unknown entities. Ideologies do not exist anywhere, they
function rather (a) as the general models of what has already been
patterned and / or (b) as models for what must and
could still be patterned. They are thus the gnoseological structures that
structure thought and feelings, without possessing any ontic existence. This is
the sense in which Eco speaks of the structure as being absent
(De Lauretis, 1981:31f). It is at this point that concepts such as ideology,
myth and truth converge on one another and become very difficult to
distinguish, so much so that what is said of one may mutatis mutandis be
applied to the other. Ricoeur —following Turbayne— speaks thus of myth as
“believed poetry,” as “metaphor taken literally” and —following Nietzsche— of
truths as being “illusions of which one has forgotten that they are
illusions” (Ricoeur, 1994:251.286, respectively).
What exists is particular actualizations of general ideologies.
In this sense, Christianity (the structured given) cannot be equaled to
the ideology of the gospels (the structuring model), nor can the Soviet
state be identified with Marxism. They are particular, always relative and
alternative, actualizations of the ideal. For neither the ideology of the
gospels nor that of Marx exists anywhere in concrete, what there exists is
particular religious groups and socio‑political bodies that pattern
themselves after the ideal, structuring model.
An ideology constitutes
therefore the ideational framework within which individuals are socialized and
interact with themselves and others, with the environment and the Ultimate
Horizon. Ideologies concern thus not only what people think, but also what they
feel insofar as it is hard to feel what one does not know (Cassirer, 1953:3ff.;
Heidegger, 1971:19; Lonergan, 1973:4.253; Bleicher, 1990:98-103). Would we be
“angry” if we did not have the word “angry”? Would it not feel otherwise if we
called it something else?
Eagleton defines an
ideology as “an inherently complex formation which, by inserting individuals
into history in a variety of ways, allows of multiple kinds and degrees of
access to that history” (Eagleton, 1976:69). Observers observe from within an
already existing framework. This is the predicament of human knowledge: all
knowledge comes from a given perspective. The fact that one sees the difference
between a robber’s demand to hand over a certain amount of money under threat
of violence and that of a tax inspector’s shows that people have been pre‑programmed
to differentiate between a robber and a government official. The fact that the
mechanics of the sexual act between siblings and between two unrelated people
are the same does not undo the incest taboo. This is because we humans do not
live in the mechanic world of physics, but in the quite arbitrary world of
culture. We could also mention the distinction between abortion, self‑defense
killing, euthanasia, homicide and murder, or between private property and
common property. Moreover, theoretically speaking, an observer that looks at
five birds from within a worldview where people only know the categories of
“one,” “two” and “many” will not become aware of the distinction between “four
birds,” “five birds” or “a hundred birds”. They will just speak of “many birds”
(Brouwer, 2000:25‑26).
Even though culture is larger than ideology insofar as the former
comprises also all material productions of a people and of individuals within
it, the two are radically interrelated; for even material production is
dependant upon considerations such as purpose, functionality, demand,
receptivity, aesthetic judgments, etc. Things are more or less functional, more
or less worth doing or making —and worth rests on value judgments. Ideologies
therefore have to do with culture “as a community of evidences, i.e. as a
‘secret’ collectivity within which a number of ideas, believable items, value
judgments, etc. become recognized as evident at a given moment in history and
do no longer need to be justified” (Brouwer,
2000).
Every ideology is
ultimately based on beliefs, presuppositions or assumptions that are both
necessary and relative. These presuppositions are necessary mechanisms because
if individuals and cultures are to think of themselves and others in any way at
all, and if they are to interact with reality at all, they have to
depart from some guiding principles. Nonetheless, the concrete ways in which
this need for intellectual and behavioral co‑ordinates is met and given
content are relative. They are true and reasonable on condition that,
provided that (if A, then B, and then also C). The belief that “peace
is better than war,” for instance, is true only if one accepts, among other
things, that the law of the jungle is not the determining factor for the
further evolution of human society. In this sense, thinking, perceptions,
emotions (to a certain extent) and actions go hand in hand with a narrative
that grounds them, leads them, criticizes them, rewards them, or even condemns
them. This narrative is basically a myth (in the extended sense of the word)
that, when worked out, becomes overall ideologies. Ideologies level out, draw
out, socialize, and perpetuate the initial myth (Murray, 1986:159-195).
Identities are imagined
Identity includes memory
and expectation: it tells where one comes from, as well as where one is going
to or ought to be going to.
If I look towards the past,
at the memory element, what binds both the European and Caribbean Dutch
is colonialism. The ancestors of the European Dutch expropriated the land that
belonged to other people and laid a claim to it; then, they went on to
fabricate their Caribbean, watering its soil with the sweat and blood of slaves
(and, in the Surinamese case, also with Asian indentured laborers). It is
therefore not a wonder that both types of Dutch citizens have tried to suppress
the memories of their shared past of oppressing or being oppressed, enslaving
or being enslaved, being the master or the subject.
Unlike the post-Hitler
Germans, who were not allowed to forget the atrocities committed by the Nazis
and their affiliates, post-slavery Europeans were allowed to get away with
robbery, kidnapping, abuse, rape, and murder. How can European and Caribbean
Dutch individuals create a past that can engender a common feeling of a Kingdom
identity surpassing negative bipolarities when there has been an
institutionalized loss of memory, the oblivion of the guilty, as well as
of the embarrassed and humiliated?
If we look towards the future,
there are different possibilities. The Caribbean Dutch could choose (to
continue) to see their Dutch nationality as a sign of colonial dependency and
seek independence (however, only a minority on the islands harbors such a
wish). The Caribbean Dutch could also accept their Dutchness, at least at the
level of nationality, being equals within the Kingdom, accepting that equal
rights entail equal responsibilities.
However, the problem with
both the past and the future is that the former does not exist any longer and
the latter does not exist as yet. The act of attributing an identity to
ourselves is basically an undertaking in the present. “Time exists only
insofar as it can be measured, and the yardstick by which we measure it is
space. Where is the space located that permits us to measure time? For
Augustine the answer is: in our memory where things are being stored up.
Memory, the storehouse of time, is the presence of the ‘no more’ (iam non)
as expectation is the presence of the ‘not yet’ (nondum). Therefore I do
not measure what is no more, but something in my memory that remains fixed in
it. It is only by calling past and future into the present of remembrance and
expectation that time exists at all. Hence the only valid tense is the present,
the Now.” (Arendt, 1996:15)
The present is all that we
have to work with. On what could an inclusive Kingdom Dutch identity be
based here and now, using the tools that are at our disposal without falling
under the reductive influences of nationalistic, exclusivist, or fragmentary
identities? Is there anything in the present cacophonic Babel of the Kingdom of
the Netherlands that could ground some sort of “common Kingdom identity,”
something that would justify the qualification of “Dutch” for both European and
Caribbean Dutch citizens, the old and the newcomers alike?
Even though the Dutchness
of the Caribbean Dutch does make them different from the rest of the Caribbean
people, it does not make them very similar to their European Kingdom partners.
History binds them as much as it divides them: the colonial master and the
servant may be gone, but the arrogance and the grudges characteristic of both
have not been eradicated yet. Just as the collective psyche of the Jews has
never quite forgotten the Holocaust, so too do European and Caribbean Dutch
individuals continue to be born within the asymmetric structures engendered by
and inherited from the colonial machinery.
The Kingdom vision: a union of countries
The Statuut voor het
Konkrijk der Nederlanden or Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands of
1954 (henceforth: Statuut) founded a type of Kingdom that we could mutatis
mutandis compare to the European Union of the future: a union of autonomous
countries sharing a statutory foundation, as well as a common defense and
foreign affairs portfolio. For, indeed, the Kingdom of the Netherlands is made
up of countries that are autonomous in matters of internal affairs but
integrated on issues of defense, nationality, and foreign affairs. The Preamble
of the Statuut states that these countries will be joined in a new
juridical order within which they would embark on an autonomous search
of their own concerns, as well as a common quest of their common concerns,
on a footing of equal dignity and helping one another along the way.
“The Netherlands, the
Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, considering that they, of their own free will,
have stated that they accept a new constitutional order for the Kingdom of the
Netherlands, in which they will, autonomously handle their internal affairs,
and, on a basis of equality, handle the common interests and render assistance
to each other, have decided in mutual consultation, to establish the Charter
for Kingdom of the Netherlands as follows.” (Statuut, Preamble)
At the head of the Kingdom
is the monarch (the King or Queen), who symbolizes the unity of the statutory
partners, vouchsafing for the Kingdom’s rationale (Statuut, § 1.
art. 2.1).
I would like to interpret
this unity in difference and autonomy in solidarity as a social project—say, the
Kingdom vision. While it presupposes an implicit recognition of the past of
injustice that brought together the European and Caribbean Dutch and explains
why they are now all Dutch, it can also be seen as a wish for equity that could
help the individual and social psyche of the Kingdom work out their differences
in their mutual favor. The Preamble may be described as visionary, even though
this most probably was an unwilled side-effect, and reality is still trying to
catch up with it.
The Statuut states
that the Kingdom members can veto any project of changes to the statutory
relations within the Kingdom. This means that the Netherlands cannot
one-sidedly break up the Kingdom. The Statuut, which certainly did not
intend to be an “eternal edict,” has become one (Oostindie, 2002:10).
The Caribbean Dutch have
clearly indicated that they do not want to follow the Surinamese example. They
have opted against the Netherlands Antilles, but in favor of the Kingdom. They
want to maintain their Dutch nationality, mostly because of practical reasons.
Their choice indirectly proves that, in the Antilles, the colonists lacked an
effective colonial cultural policy. Unlike the Surinamese, the Caribbean Dutch
did not quite become culturally “Dutch,” at least not in any
considerable way. This created the situation in which the Surinamese, who are
Dutch-speaking and feel profoundly connected with the Netherlands, found
themselves severed from the Kingdom in 1975, while the Antilleans and Arubans,
whose knowledge of Dutch and the Dutch culture is not remarkable, are still
inside the Kingdom.
Autonomy is a start, but not everything
The problem is that the
issue of the common Kingdom Dutchness is not without problems.
The European and Antillean
Dutch citizens were unequal equals at the moment in which of the Statuut
was drawn up and still are today (Munneke,
2002:34; Broek, 2005:7). The Caribbean Dutch have preferred to stress their
autonomy, while their European counterparts opted to stay out, trying to remain
politically correct. Thus, autonomy became lack of meaningful engagement and
commitment. The Kingdom grew and continued to grow in disproportionate ways:
while its European member became increasingly preoccupied with its own problems
and the European question, the Caribbean communities became more and more
disenchanted with the Netherlands Antilles.
Colonial thought-patterns
die hard, in general and in particular. The very relationships of dependency
that the Netherlands had implanted in the individual minds and groups of the
colonized at the levels of law, education, and finances became structural
obstacles to Kingdom equality. The European Dutch legal mentality made it worse.
One of the most characteristic malaises of the European Dutch political culture
is the belief that solutions can be imposed and society changed at will by
decree. Many politicians see themselves as engineers and the rest as mere clay
waiting to be shaped. The European Dutch tend to think that all that they need
to do to solve social problems is talk about the problems, pass good laws, and
then convince the people of the goodness of these laws —of course, because
there are no laws as good as the Dutch in the entire world! Often, their
culture is sick with self-importance, the myth of a tolerant self that
tolerates only itself and the like. The establishment must now wake up
to reality. People are not submissive clay; they resist the politicians’
hubris.
The Constitution: a clear sign of inequality
The Netherlands cannot deny
that it (i.e. the European partner in the Kingdom) is still the colonial master
who continues to identify itself with the Kingdom and its identity with
the pure Dutch identity. The Dutchness of the other Dutch citizens is
not their own since it does not belong to them: it has been given
to them. This applied not only to the newcomers (the Dutch of Turkish or
Moroccan descent), but also to the Caribbean Dutch.
The Queen, who is the basic
symbol of the unity of the Kingdom and the equal dignity of its member
countries, resides in the Netherlands and has Governors or Lieutenant Governors
in the Caribbean Dutch territories. If the Kingdom was truly based on a footing
of equality between its members, the monarch would alternate her stay among the
countries of her Kingdom to preclude any identification of the Kingdom with any
of the individual member countries. This would be desirable especially as a
means to rectify the colonial past of the Netherlands. In such a case scenario,
it is altogether reasonable that the Queen should have a Governor in Amsterdam
or Den Haag just as she currently has one in Curaçao and Oranjestad.
The part in the government
of the Kingdom allotted to the governments of the Caribbean member countries is
quite negligible. Ҥ 2. Art. 7 The Kingdom Council of Ministers consists
of Ministers appointed by the King and the respective Plenipotentiary Ministers
appointed by the governments of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. (…) § 2.
Art. 10.1 The Plenipotentiary Minister will take part in those discussions
in meetings of the Council of Ministers and the permanent boards and special
committees of the council, regarding Kingdom matters affecting his respective
country.” (Statuut)
The idea of the equality of
the Kingdom member countries is also weakened by the Statuut’s lexical
distinction between the names of the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom member
countries. Ҥ 4. Art. 42.1 Within the Kingdom, the constitutional
organization of the Netherlands is established in the Constitution, that of the
Netherlands Antilles in the Regulations for the Islands of the Netherlands
Antilles and that of Aruba in the Island Regulations for Aruba.” (Statuut)
In other words, the
Netherlands got a Constitution, whereas the insular partners did Island
Regulations. This lexical colonial Freudian slip is further aggravated by
the fact that the Constitution of the Netherlands is called: the Constitution of
the Kingdom of the Netherlands or Grondwet van het Koninkrijk der
Nederlanden. It is also remarkable that even though this Constitution does
not explicitly legislate for Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, it does still
do so indirectly when it concerns the establishment of the Kingdom’s Organs,
the workings of which are described in the Constitution.
The legislative
component of the Kingdom is also equally one-sided. Ҥ1. Art. 4.2
Legislative power, with regard to the Kingdom, is executed by the Legislative
body of the Kingdom. Draft Kingdom laws will be handled with the observation of
articles 15, up to and including, article 21.” (Statuut)
Articles 15 up to including
article 21 will show that the First and Second Chambers of the States-General (Staten
Generaal) —which are in the Netherlands— take on factual precedence over
the Dutch Caribbean legislative bodies. This is so even despite the role
allotted to the Plenipotentiary Ministers of the Netherlands Antilles and
Aruba, respectively, in the Kingdom’s law-making processes. Even though the
Plenipotentiary Ministers of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, respectively,
may introduce a project of Kingdom law at the Second Chamber of the Dutch
Parliament, the Members of this Parliament have been elected only by the voters
of the country of the Netherlands. Needless to say, this does not do justice to
the Caribbean Dutch citizens’ right to meaningful self-determination.
The current process of
statutory inner self-redefinition of the Kingdom relations vis-à-vis the
cessation of the Netherlands Antilles has further reinforced the inkling that
the Kingdom of the Netherlands is a union of unequal equals. The government of
the Netherlands would seem to act at times as though they were the mouth
speakers of the Kingdom.
What is the value of such a Kingdom?
One might rightfully ask:
Why maintain a Kingdom while there is no visibly dominant Kingdom identity? Who
wins and who loses? Is its survival based, on the part of the Caribbean Dutch,
on the pragmatic benefits of having the Dutch nationality or, on the part of
the European Dutch, on the guilty feelings of the old masters who would lose
face if they sent the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba away as they did Suriname?
The Caribbean Dutch have
opted to discontinue the Netherlands Antilles, while expressly restating their
will to stay within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Their option is in keeping
with Resolution 2625 (XXV) passed by the United Nations General Assembly in
1970: “The emergence of a sovereign and independent State, the free association
or integration with an independent State or the emergence into any other
political status freely determined by a people constitute modes of implementing
the right of self-determination by that people.” Does the Netherlands share the
same commitment to the Kingdom or do its citizens merely feel saddled with the
burden of their colonial past in the Caribbean, “the wages of the slave and
plantation masters’ sins”? Have they ever really opted for a Kingdom of
equals? Are they willing to put their money where their mouth is?
Concluding remarks
I consider myself a world
citizen and as such I refuse to let myself be reduced to my nationality. Still,
for dearth of better criteria, I would like to underline the truism that even
though our personal identity can never be circumscribed to being this or that
because we are much more, from the legal point of view, our identity as
natural persons within the global political community is still defined by our
nationality. The law is the basic organizational framework within which we
become who we can be by demanding our rights and doing our duties. If the law
says that we are Dutch, we will be as Dutch as any other Dutch citizen,
according to the terms of the law. This is not the greatest humanist ideal, but
it is also not an irrelevant given. We can build on it as we attempt to form
communities and steer their course. We do not need to fight for what the law
already gives us; we must only find ways to implement it and, if need be, even
demand that it be done.
Even though sometimes
people treat “country, nation, and people” as though they were synonymous, they
refer to different things. They may be coterminous, but they are not the same.
Countries are legal constructions. They may house one or more peoples and
nations. They may equally be mono- or multicultural communities. Communities
may be joined by cultural or ethnic traits, which may or may not be our own,
but countries are established by laws and manifested in nationalities. We may
be among the nationals of a country, even though we are not members of its
majority ethnic group.
The Kingdom of the
Netherlands is not one country, but a union of countries within which several
groups are found (in terms of language, religion, descent, philosophies,
economics, education, politics, etc.). However, the Statuut recognizes
the equal legal standing of all of the citizens and
residents of the Kingdom, regardless whether they share the same traits and
culture or not.
For a society that keeps to
the rule of law, the above makes all the difference. If some of the cultural
identities of a society were unjustly privileged to the detriment of others,
this would equal to a breach of the equality that the law foresees. Therefore,
the moral caliber of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is essentially linked to the
recognition and defense of the common Dutchness of all of its members; this
is the basis upon which the rest of their fundamental rights and duties are
established.
I would suggest that the
nationals of the Kingdom of the Netherlands be invited to focus on the fact
that the law stipulates that all Dutch nationals are equally Dutch. Once
the people have become aware of this liberating idea, each of the Kingdom
partners should struggle to have its rights recognized, not based on the size of
its population, but in terms of its status as Kingdom partner.
Given that the Kingdom is a
union at the statutory level between countries that can autonomously deal with
their own internal affairs, it is of paramount importance that the equality of
all the members may be visible and safeguarded at this very statutory
level, which is not the case now since it is quite undeniable that the
Netherlands has drawn Kingdom capacities toward itself. The Kingdom’s
administrative and legislative dimensions should be clearly, easily, and
absolutely distinguishable from the government of the country of the
Netherlands, which is not quite the case at present.
The wording of Kingdom
statutory law should show its community character. The stipulation of the Statuut
dealing with naturalization is clearly written from the perspective of the
country of the Netherlands, as though naturalization into the Kingdom’s
nationality was not the same everywhere in the Kingdom’s territories: “§
2. Art. 11.5 Proposals for naturalization are assumed to affect the
Netherlands Antilles and Aruba only when the petitioners live in those
countries. (…) § 2. Art. 14.4 The naturalization of persons, who are
residing in the Netherlands Antilles or Aruba is done by Kingdom Law.” (Statuut)
A more Kingdom-conscious alternative could have been: Ҥ 2. Art. 11.5
Proposals for naturalization are assumed to affect the individual country where
the petitioners live, namely the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles, or
Aruba. (…) § 2. Art. 14.4 The naturalization of persons within the
Kingdom, regardless whether they live in the Netherlands, the Netherlands
Antilles, or Aruba, is done by Kingdom Law.”
At the economic and
financial level, population size will surely be of importance since small
developing islands cannot be expected to compete with a fully developed country
as the Netherlands. However, if there is a healthy conviction of the common
Kingdom identity, looking after each other’s need in cooperation —as the
Kingdom Charter says and as the European Union is doing vis-à-vis its needier
members— should not be an impossible task. False prides born out of historical
complexes should be overcome on both sides of the Atlantic.
The common Dutchness of all
the Kingdom’s citizens should lead to a common concern for democracy, the rule
of law, and welfare at all levels of the Kingdom.
If European and Caribbean Dutch people decided
that they would like their belonging to the Kingdom of the Netherlands to be
continued in ways that are meaningful and concrete, then,
education, the arts, study trips, and sports could become effective channels
whereby a Kingdom identity could be forged on all sides. Such a
Kingdom identity would be polyvalent, with as many different facets as a
diamond. The European Dutch would have to learn that the Kingdom is larger than
the Netherlands, and the Caribbean Dutch would have to value their belonging to
a statutory body which enables them to have special ties with the European
Union, as well as the rest of the Caribbean. This should be a question of being
and becoming more, instead of less.
The European education
system would have to acquaint its pupils and students with the history and
culture of the Dutch Caribbean, and the Caribbean Dutch education systems ought
to help their pupils and students to discover the multifaceted reality of the
Kingdom, including the assets of their fellow nationals in the Netherlands,
both old and newcomers.
The issue of language
should function as an example. The Kingdom of the Netherlands is practically trilingual.
This is not a matter of discussion and it need not be proven: it is a fact. The
Caribbean Dutch must demand what is theirs. The Kingdom ought to accept
the fact that some parts of the Kingdom are essentially Dutch-speaking,
others Papiamento-speaking, and others English-speaking. The Kingdom’s
statutory and juridical framework ought therefore to expressly acknowledge and
reflect this linguistic given, thus establishing in the letter of the law that
Dutch, Papiamento, and English are the official languages of the Kingdom,
in a similar way as French, Dutch, and German are the official languages of the
Federal Kingdom of Belgium. The text of the Constitution of the Kingdom should
be trilingual and so too the Kingdom’s whole legal corpus. It should even be
desired that the members of the Kingdom government, starting by the monarch,
are fluent in all three languages.
However, the poor knowledge
of Dutch that the Caribbean Dutch have is creating problems and has adverse
repercussions both for the Netherlands and the Islands. The migration of
thousands of Caribbean Dutch into the Netherlands and the problems they
encounter over there favor the idea that the Caribbean Dutch should be helped
to learn Dutch and not just their mother tongue and their island’s lingua
franca, if the latter is different from their mother tongue.
It is only if and when all
parties acknowledge their right to opt for and against their togetherness in
difference that a healthy Kingdom identity will be able to develop
naturally. It must not be another compulsion: the state cannot force the
citizenry to think and feel “in a Kingdom way.” Identifications encroach upon
the individual’s and the group’s freedom to determine what thoughts and
feelings they want to make their own. Generalizing identifications are bad for
true identity. Still, if the Kingdom presents itself as togetherness in
difference, the citizenry might realize that the idea of the Kingdom could
precisely safeguard their right to self-determination, instead of undermining it.
On the one hand, the
Netherlands must once and for all abandon its colonial mentality and stop
identifying the Kingdom with the Netherlands. As long as this
mentality change has not taken place, we may keep on describing the government and
people of the Netherlands as a colonial power, with the negative moral
value judgment that this entails and deserves in the present world. On the
other hand, the Caribbean Dutch must stop undermining their position by
endlessly doubting their Dutchness or taking it slightly. Only if they allow it
to happen can they be patronized as second class colonial subjects. Of course,
laying their rightful claim to equality presupposes, too, that they accept
their rights together with their duties.
It is my suggestion that if
a number of significant measures were taken, a positive Kingdom identity could
be forged (i.e. an ideology of equality, equity, and togetherness in
difference). There is therefore a need for symbolic deeds that can enhance the feeling
of the Kingdom, for instance:
·
Ideally, the Statuut could be updated. It could be renamed so that it
becomes a true Constitution of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. [If the
monarchy should ever be abolished, such a Statuut could become the Statuut
of the Commonwealth of the Netherlands].
·
Each of the countries making up the Kingdom could have their own Fundamental
Rule without the dichotomy of one being called Constitution and the others
Regulations, including the Netherlands. Otherwise, they could all be called Constitution
without claiming to be the Kingdom’s Constitution, as now is the
case.
·
The Queen could rotate her stay in the member countries of her Kingdom. [In the
event of the abolition of the monarchy, a President could become the Head of
the Commonwealth of the Netherlands and whatever is suggested for the monarch
could apply to him or her.]
·
The Kingdom Government could more clearly be distinguished from the government
of each of the member countries, especially the Netherlands.
·
The Caribbean communities could overcome the victim mentality whereby they fail
to see the active role that they can and must play within the Kingdom. The
“Dutch” standards of welfare and wellbeing do not always dovetail with the
“Caribbean way;” in this respect, they indeed are unequal equals. Upgrading the
life standards on the Islands is not merely the task of the Netherlands. The
Islands could be helped to become more aware that the world is larger than each
of them, within which strength is found in communion and not in fragmentation
and isolation, and that adult choices must be made and followed through if they
(the Islands) really want to count. If they do not want to be patronized, they
must become adult societies, conscious of their duties, especially toward their
local citizens and residents. Being a country entails functioning as
one.
·
The Netherlands could also make sure that the help they give to their partners
in the Kingdom is not mere self-help under the guise of developmental aid. How
can it be that often “helping the Islands” ends up helping the Netherlands more
than the Islands, as if the money never left the Netherlands or merely went
from European Dutch bank accounts into European Dutch bank accounts?
·
Even if all of the Islands should opt for integration into the Netherlands, the
ideals of a Kingdom of togetherness in difference could still be
maintained. Acculturation did not take place in the colonial past —if it ever
did, it failed— and it will not work now either. The whole world is moving
towards a recipe of globalization and regionalization, of commonalities and
differences being upheld at the same time. Why should the Kingdom of the
Netherlands be an exception to the trend?
·
Defense is a Kingdom affair and all member countries ought to be seen to be
contributing to it. Having said this, it is unthinkable to expect the smaller
member countries to take such a task upon their shoulders. The Netherlands will
always remain the greater defense provider. Nevertheless, it could also be made
structurally clear that the role of the country of the Netherlands in defense
is by delegation and not by appropriation. And it should feel
that it is this way.
·
New educational activities and projects could be created whereby a Kingdom
identity can be fostered by impartial mutual knowledge so that the European
Dutch may learn to be proud of belonging to a Kingdom that is multicultural and
surpasses the boundaries of Europe. The Caribbean Dutch
could also learn to acknowledge and be proud of their Dutchness, which adds one
more color into the mosaic of their Caribbean identity and opens up
possibilities for them in Europe and beyond.
·
People should be helped to appreciate, on the one hand, the statutory union
of the Kingdom, expressed in their common nationality, and, on the other hand,
the local differences, recognized in the statutory acceptance of the
local autonomy of each of the Kingdom’s countries. In the current globalized
world, the Kingdom philosophy of togetherness in difference could
benefit both the European and Caribbean Dutch and better equip them to
positively live in different dimensions at once, making use of all the chances
that this situation gives them rather than emphasizing the problems that
divides them.
·
Newcomers to the Caribbean and European Netherlands territories should be made
aware that they are coming not only into a particular local territory, but also
into a Kingdom of countries. Socialization programs for newcomers ought
not to leave out this organic dimension of Dutch life, be it in the
Caribbean or on the European continent.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Arrindell, Gracita R.
(2006). Looking Back to Move Forward. Speeches from the Forum of Former
Prime Ministers of the Netherlands Antilles. Philipsburg, St. Martin:
House of Nehesi.
Arendt, Hanna (1996).
Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago & London: University of
Chicago Press.
Bleicher, Joseph (1990). Contemporary
Hermeneutics. London: Routledge.
Broek, Aart G. (2005).
“Voorbij schuld en schaamte: naar ongedeeld Nederlanderschap,” in Christen
Democratische Verkenningen, winter [speciaal nummer: Antillen/Aruba: uit de
gunst], pp. 20-33.
Brouwer, P. W. (2000). Kenmerken
van recht. Nijmegen: Ars Aequi Libri.
Cassirer, Ernst (1953).
Language and Myth. New York: Dover Pub. Inc.
De Lauretis, Teresa (1981).
Umberto Eco. Firenze: La nuova Italia.
Eagleton, Terry (1976). Criticism
and Ideology. A Study in Marxist Literary Theory. London: NLB, 1976.
Government of the Island
Territory of St. Martin (2001). Saint Martin as a Country within the Kingdom
of the Netherlands. Synopsis of the position paper of the government of the
island territory of Sint Maarten. Philipsburg: Government Administration
Building.
Heidegger, Martin (1971). Unterwegs
zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Neske.
Bureau of Constitutional
Affairs. Kingdom Charter of the Netherlands. Online version: http://constiburosxm.org/content/view/30/43.
Retrieved on Oct 28, 2006.
Lonergan, Bernard J. F.
(1973). Philosophy of God, and Theology. London: Darton, Longman &
Todd.
Munneke, Harold F. (2002).
“Staatsrecht in de Cariben; van locale speelterrein naar aanpassing aan de
internationale orde,” in Justitiële Verkenningen, jrg. 28, nr. 1,
pp. 47-66.
Murray, Edward L. (1986). Imaginative
Thinking and Human Existence. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Oostindie, G.J. (2002).
“Een antwoord op de Curaçaose exodus?,” in Justitiële Verkenningen, jrg.
28, nr. 1, pp. 1-20.
Ricoeur, Paul (1994).
The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of
Meaning in Language. Padstow: TJ Press.
Werkgroep BFV (2004). Nu
kan het… nu moet het! Online version: http://constiburosxm.org/content/view/30/43.
Retrieved on Oct 28, 2006.
Some thoughts on Education
as Bildung
University of
St. Martin, Netherlands Antilles
silviosergio@yahoo.com
It has been argued that one
of the things that differentiate modernity from the previous periods in time is
that the modern discourse on education is no longer limited to an enquiry into
the means of education, but encompasses also the debate on its purpose
(Nordenbo, 2002). Modernity refers here to the worldview formed in the 19th
century under the influence of philosophers such as Immanuel Kant (1724—1804),
industrialization, and the rise of the European nation states. The 1960s would
deconstruct the grand narrative of modernity, thus ushering in the post-modern
era.
Bildung encapsulates the modern re‑centring of
education that took place at the time, especially in the German-speaking
societies. It has to do with the paradigm shift which moved away from mere
upbringing (Erziehung) seen as socialization in terms of accepted,
heteronomous values and morals as understood by the Church in the Middle Ages
and started concentrating on the development of the autonomous, critical subject.
Bildung
The concept of Bildung goes
back principally to the Prussian diplomat, linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von
Humboldt (1767—1835). It encapsulates his views of education, especially as set
forth in On the Limits of State Action. For him, education was the means
whereby the state could be reformed by reforming the individual. Education
should transform human subjects into free-thinking citizens of the nation.
When Humboldt was asked to
reform the education system, he set out his vision in the School Plans
Königsberg and Prussian Lithuania. (1) Every ordinary person should
have access to the same basic education as the one enjoyed by the most highly
educated person and (2) all the components of the education system should
be interlocking. He divided the education trajectory into a tripartite
structure: elementary, scholastic, and university education. The purpose of
elementary education would be to equip the pupils with the necessary tools to
describe their world and experience (language acquisition, reading, writing,
and numeracy). Scholastic education would concentrate on giving the students a
broad knowledge base (learning) and skills (learning how to learn). University
education must concentrate on pure science; university students should, according
to Von Humboldt, live for science. The position of the teacher would also
change in relation to his or her place within the structure. For Von Humboldt,
teachers had a central role to play only in scholastic education. However, even
though for Von Humboldt university students would not be as dependent on their
teachers as scholastic students, they would still learn to be scientific by
being at the service of their professors’ research projects (Nordenbo, 2002:347‑348).
“Bildung has the goal of a
fulfilment of humanity as its aim: full development of the powers of each human
individual. In such a Kultur the end result will be the development of
many, different, highly individuated persons who will establish a more humane
society.” Furthermore, “Bildung represents ‘a principal orientation of the
totality of the human (intellect, will and senses) towards the totality of
Being’ and this orientation is carried and developed by and within the history
of humanity. The elevation of the independent, creative, autonomous individual
here is the heart of the project.” (Gur-Ze’ev, s.d.:3)
Three main general trends
can be recognized in the overall modern Bildung philosophy of Education.
The first in time was Rousseau’s (1712—1778) implicit approach to Bildung in
his work on education Émile, published in 1762. He focused on the
child’s own path as the key to self‑fulfilment, after which came the
guide of an instructor (Nordenbo, 2002:345.351). In a certain sense, each child
became (in theory) its own norm. Then, there was the philanthropist
approach to Bildung. Happiness or bliss was seen as the purpose of
education, and civil competence as its means (Nordenbo, 2002:345). Utility and
usefulness thus became the rationale of the educative process (Nordenbo,
2002:351). Whatever makes the individual happy within the matrix of his or her
society cannot be absent from the educative offer. “No pain no gain.” Education
must prepare the students to attain happiness by giving them the necessary tools
for struggling for it within society. Finally, there came the neo‑humanist
approach to Bildung. This perspective aimed at the harmonious
development of spiritual powers (Nordenbo, 2002:345), emphasising the world as
the other necessary element of the equation —the ego and the world (Nordenbo,
2002:351).
Critique
Bildung is related to the Greek concept of Education
as paideia. As viewed by the Greek, paideia was the process
whereby a child was formed into a citizen by means of his or her
gradual, rhetoric‑erotic interaction with a pedagogue (Gurley). Both paideia
and Bildung aimed at forming the citizen. However, modern Bildung
theories must be read in light of Kant’s philosophy of the subject involving
the transcendental, critical analysis of knowledge, its validity and
acquisition.
The development of the
modern subject does not take place in isolation. Nor does it happen overnight.
If it did, there would be no need to question the purpose of education as such
since it would take place of its own. Teaching is still needed, as are time and
effort.
The fact that none of the Bildung
proponents after Von Humboldt were social revolutionaries indicates that Bildung
is not meant primarily as a means of bringing about sudden changes. The
contrary is true. Bildung as a pedagogical ideal affects society only in
the long run, by fostering the new citizens who can, on the one hand, do their
given jobs and, on the other, push the boundaries of (accepted) knowledge.
The positive elements of Bildung
are that the primary participants of the educative task —namely the children,
pupils, and students— come to the fore, albeit not always in the same way. We
could say, however, that modern Bildung has had to pay the price of the
burden of the subject’s own subjectivity perceived as a strong sense of alienation
from the world. To the Kantian, modern mind, the world became a mere unknown, a
noumenon that we can use better than we can know.
The said “autonomy” and
self‑regulation that modern Bildung would bring about is engrafted
on far‑reaching power relationships. Education loses its critiquing
force, it becomes subsumed within the normativity of “normalcy,” the “conduite
des conduites” (Foucault). Education in terms of Bildung aims at
socializing students into this ideology: the modern industrialized society is
the new polis into which our children must be led by their pedagogues.
In our globalized world, this means that the formation of character (Bildung)
is understood as the formation of inventive, competitive citizens. This does
not need to be envisaged as being a negative objective as such; it becomes
deficient only when it is not the only coordinate used to define
education.
Education should not only
prepare our young generations to find a place in the global market, but also to
critically assess its promises, as well as the sacrifices it calls for. If
pupils and students are seen only as future “workforce,” Bildung will
automatically be at the service of the labour‑consumption society. Istead
of freeing the individual, it will enslave him or her to the labour market.
Thus, the problem with the
term is that it “always implies ‘an idea of humanity’” (Masschelein &
Ricken, 2003:142). In other words, it is not ideology‑free. It is based
on grand narratives and found within truth games and power relations. It
indeed appears as a key‑term of Bourgeois society, as a force of
individualization and totalization (Masschelein & Ricken, 2003:146).
Masschelein analyzes the
change that started taking place with modernity by distinguishing between zoé
(physical life as such) and bios (human life, including the search for
meaning). In religious terms, it is often said that in modernity European
Christians started reading the biblical Creation Narratives as legitimizing
their “dominion of the world” by means of industrial production and
colonialism, including slavery. Both these tactics provided them with the raw
materials and the cheap labour. Humans saw themselves as masters, rather than
as part of the living commune.
With modernity and the
industrialization of society, Bildung started off its journey towards
the zoologization of human life itself: human existence was increasingly
understood as the satisfaction of human physical needs, to which end the
rest functions as a means or tool, including social relationships
and education. Education became reduced to learning how to sustain life in
order to stay alive at all costs, especially by using the right
information and technologies. Learning became the mere learning of skills, and
not the attainment of knowledge, insights, and wisdom.
The mercantilization of
human life means that many people nowadays want to be “happy” even by
leading meaningless lives. Happiness and meaning have been disconnected,
even wrenched asunder. Even though we think that we are becoming more autonomous,
we are increasingly becoming automatized pieces of the larger machinery
of power and economic games.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Gur-Ze’ev, Ilan (s.d.). Bildung
and Critical Theory facing Post-modern Education. Haifa: The University
of Haifa.
Nordenbo, Sven Erik (2002).
“Bildung and the Thinking of bildung,” in Løvlie, Lars; Mortensen, Klaus P.
& Nordenbo, Sven Erik, Educating humanity: "Bildung" in
Postmodernity [Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 36, no 3],
pp. 341-352. London: Blackwell.
Some thoughts on the
Meaning of Education in the Learning Society
University of
St. Martin, Netherlands
Antilles
silviosergio@yahoo.com
Currently, schools can no
longer meet our technological world’s hunger for knowledge. Society at large
must therefore become a “learning society” (Faure et al., 1972). In the
globalizing world, the boundaries of nation states become porous. Any serious
attempts to block the translational flow of information and merchandize will
sooner or later have negative consequences.
Torten Husén already
predicted in 1974 that education would become a life-long, flexible, and
increasingly informal enterprise (Husén, 1974). Richard Evans (1977) described the
learning society in the following terms:
The
learning society is an educated society,
committed to active citizenship, liberal democracy and equal opportunities.
This supports lifelong learning within the social policy frameworks of
post-Second World War social democracies. The aim is to provide learning
opportunities to educate adults to meet the challenges of change and
citizenship. Support for this conception was put forward largely by liberal
educators in the metropolitan areas of the industrialized North in the 1960s
and 1970s. This is part of a modernist discourse.
A
learning society is a learning market,
enabling institutions to provide services for individuals as a condition for
supporting the competitiveness of the economy. This supports lifelong learning
within the economic policy framework adopted by many governments since the
middle of the 1970s. The aim is for a market in learning opportunities to be
developed to meet the demands of individuals and employers for the updating of
skills and competences. Support for this conception has come from employers'
bodies and modernizing policy think-tanks in the industrialized North since the
mid-1970s in response to economic uncertainty. The usefulness or performativity
of education and training becomes a guiding criterion.
A
learning society is one in which learners adopt a learning approach to life, drawing on a wide range of resources to
enable them to support their lifestyle practices. This supports lifelong
learning as a condition of individuals in the contemporary period to which
policy needs to respond. This conception of a learning society formulates the
latter as a series of overlapping learning networks... and is implicit to
much of the writing on post-modernity with its emphasis on the contingent, the
ephemeral and heterogeneity. The normative goals of a liberal democratic
society - an educated society - and an economically competitive society - a
learning market - are displaced by a conception of participation in learning as
an activity in and through which individuals and groups pursue their
heterogeneous goals. (Smith, 2000)
One can hardly object to
the idea that learning must be a process on which the whole society —indeed all
societies— embarks. Nonetheless, we as educators must be conscious that the
“learning society” is often politicized, resulting in reductive views of
education.
According to the European
Commission’s “White Paper on Education and Training: Teaching and Learning –
Towards the Learning Society,” European schools are faced with the issues of
“personal development” and “social integration.” Despite the positive ring of
these concepts, an intra‑textual reading of the Paper shows that both
poles of the equation are reduced to sheer economic terms. “Personal
development” is synonymous with “becoming employable” and “social integration”
means that society should not be ruptured into two groups, namely those who
have a job and those who do not. This is made manifest by the stress on the
idea that growing employment fosters social integration. For “this essential
function of social integration is today under threat unless it is accompanied
by the prospect of employment” (EC, 1995:3).
The above is confirmed by
the intertextual evidence, especially in light of the White Paper on Growth,
Competitiveness, and Employment, The challenges and ways forward into the
21st century, of 5th December 1993. The rationale is spelt out
there more clearly than in the White Paper on Teaching and Learning:
Our countries’ education systems are faced with
major difficulties, and not only of a budgetary nature. These problems are
rooted in social ills: the breakdown of the family and the demotivation bred
by unemployment. They also reflect a change in the very nature of what is
being taught. Preparation for life in tomorrow’s world cannot be satisfied by a
once-and-for-all acquisition of knowledge and know-how. Every bit as essential
is the ability to learn, to communicate, to work in a group and to assess one’s
own situation. Tomorrow’s trades will require the ability to make
diagnoses and propose improvements at all levels, and the autonomy and
independence of spirit and analytical ability which come of knowledge.
Hence the need to adapt the content of training and to be able to improve one’s
training (knowledge and know-how) whenever necessary.
Lifelong education is therefore the overall
objective to which the national educational communities can make their own
contributions. Difficult choices will have to be made, between increasing
university capacity or quality, between higher education and vocational
paths, and between traditional courses and “sandwich” courses (studying plus
work experience). However, each country should be aiming towards universally
accessible advanced vocational training.
As is shown by the Member States’
contributions, principles and methods of financing may differ. In some cases,
the emphasis is on equal opportunities for all individuals and the proposed
response is the provision of training capital or cheques financed by the redistribution
of public resources. In other cases, advanced vocational training is linked
to businesses and so contractual mechanisms will be proposed for training
investment or for co-investment with the participation of wage-earners. In
any event, public and private efforts must be married to create the basis in
each Member State for a genuine right to on-going training. This should be a
key area of social dialogue at European level. A start has in fact already been
made. To enhance this right, the Community will have to facilitate cooperation
between the Member States with a view to creating a genuine European area for
vocational qualifications. (EC, 1993; italics added)
The three major factors of
upheaval in Europe, according to this Paper, are: “the onset of the information
society; the impact of the scientific and technological world; and the
internationalisation of the economy” (EC, 1995:5). Within this scheme of
things, schools are expected to be the main mediators of a broad knowledge
base, proficiency in foreign languages, and domain‑specific knowledge of
modern technologies whereby these three causes of upheaval are domesticated and
put at the service of European economic bonanza.
All in all, the Paper’s
main concern is that Europe remains a key player on the international, global
economic scene. Despite the mentions of European “plurality” ad intra and
economic openness ad extra, the Paper works on the basis of an imperialist and
pedantic view of “European culture.” The Paper is apparently interested in
anything non‑European only insofar as that can create jobs for Europeans
or permit Europe to remain one of the hegemonic economic powers on the globe.
Even though it is a truism
to say that schools cannot be impervious to the labour market (children will
become adults and must have the necessary minimum tools for functioning in
society, including the labour market), it must still be asked whether education
can be understood exclusively in terms of knowledge that vouchsafes the
individual’s employability. Can we reduce human life to labour, and human
society to labour networks and relationships? In fact, the Paper’s use of the
word “relationships” is somewhat puzzling since its point of departure for
interpreting social interaction is “competition” and “competitiveness.” Schools
must make their students become skilful and competitive, rather than empower
them for establishing “relationships” that go beyond economic gain. Seen from
this viewpoint, the Paper’s mention of ecological concerns comes across as somewhat
unrelated to the rest of the argumentation.
Even though there are some
hints at the ethical dimension of technological inventions (“The future of
European culture depends on its capacity to equip young people to question
constantly and seek new answers without prejudicing human values,” EC, 1995:10)
and to the present “European social model” (EC, 1995:7; presumably the social‑democratic
welfare state), it transpires from the text read in its entirety that the
stress on inventiveness is driven mostly by the wish to facilitate economic
gain so that Europe’s superiority may be safeguarded, rather than by an
outspoken desire to create a future where being is more important than
having (using the language of Marcel). Even the call to allow for and encourage
“critical faculties ... among both pupils and teachers” (EC, 1995:12) does not
escape being related to the value of economics and employment (cf. EC,
1995:13).
Even though the Paper
positively pleads for a diversification of the meaning of knowledge so that it
can encompass not only scientific expertise backed up by diplomas, but also
skills for which people do not necessarily need degrees, knowledge and
understanding are still continually being reduced to learning technological
domain‑specific knowledge or skills. In the Paper’s words: “In today’s
world, knowledge in the broad sense [!!!] can be defined as an
acquired body of fundamental and technical knowledge, allied to social skills
(...) Basic knowledge is the foundation on which individual employability
is built” (EC, 1995:13; underlining added). Must education no longer aim at
helping the learners gain insights into the non‑quantifiable value of
human life, joy, togetherness, and solidarity —to mention but a few
non-commercial human realities?
“The ability to understand
is the capacity to analyze how things are assembled and taken apart” (EC,
1995:11). There must surely be more to be said about “understanding” that the
technical know‑how of assembling and disassembling a machine! Can the
human heart of all labourers and business people be “assembled and taken
apart”? Can their lives be conceived of as mere machines to be analyzed by
“human engineers”? We may thus ask whether the notion of education implied by
this White Paper is conducive to happier lives, to the attainment of a sense of
personal development and social integration that transcends the possession of a
job, or the lack thereof.
The use of the term
“learning society” in this Paper implies that students are envisaged already
from a tender age merely as “the future workforce,” as though work or
employment was their essence. Europe is rich (among other things because of its
colonial past) and must be kept rich. How? By “creating” students that are
innovative and creative in an economic and technological sense since both terms
are becoming increasingly inseparable. It is accurate to say that being human
and survival are both radically linked to creativity and innovation, but can we
reduce human inventiveness to labour conditions and market competition?
We humans do not ultimately
live for working, but for what we see as valuable (which can be work, but it
can also be something else). We live in the world of our imagination where we
first create worlds to inhabit, and then move towards them. If we set too high
goals for ourselves, we will cause our own pain. If we imagine that there
should not be death, we will fear our death. If we think that romantic love is
the highest type of love, then we will feel unhappy as long as we remain alone.
Think a thought and cause an emotion!
Education ought therefore
to be as broad as possible. It should touch human concerns, including,
but also going beyond, market and labour concerns. If we were to limit the
world “knowledge” to practical know‑how, as this Paper suggests, we will
stop seeking wisdom.
The vision of humanity and
education implicit in this White Paper is grossly reductive and does great
disservice to human life as it is lived. Most people work in
order to survive, not the other way around. Even in those cases where they do
it out of avarice, they are still doing it for cultural goals, such as to
become rich and be adulated by others, and not for merely economic
reasons. The Paper gives the impression of having been written by economists,
finance people, and managers, rather than by philosophers of education or
educators.
In the world of employment
rather than of meaning, there is little place for solidarity and justice.
People such as Osama Bin Laden are unfortunately symptomatic figures that will
keep coming up to remind us that nobody is an island. The globalized world puts
us all face to face with each other. The world has become some sort of
Worldwide Big Brother show. The have‑nots see what the have’s possess
thanks to their ill‑paid labour and age‑long structural inequality.
The rich also know that millions of eyes are fixed on them —in emulation, in
pain and frustration, or in wait for revenge.
Now that we are all
on the mega screen erected in the main square of our global village, there is a
need for deep thinking. Is there really no room left for other stories that can
replace “economism”? Will our conscience be bribed into silence for ever? Is
education a mere servant of the status quo? Can we not turn the learning
society into an insightful society? After all, the more we know, the more we
realize that we do not know much and that we need one another. Schools cannot
afford to be oblivious to the economic dimension of human life. Such a lack of
realism would be a recipe for social irrelevancy. Economic wellbeing is to be
desired not only for Europe, but also for the Caribbean and other developing
regions. However, schools must also not be allowed to be reduced to
being the factories of future labourers. Our young generations are surely called
to become more than that.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Edwards, R. (1997). Changing Places? Flexibility, lifelong
learning and a learning society, London: Routledge.
European
Commission [EC] (1993). White Paper on growth, competitiveness, and
employment: The challenges and ways forward into the 21st century, in COM
(93) 700 final. Brussels.
European
Commision [EC] (1995). White Paper on
Education and Training -Teaching and Learning - Towards the Learning Society, in COM (95) 590. Brussels.
Faure, E. and others
(1972). Learning to Be, Paris: UNESCO.
Husén, T. (1974). The
Learning Society, London: Methuen.
Smith, M. K. (2000). “The
theory and rhetoric of the learning society,” in The encyclopedia of
informal education, www.infed.org/lifelonglearning/b-lrnsoc.htm.
Retrieved on 17th November 2006.
Some thoughts on Jean-Paul
Sartre and Education
University of
St. Martin, Netherlands
Antilles
silviosergio@yahoo.com
Starting point
“(…)
I will refer to the case of a pupil of mine, who sought me out in the following
circumstances. His father was quarrelling with his mother and was also inclined
to be a ‘collaborator’; his elder brother had been killed in the German
offensive of 1940 and this young man, with a sentiment somewhat primitive but
generous, burned to avenge him. His mother was living alone with him, deeply
afflicted by the semi-treason of his father and by the death of her eldest son,
and her one consolation was in this young man. But he, at this moment, had the
choice between going to England to join the Free French Forces or of staying
near his mother and helping her to live. He fully realised that this woman lived
only for him and that his disappearance – or perhaps his death – would plunge
her into despair. He also realised that, concretely and in fact, every action
he performed on his mother’s behalf would be sure of effect in the sense of
aiding her to live, whereas anything he did in order to go and fight would be
an ambiguous action which might vanish like water into sand and serve no
purpose. For instance, to set out for England he would have to wait
indefinitely in a Spanish camp on the way through Spain; or, on arriving in
England or in Algiers he might be put into an office to fill up forms.
Consequently, he found himself confronted by two very different modes of
action; the one concrete, immediate, but directed towards only one individual;
and the other an action addressed to an end infinitely greater, a national
collectivity, but for that very reason ambiguous – and it might be frustrated
on the way. At the same time, he was hesitating between two kinds of morality;
on the one side the morality of sympathy, of personal devotion and, on the
other side, a morality of wider scope but of more debatable validity. He had to
choose between those two. What could help him to choose? Could the Christian
doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says: Act with charity, love your neighbour,
deny yourself for others, choose the way which is hardest, and so forth. But
which is the harder road? To whom does one owe the more brotherly love, the
patriot or the mother? Which is the more useful aim, the general one of
fighting in and for the whole community, or the precise aim of helping one
particular person to live? Who can give an answer to that a priori? No one. Nor is it
given in any ethical scripture. The Kantian ethic says, Never regard another as
a means, but always as an end. Very well; if I remain with my mother, I shall
be regarding her as the end and not as a means: but by the same token I am in
danger of treating as means those who are fighting on my behalf; and the
converse is also true, that if I go to the aid of the combatants I shall be
treating them as the end at the risk of treating my mother as a means. If
values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the
particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust in
our instincts. That is what this young man tried to do; and when I saw him he
said, “In the end, it is feeling that counts; the direction in which it is
really pushing me is the one I ought to choose. If I feel that I love my mother
enough to sacrifice everything else for her – my will to be avenged, all my
longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on the contrary, I
feel that my love for her is not enough, I go.” But how does one estimate the
strength of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother was determined
precisely by the fact that he was standing by her. I may say that I love a
certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum of money for him, but I
cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, ‘I love my mother enough to
remain with her,’ if actually I have remained with her. I can only estimate the
strength of this affection if I have performed an action by which it is defined
and ratified. But if I then appeal to this affection to justify my action, I
find myself drawn into a vicious circle.
Moreover,
as Gide has very well said, a sentiment which is play-acting and one which is
vital are two things that are hardly distinguishable one from another. To decide
that I love my mother by staying beside her, and to play a comedy the upshot of
which is that I do so – these are nearly the same thing. In other words,
feeling is formed by the deeds that one does; therefore I cannot consult it as
a guide to action. And that is to say that I can neither seek within myself for
an authentic impulse to action, nor can I expect, from some ethic, formulae
that will enable me to act. You may say that the youth did, at least, go to a
professor to ask for advice. But if you seek counsel – from a priest, for
example you have selected that priest; and at bottom you already knew, more or
less, what he would advise. In other words, to choose an adviser is
nevertheless to commit oneself by that choice. If you are a Christian, you will
say, consult a priest; but there are collaborationists, priests who are
resisters and priests who wait for the tide to turn: which will you choose? Had
this young man chosen a priest of the resistance, or one of the collaboration,
he would have decided beforehand the kind of advice he was to receive.
Similarly, in coming to me, he knew what advice I should give him, and I had
but one reply to make. You are free, therefore choose, that is to say, invent.
No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no signs are
vouchsafed in this world. The Catholics will reply, ‘Oh, but they are!’ Very
well; still, it is I myself, in every case, who have to interpret the signs.
While I was imprisoned, I made the acquaintance of a somewhat remarkable man, a
Jesuit, who had become a member of that order in the following manner. In his
life he had suffered a succession of rather severe setbacks. His father had
died when he was a child, leaving him in poverty, and he had been awarded a
free scholarship in a religious institution, where he had been made continually
to feel that he was accepted for charity’s sake, and, in consequence, he had
been denied several of those distinctions and honours which gratify children.
Later, about the age of eighteen, he came to grief in a sentimental affair; and
finally, at twenty-two – this was a trifle in itself, but it was the last drop
that overflowed his cup – he failed in his military examination. This young
man, then, could regard himself as a total failure: it was a sign – but a sign
of what? He might have taken refuge in bitterness or despair. But he took it –
very cleverly for him – as a sign that he was not intended for secular success,
and that only the attainments of religion, those of sanctity and of faith, were
accessible to him. He interpreted his record as a message from God, and became
a member of the Order. Who can doubt but that this decision as to the meaning
of the sign was his, and his alone? One could have drawn quite different
conclusions from such a series of reverses – as, for example, that he had
better become a carpenter or a revolutionary. For the decipherment of the sign,
however, he bears the entire responsibility. That is what ‘abandonment’
implies, that we ourselves decide our being. And with this abandonment goes
anguish.” (Sartre, 1964)
Question
“You are free, choose, that
is, invent.” Does Sartre refuse to be an educator or is he being an educator
precisely because of this attitude?
Elements towards an answer
When enquired about his
answer to the young man in the above example, Sartre’s response was once again
very simple: “If he comes to ask your advice, it is because he has already
chosen the answer. Practically, I should have been very well able to give him
some advice. But as he was seeking freedom I wanted to let him decide. Besides,
I knew what he was going to do, and that is what he did.” (Sartre, 1964:70)
Condemned to
freedom
Sartre made explicit what
he had always proclaimed: the young man is condemned to freedom, he must invent
himself. After all, this thinker understood his philosophy as being one of
freedom and commitment. It was not one “of reality,” but “of the Cartesian
cogito.” (Sartre, 1964:66‑67) Freedom and commitment are subjective,
psychological experiences circumscribed within the thinking self that is aware
of itself. Sartre said that in a world of objects, there is no truth. For, he
argues, in a world that seeks objectivity, the only thing left is the probable,
the doubting and inquiring self. The only firm ground left is subjectivity: cogito
ergo sum. Humans are objects that attain to themselves as subjects: we are être‑en‑soi
(being-in-itself), able to double ourselves so that we become être‑pour‑soi
(being-for-itself). Humans are at once the mirror, the image
reflected on the glass and the one reflecting on it. In this sense, the most
terrifying “gaze” is not that of others looking at us, but our own gaze upon
ourselves. Our human self is thus radically alienated: it becomes its own
judge.
“Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous
realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. – We are left alone,
without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be
free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty,
and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for
everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of
passion. He will never regard a grand passion as a destructive torrent upon
which a man is swept into certain actions as by fate, and which, therefore, is
an excuse for them. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion. Neither
will an existentialist think that a man can find help through some sign being
vouchsafed upon earth for his orientation: for he thinks that the man himself
interprets the sign as he chooses. He thinks that every man, without any
support or help whatever, is condemned at every instant to invent man.”
(Sartre, 1964)
In the subjective sphere of
human life, humans (can) come to the realization that our existence is a
dynamic —the dynamic of freedom. I say “the dynamic” of freedom and not “the
rule” of freedom because the latter would presuppose an intentionality that
encompasses history. There can be rules only when there is a Ruler (e.g. God),
but this is impossible in Sartre’s view because “existence precedes essence.”
If there is no essence, there is no “should be” since there is no telos,
no purpose. In Sartre’s eyes, there is only dynamic, only movement. It is in
this sense that, for Sartre, what determines human actions is not human nature
(“human essence”) but the conditions within which we humans live and the
dialectics of interaction between us human subjects. This is the human
“condition” or “predicament,” rather than human “nature”.
“Furthermore, although it is impossible to find in each and every
man a universal essence that can be called human nature, there is nevertheless
a human universality of condition.
It is not by chance that the thinkers of today are so much more ready to speak
of the condition than of the nature of man. By his condition they understand,
with more or less clarity, all the limitations
which a priori
define man’s fundamental situation in the universe. His historical situations
are variable: man may be born a slave in a pagan society or may be a feudal
baron, or a proletarian. But what never vary are the necessities of being in
the world, of having to labor and to die there. These limitations are neither
subjective nor objective, or rather there is both a subjective and an objective
aspect of them. Objective, because we meet with them everywhere and they are
everywhere recognisable: and subjective because they are lived and are nothing if
man does not live them – if, that is to say, he does not freely determine
himself and his existence in relation to them. And, diverse though man’s
purpose may be, at least none of them is wholly foreign to me, since every
human purpose presents itself as an attempt either to surpass these
limitations, or to widen them, or else to deny or to accommodate oneself to
them. Consequently every purpose, however individual it may be, is of universal
value. Every purpose, even that of a Chinese, an Indian or a Negro, can be
understood by a European. To say it can be understood, means that the European
of 1945 may be striving out of a certain situation towards the same limitations
in the same way, and that he may reconceive in himself the purpose of the
Chinese, of the Indian or the African. In every purpose there is universality,
in this sense that every purpose is comprehensible to every man. Not that this
or that purpose defines man for ever, but that it may be entertained again and
again. There is always some way of understanding an idiot, a child, a primitive
man or a foreigner if one has sufficient information. In this sense we may say
that there is a human universality, but it is not something given; it is being
perpetually made. I make this universality in choosing myself; I also make it
by understanding the purpose of any other man, of whatever epoch. This
absoluteness of the act of choice does not alter the relativity of each epoch.”
(Sartre, 1964)
For Sartre, there is no
blueprint which one must of necessity live up to. There is only movement. The
so‑called blueprint is continually being made. How is it being made? By
choosing, that is, by means of commitment. To choose is to commit oneself to
one instant definition of freedom that will be the ground for another choice,
and another and another... Every choice bears within itself an image of
humanity. “In fashioning myself I fashion man.” What I do is an implicit
statement of what I believe human beings should become if they found themselves
in this situation that I am in. If the generalization of my choice ends up
being counterproductive for myself, that is a sign that I am being
irresponsible and wrong. The problem is: How can I fashion the human in a world
where there is no essence and therefore also no “humanity”? How can I produce
essence (“form”) out of formless existence?
Existence
precedes essence
The combination of freedom
and commitment (bearing within itself the burden of responsibility) brings
along anguish and despair. Each choice, insofar as “existence comes before
essence,” is original. Each action is always‑already a new, unrepeatable
and, therefore, also unjustifiable. A world without essences (without “forms”
after which life may or must be “patterned”) will always lack justification.
Not only the human, but the whole world is “forlorn,” lost to itself, like a snowball
rolling off a mountain top. The only justification for one’s action is that one
must act. Each epoch calls for different kinds of commitment, but commit
we must!
According to Satrte, we
humans present ourselves as choices to be made. The problem is that once the
choice is made, we are still unfinished. No matter how much we may try to
become, we never ARE in the sense that our existence and our essence can
coincide and stay that way. In other words, Sartre takes the old theological
axiom defining God as “the Being in which existence and essence are one and the
same” as the definition of “being” in general, also applicable to human beings.
No human IS in this sense (existence = essence). Whenever we humans as être‑pour‑soi
(human as objects to ourselves) gaze upon ourselves and see that we are être‑en‑soi
(self-conscious beings), we know that the movement of becoming will never
end. We will never really attain to Being. We will always be and not be, until
we are no more. By negating God, Sartre expected the human to be like God and
ended up saddling the human with the unbearable lightness of endless Being‑less
becoming.
What is
education?
Does Sartre have a view of
education? His reply to the young and to the question why he had given him such
an answer suggests that the teacher must lay out the conditionings within which
human freedom must commit itself, but ought never to make the choice for
someone else. Educators must help their students to own up to their own
responsibility. Students exist within their own situatedness; they are
condemned to make their own choices. There is no teaching possible in the sense
of showing the way, because there is no map, no blueprint. There is only
walking. “Camino se hace al andar,” that is, “the way is made while/by
walking.” It is not the teachers’ job to present their students with some sort
of schema of life and human existence, simply because, for Sartre, it does not
exist. Existence precedes essence. Sartre as teacher differs thus from
Plato since, for the latter, e‑ducare means ducere ex umbris in
lucem, that is, to conduce the students out of the world of shadows into
the world of light. This world of clarity is the realm of the blueprint of
existence. For Sartre, there are no “forms” because there is no essence.
Educators ought therefore to help their students to become aware of their own
situation and necessity to choose. Educators must help them to see what is at
play. Teachers are there to invite students to live their lives in good
faith. Educators must encourage their students to accept the inescapable
predicament of their human condition, as well as the freedom that the absence
of blueprints gives them. For better or for worse, educators cannot walk in
somebody else’s shoes.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Jean‑Paul Sartre
(1964). Existentialism & Humanism. London: Eyre Methuen.
Otto Huiswoud:
Political
Praxis and Anti-Imperialism*
University
of St. Martin, the
Netherlands Antilles
educonsult@caribserve.net
It is 1919. The Great War
that was supposed to have made the world safe for democracy is over. Thousands
of black Americans who fought in the war have returned home. Race riots are on
the increase, yet the Jamaican poet Claude McKay admonishes the Negro
population to fight back. Otto Huiswoud, born in Dutch Guiana (nowadays known
as Suriname), has been in the United States for nine years as an illegal
immigrant when he joins the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), a revolutionary
organization founded by Caribbean radicals, and becomes one of the charter
members of the American Communist Party (CPUSA).
Otto Eduard Majella
Huiswoud (1893-1961) stands out in the rank of Caribbean radicals who lived in
the United States at the beginning of this century. Not only for being the
first person of colour to join the CPUSA, but also for never officially
severing his connections with the Communist Movement as most of his friends did
later. Within a group of radicals that consisted mainly of people originating
from the British West Indies, Huiswoud is the only one who grew up in a Dutch
colony (where the abolition of slavery occurred thirty years later than in the
British territories). Huiswoud’s father, born a slave and emancipated at the
age of eleven, settled in the city of Paramaribo where he became a tailor.
Descending from a working-class background Otto Huiswoud profited from the
Dutch assimilation policy (1876), which provided all children with free
education until the age of twelve. After he landed in the United States in
1910, Huiswoud became a member of the Socialist Propaganda League and joined
the surrounding group of Black radicals.1
Throughout his life, Otto
Huiswoud wrote various articles and pamphlets2. He also worked as
contributing-editor and editor-in-chief for The Negro Worker, a black
radical magazine which appeared from 1928 until 1937 and was banned in most
European colonies3, and for De Koerier (The Messenger), a
magazine for Surinamese in the Netherlands during the late 1950s. But since
Huiswoud was an expert professional revolutionary working for the Communist
International or Comintern from 1928 until 1938, and was sought after by the
FBI and security agencies of various European colonial powers, he destroyed
many of the documents he produced. The writings that did not perish are written
in the typical communist agitprop-style of the 1920s and 1930s. These factors
make a systematic analysis of his political thoughts extremely difficult.
Furthermore, on account of Huiswoud’s work and actions, I prefer not to speak
of his political thought but his political praxis. First and foremost, Huiswoud
was an organizer, a union man, concerned about the dissemination of information
and material needed to become better organized in the struggle against
colonialism and capitalism. His anti-imperialist sentiments are a recurrent
thread from his first article, in 1919,4
to his last action in 1961.
The African Blood Brotherhood, the American
Communist Party, and the Communist International
Otto Huiswoud was already a
member of the CPUSA when he joined the African Blood Brotherhood sometime
between 1919 and 1920.5 His illegal presence in the United States
(until 1923) and the fact that the Communist Party had gone underground right
after its beginning account for the fact that he does not feature highly in
documents from the ABB and other organizations. In 1922 Huiswoud attended the
Fourth Comintern Congress in Moscow as an official delegate for the CPUSA,
together with Claude McKay as a fraternal delegate. These two West Indians
presented the Comintern with a thorough picture of the position of Negro
workers in the United States of America, generally referred to as the ‘Negro
Question or Negro Problem’.
A few words on the ‘Negro
Question’ are in order here. From an orthodox Leninist point of view, the
‘Negro Question’ is part of the ‘National & Colonial Question’. During the
Second Comintern Congress in 1920, Lenin mentioned the American Negroes in his Theses
on the National & Colonial Question as being part of the oppressed
minorities of the world. At the Fourth Comintern Congress, in
1922, Huiswoud was elected Chairman of the Negro Commission charged with
analysing the ‘Negro Question’. This resulted in the Thesis on the Negro
Question and four resolutions, which Huiswoud presented to the Congress. In
the Thesis it was acknowledged that, “the history of the Negro in
America fits him for an important role in the liberation struggle of the entire
African race”, and concluded: “ . . . Subjectively as well as objectively, the
Negro problem has become an important question of the world revolution, and,
that the Comintern, already understanding how important it can be for the
proletarian Revolution to support the coloured Asian people in semi-colonial
countries, has also acknowledged the necessity of the participation of our
exploited black fellow men for the Revolution of the proletarian masses and the
destruction of capitalist power.” 6
But who was going to
convince the black workers in America that it was necessary for them to
participate in the proletarian revolution? The Garvey Movement? The African
Blood Brotherhood? An unknown fact concerning the four resolutions could
provide an answer to these questions. The resolutions were offered twice. The
second resolution “The Communist International will fight for the equality
of the white and black races, for equal wages and political and social rights”
originally read: “The work among Negroes should mainly be done by Negroes.”7
Despite the official change of the resolution the mentality of most American
Communists did not change, and many felt that the work among the Negroes should
be a special task of the black comrades. It was not until 1928 when the Sixth
Comintern Congress endorsed the “Black Belt Thesis” that this attitude finally
changed.
When Huiswoud returned to
the United States in 1923, he became actively involved in the Brotherhood as
its National Organizing Secretary. In this capacity, Huiswoud travelled
throughout the United States, trying to organize “Negro Labor” and “unite them
with the white workers.” In an article in The Worker of 28
April1923, called The Negro Problem is Important, Huiswoud analysed the
‘Negro Problem’ in the United States and why it was important for the CPUSA to
win the support of the Negro workers. According to Huiswoud, the “Negro Problem
is fundamentally an economic problem but intensified by racial antagonism.”
Huiswoud felt that the Negro population was the most ruthlessly exploited group
of the working class and ought to be won over to the Communist Party. In case
the Party failed to win the support of the Negro workers they would be used as
strike breakers against the white workers. Since Negroes had become more
radical after the Great War, “[They] did not let themselves be shot down as dogs.
Instead they put up resistance and became race conscious.” It was the
duty of the Communist Party to turn this “race-consciousness into
class-consciousness.”
The American Communist
Party failed to do any political and organizational work among the Negroes and
attracted hardly any new black members during the first five years of its
existence. This serious shortcoming became obvious during the All-Race
Conference or Sanhedrin, in Chicago in February 1924, which Huiswoud attended
as an ABB delegate.8 Backed by the reactions from the audience,
Huiswoud forced the chairman of the conference to deal with the issue of
labour. The delegate of the Communist Party (Lovett Fort-Whiteman) had tried
the same but had been overruled. The audience clearly favoured the Brotherhood
above the Communist Party.9 As an official Communist Party member,
yet actively involved in the ABB, Otto Huiswoud has contributed greatly to the
organization of black workers by appealing to their class-consciousness, yet
never ignoring their race-consciousness.
Three months later,
Huiswoud’s outspokenness on the issue of race led to his suspension from the
CPUSA. Attending a conference of the Farmer-Labor Party in St. Paul, Minnesota,10
Huiswoud proposed a resolution for the social equality of Negroes and against
lynching. When a white farmer from Texas opposed the resolution, saying that
the farmers in the South would not support a platform which demanded social
equality for Negroes, the leading party members decided to tone down the resolution.
The same farmer reacted by declaring that Negroes did not want social equality
but were only seeking to secure material advantages. Although Huiswoud had been
urged not to react, he took the floor again and strongly denounced the farmer,
which led to a one-year-long suspension from the party.11
This incident, at that time
hardly known among Huiswoud’s black comrades, demonstrates two important
aspects of Huiswoud’s political thoughts and actions. First, he seemed to be
the only one in the party, black or white, who realized that when addressing
the ‘Negro Question’ one ought to include the sharecroppers, tenant farmers and
agricultural labourers in the South, where ten of the twelve million Negroes
lived. He had already elaborated on this point during the Fourth
Comintern Congress in Moscow in 1922. Secondly, in his outspokenness against
the racism of white party members he joined his friends Richard B. Moore and
Cyrill Briggs, who by 1924 had both joined the CPUSA.12 The
outspokenness of the ABB members within the American Communist Party, and their
work on behalf of the Negro workers, was a continuous embarrassment to the
Party. The Brotherhood members exposed the lack of organization for and amongst
Negroes by the CPUSA and the Party’s existing racist attitude against its
active Black comrades. Moscow’s insistence that all members of the American
Communist Party, and not only the ABB members, should deal with the ‘Negro
Question’ led to the founding of the American Negro Labor Congress (ANLC) in
October 1925. Communist Party leaders made use of the opportunity to put the
vocal Brotherhood members on the sideline. Young black communists (Lovett
Fort-Whiteman, Harry Haywood 13 and James Ford14), who
had recently joined the Party and were unfamiliar with previous Party politics,
were promoted to high positions within the newly founded ANLC.15
Huiswoud, Briggs and Moore
continued to work with the ANLC, and by 1928, both Huiswoud and Moore had
obtained high positions within the CPUSA, a fact that never kept them from
criticizing the party’s work among the “Negro working masses”.16 By
that time Stalin had reorganized the Comintern. The appointment of these two
old hands in high positions had been motivated by political opportunism.17
It goes beyond the scope of this paper to elaborate on the organizational
pattern of the Comintern. However, some aspects need to be discussed in order
to better understand Huiswoud’s relocation from the CPUSA to the Comintern.
The Comintern was founded
in 1919 and was formally run by the Executive Committee or ECCI, and by the
ECCI’s Presidium and Political Secretariat or Politsecretariat.18 On
10 December 1928, the Politsecretariat requested the founding of a Negro Bureau
“to study the Negro situation and organizations and the political propaganda
among the Negro masses in various countries.” At the same time, a
second Negro Bureau was founded by the Profintern or Red International of
Labour Unions (RILU), and accountable to the Comintern.19 These two
Negro Bureaus did not coordinate their work. Before the official organization
of the two bureaus several Negro Commissions and sub commissions existed at
various times. They were attached to either the Anglo-American or to the
Eastern Secretariat.20 Until 1928 most of the Comintern’s “Negro
Work” was done through the Eastern and the Anglo-American Secretariat. This
accounted for the lack of commitment concerning the ‘Negro Question’ because
the Comintern was never in the position to directly enforce its instructions, but
had to go through the Communist Parties in the various countries. If the Party
in question did not do as the Comintern had ordered, it was virtually
impossible to do anything at all.
By the time Moscow ordered
the CPUSA to adhere to the “Black Belt Thesis”21 in 1928, Huiswoud
had moved on to the international arena, where he was in a better situation to
“organise the Negro workers of the USA as the vanguard of the struggle of the
Negro movement all over the world against imperialism.”22
Huiswoud, Padmore and the International Trade
Union for Negro Workers (ITUC-NW)
In August 1929, Huiswoud
challenged Marcus Garvey to a public debate on the race / class issue in
connection with the ‘Negro Problem’ in Kingston, Jamaica. Following the
orthodox Marxist-Leninist tradition, Huiswoud stated: “The Negro problem is
fundamentally a class problem and not a race problem, for race only serves to
intensify the situation and gives an impetus to the further exploitation of the
Negro.” 23
However, a slight deviation
from the orthodox interpretation became apparent when Huiswoud compared the
situation for the Negro people in Africa and the West Indies with those in
America. Because of the colonial situation in the West Indies and Africa, class
against class came more readily to the forefront, rather than race. Back in the
United States, Huiswoud expanded more fully on the racial aspect of the ‘Negro
Question’. “It is essential that we distinguish the situation of the Negro
masses in the colonies - Africa and the West Indies- and the semi-colonies -
Haiti and Liberia - who suffer from colonial exploitation, from that of the
Negro in America, a racial minority, subjected to racial persecution and
exploitation. We must take into consideration the National-Colonial character
of the Negro Question in Africa and the West Indies and the racial character of
this question in the United States.” 24
Before his visit to
Jamaica, Huiswoud had travelled to Moscow where he stayed from March until
June.25 Documents in both the Comintern and Profintern Fund indicate
that Huiswoud was present at meetings of the ITUC-NW of the RILU, where he
delivered a report on the “Negro Work in the United States”.26 At
that time the preparations for a Negro Conference were already in full swing.
The RILU was looking into the possibility of creating a Negro Bureau in Paris,
which would be responsible for connecting work between the French and Belgian
parties and the United States.27 Another urgent task was to find
people to participate in the Negro Conference and “in line with this, definite
steps should be made to make contact with the workers of the West Indies and
Latin and Central America.”28
I have found no clear
indications in the Comintern and Profintern Funds that Huiswoud was officially
appointed as a member of the Negro Bureau.29 However, Huiswoud’s
activities and his writings30 demonstrate that he had moved away
from the CPUSA with its factional fighting about the Black Belt Thesis31 and
had become engaged in the international anti-colonial struggle, alongside his
younger friend and comrade George Padmore.32 In 1930 he travelled
throughout the Caribbean, together with his wife Hermine Alicia
Huiswoud-Dumont, to find representatives for the First International Negro
Congress, to be held in Hamburg in July 1930. From December 1930 until
Huiswoud’s trip to South Africa late 1932, a close working relationship ensued
between Huiswoud and Padmore. They were both working for the RILU and its
ITUC-NW. In October 1931, Padmore was sent to Hamburg to replace James Ford as
editor-in-chief of The Negro Worker, while Otto Huiswoud became chairman
of the ITUC-NW.33 When Huiswoud returned from South Africa, George
Padmore had been arrested by the German police and was deported to the United
Kingdom.34 Padmore relocated to Paris, where he established contact
with Tiemoko Garan Kouyaté. They had first met in 1930 during the Negro
Conference and became good friends. When the Comintern officially excluded
Kouyaté in October 1933,35 Padmore continued to associate with him
and supplied him with Comintern money. Otto Huiswoud was ordered by the
Comintern to go down to Paris and investigate both Padmore and Kouyaté.
Huiswoud explained to Padmore that he was supposed to travel to Moscow “to give
an account of his work amongst the Negroes since his departure from Hamburg.”
Padmore refused to go; this led to his official exclusion by the Comintern on
23 February 1934.36
Contrary to Padmore’s
assertion, the Comintern did not dissolve the ITUC-NW in 1933. Huiswoud
continued with the work until 1937, relocating from Copenhagen to Antwerp, to
Amsterdam, and finally to Paris. In the last issue of The Negro Worker
(September-October 1937) Huiswoud announced the formation of a new committee
that would join the movement to “stop the ruthless advance of fascism.”37
This committee never materialized, but evidence in the French Archives
Nationales section Outre-Mer (ANSOM) shows that Huiswoud was very active in
the Union des Travailleurs Nègres (UTN) until he left Paris for the
United States in the second half of 1938.
Though no longer working
for the same organisation, Padmore and Huiswoud remained engaged in similar
activities. What Padmore was doing in England, first with the International
African Friends of Ethiopia (IAFE) and later with the International African
Service Bureau (IASB), Huiswoud was doing in France with the ITUC-NW and the
UTN. In one of his last reports to the Profintern, Huiswoud noted the change in
interest among the “toiling masses in the colonies”. “While we must recognize
the fact that in most of the colonies strike struggles are fast increasing and
steady progress is being made in trade union organization, especially in South
Africa and the West Indies, nevertheless the major development in organization
among the Native people today is on a much wider basis - the struggle for
elementary democratic rights - political rights, the rights of free press,
speech and organization, against specific colonial laws and economic
exploitation. The demand for the activity to gain self-government is gaining
ground among the Natives of the larger and most important West Indian colonies.
[...] To this must be added that the Italian fascist war on Abyssinia, has
profoundly affected large strata of the Negro people everywhere imbuing them with
a certain political consciousness as to the necessity of struggle for
liberation from imperialist domination.[...] We consider that our present major
task is to further stimulate and give aid in the development of the National
Liberation movement organizations in the colonies and to propagate and help
bring about united front actions and the unity of these organizations.”38
A month later, at the
opening of the new headquarters of the UTN in Paris,39 Huiswoud took
the ‘united front’ policy to a logical conclusion by advising those present
that it was important for Negroes to cooperate with those democracies that were
concerned about their welfare. Since the Negroes would never be able to obtain
their liberation by themselves, they would need the support of these
democracies and their respective mother-countries.40
During the Second World War
Huiswoud was incarcerated by the Dutch colonial authorities in his country of
birth, Suriname. At the same time, the FBI started an investigation into
Huiswoud’s past. When it became known that Huiswoud had worked for the
Comintern, he became an enemy of the state and was unable to return to the
United States. In 1947 Otto Huiswoud settled down in the Netherlands, where he
dedicated the rest of his life to the guidance and growth of young Surinamese,
who would become the ‘avant-garde’ in the struggle for “national independence,
and against colonialism and imperialism.”41
Notes
* This contribution
reproduces an older unpublished paper based on Dr. Maria Van Enckevort’s PhD
dissertation.
[1] The moving force behind the Socialist
Propaganda League was Sebald Justinus Rutgers, a Dutch civil engineer who had
worked in the Dutch East Indies. Through Rutgers, Huiswoud befriended the
Japanese Sen Katayama, who in 1922 became the Head of the “Negro Commission” of
the Comintern.
2 How to Organize and Lead the Struggles of
Negro Toilers, by Charles
Woodson. Published by the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers,
Copenhagen, 1935.
3 George Padmore worked as its editor-in-chief
from November 1931 until February 1933, when he was arrested by the Political
Division of the Hamburg police and subsequently deported to England. The
magazine did not cease to exist as many were led to believe but continued with
Otto Huiswoud, under the name of Charles Woodson, until 1937.
4 The Messenger, Dec.1919, Vol.2, nr.11, 22-23: “In order to
understand colonialism, it is necessary to understand the development of
capitalism. The principal motive behind the race for colonies, protectorates
and ‘spheres of influence’ between the great nations of Europe is not one of
good or bad intent toward the natives of these colonies, but one of their
economic exploitation.”
5 FBI Records file # HQ 64-30457-2, p.2. “Otto
Huiswoud” an obituary by Cyril Briggs in: The Worker, Dec. 1961, p.8.;
Letter Hermine Huiswoud, Oct.24, 1990. In Huiswoud’s personal file in the
Comintern Fund 495, Inv. 261. File # 6668, it states that he has been a member of
the CPUSA since 1919.
6 Protokoll des IV Kongresses, p.697,
translation mine.
7 Ibidem.
8 Turner & Turner [1988:50] explain that the
name “Negro Sanhedrin” was used by Kelly Miller a sociology professor and the
Dean of Howard University, who acted as chairman of the conference.
9 The Daily Worker, February 15, 1924.
10 The Farmer-Labor Movement had been formed
around the same time as the American Communist Party at the end of 1919. The
movement was started by local trade unions and concentrated in the American
West.
11 Comintern Fund 495, Inv.155, file # 59. The
only reference in the American Press is by Cyril Briggs in the Communist
of September 1929; see Foner [1987:217].
12 It is not clear when exactly Moore and Briggs
joined the Communist Party. Turner & Turner [1988:51] put Moore’s entry
around 1926. Briggs’ entry is more difficult to determine. Many scholars put
his entry around the same time as that of Moore. In his handwritten
autobiography in the Comintern Fund 495, Inv. 261, file # 2133, Briggs states
that he joined the party in 1919 in New York.
13 In his autobiography Black Bolshevik
[1978:146] Haywood questions the selection of the new leadership for the ANLC.
“Why was Fort-Whiteman chosen in preference to such well-known and capable
Blacks as Richard B. Moore, Otto Huiswood or Cyril Briggs, all of whom had
revolutionary records superior to Fort-Whiteman’s? [ . . . ] These Black
leaders had records comparable to, or better then, those of any whites on the
Central Committee.”
14 It was James Ford who introduced George
Padmore to the work of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers
(ITUC-NW) in 1929. Padmore was acquainted with Otto Huiswoud and his wife
Hermine to whom he allegedly owns his pseudonym. The three of them had worked together
in the ANLC. [Turner & Turner, 1988: p.56 & note 43, p.104]
15 Three years later (1928) in a report to the
Comintern [Fund 495, Inv. 155, file # 59] Ford criticizes the Party’s “attitude
to leading Negro Comrades.” Capable Negro Comrades who had pointed out mistakes
had not been given consideration, but were relegated to insignificant
positions. He mentioned Moore, Briggs and Huiswoud by name.
16 Comintern Fund 495, Inv. 155, file # 39, pp.
3-5. Report and recommendations on the Conference of the Party
Fraction in the General Executive Board of the ANLC. Moore had been elected
as the new General Secretary-Organizer of the ANLC and had been placed on the
Council of Directors. Huiswoud had been appointed as the Head of the Negro
Department of the National Executive Committee.
17 Jay Lovestone, who was lobbying in Moscow for
the vacant position of General Secretary of the CPUSA admitted that the former
Party leadership had neglected its Negro Work. By appointing Huiswoud and Moore
the Party showed Athe determination of the Central Committee to remedy our
default on this most important question@. See Haywood [1978:189] and Comintern
Fund 495, Inv. 155, file # 66.
18 These executive organs had an extensive
administrative network at their disposal, with departments for organization,
information, agitation and propaganda. The headquarters also contained regional
or “ländersecretariats”, e.g. the “Anglo-American Secretariat”, the “Latin
American Secretariat” etc. These regional secretariats could form commissions
and sub commissions to study specific problems.
19 The Profintern or RILU - an international
federation of revolutionary trade unions - was founded in July 1921, under the
leadership of the Comintern. Its purpose was ‘to organize the working masses of
the world for the overthrow of capitalism”. A chosen representative of the RILU
was part of the ECCI. From 1921 until 1937, when the RILU was dissolved,
Losovsky was its General Secretary and the representative on the ECCI. On July
31st, 1928, during a meeting of the Executive Bureau of the RILU,
Losovsky came with the idea of forming a Negro Bureau under the name of the
International trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUC-NW), with the
African American James Ford as chairman of the Committee.
20 A clear picture of the organizational pattern
of the Comintern can be found in the Short Guide (Kratki’i Putjevoditjel) of
the Funds and Collections, collected by the Central Archives of the
Party. Published by the Russian Center of Conservation & Study of Records
for Modern History, Moscow: Blagoviet, 1993.
21 At the Sixth Comintern Congress in Moscow,
summer 1928, a resolution was passed on the Negro Question in America, which
advocated the slogan of “the right of self-determination of the Negroes in the
Black Belt” better known as “Black Belt Thesis”. The African American Harry
Haywood had played an important part in the development of the thesis. Stalin,
however, used it as an instrument to establish his power over the American
communist Party, manipulating the Party’s factional fighting. See also
Robinson, Black Marxism, 1983, pp.308, ff.
22 Comintern Fund 495, Inv.155, file # 56, p.114.
“The Negro and the Trade Unions”, in The Communist, December 1928,
Vol.viii, no.12, pp.770-775. In this article Huiswoud mentioned the newly
established International Trade Union Committee for Negro Workers (ITUC-NW)
organized by the RILU as being responsible for “ . . . the distinctly
proletarian leadership of the American Negro worker, not only nationally, but
internationally as well.”
23 The Daily Gleaner, August 12,
1929. The theme of the debate was: “Resolved that the Negro problem can only be
solved by International Labour cooperation between White and Black labour.”
Huiswoud would speak for the affirmative and Garvey for the negative.
24 “World Aspects of the Negro Question”, in:
The Communist, Vol.ix, no.2, Feb.30, 1930, pp.132-147.
25 FBI file # HQ 64-30457-2, p.4.
26 Comintern Fund 495, Inv. 155, file # 67, p.14;
Profintern Fund 534, Inv. 3, file # 450
27 Comintern Fund 495, Inv. 155, file # 67, p.19.
28 Ibidem, file # 77, p.86.
29 Comintern Fund 495, Inv.261, file # 1408, p.16
& p.26 contain a questionnaire and an autobiography by Helen Davis, the
party name of Hermine Huiswoud-Dumont. In it she mentions that in 1930
her husband was working for the RILU doing “Colonial and Trade Union work in
the Caribbean and Latin America. While I was not sent to do this work, I
accompanied my husband and assisted in it.”
30 See above, note 24. The same article talks about
the need to draw the “colonial slaves” in Africa and the West Indian Islands
into a “world-wide revolutionary movement for the overthrow of world
capitalism.” Interesting is Huiswoud’s warning of another imperialist war and a
war against the Soviet Union “into which thousands of Negroes will be drawn and
sacrificed to appease the greed of world imperialism.”
31 Huiswoud had publicly ignored the “Black Belt
Thesis” and had published an article that was interpreted as being in direct
opposition to the line of the Comintern. In December 1930, when he had
officially relocated in Moscow with his wife, he confessed that he had made an
error with regard to the question of self-determination. Comintern Fund 495,
Inv. 155, file # 87, pp.441-445.
32 The Profintern Fund 534, Inv. 3, file # 450,
contains a letter, dated Dec. 23, 1929, from James Ford to Slavin in Moscow, in
which he announced the arrival of George Padmore. This is the first mention of
Padmore in this Fund.
The Caribbean Bureau of the
Profintern Fund 534, Inv. 4, file # 330, contains a personal letter from
Huiswoud, dated April 14, 1930, Port of Spain, to George Padmore. The letter is
not written in the stiff Comintern style. It opens with “Dear George” and is
signed “Fraternally yours, Otto.”
33 Profintern Fund 534, Inv. 3, file # 668.
34 Public Record Office, London, FO 372/2910,
Dispatches, no.21, February 21, 1933 and no.22, February 22, 1933 (208/33).
35 SLOTFOM, III/53, dossier UTN, Rapport de Paul,
date: Dec.18, 1933.
36 SLOTFOM III/53, Rapport de Joe, date: Feb.27,
1934; SLOTFOM, III/61, doss.”Notes sur la propagande, Février 1935, Huiswood et
la Crusader News Agency.” The Profintern Fund 534, Inv. 3, file # 895, contains
an interesting letter to Padmore, dated March 22, 1933, signed [illegible],
admonishing him that he has to change his methods of work radically. He is too
individualistic and not collective enough, he leaves too many traces of himself
and he should become more skillful in “legal, semi-legal and illegal methods of
work.”
37 Profintern Fund 534, Inv.3, file # 1114,
contains a letter to Moskvin, a former chief of the Secret Police (OGPU), who
in 1935 had been elected to the ECCI. In this letter Moskvin is informed that
the ITUC-NW had been converted into a “Committee of Cultural service for the
toiling masses of Africa.”
38 Profintern Fund 534, Inv. 3, file # 1103,
date: January 1937, total of eight pages.
39 Huiswoud donated the furniture and appliances
of the former ITUC-NW offices to the new UTN headquarters.
40 SLOTFOM II/2, Agent COCO, date: Fevr.7, 1938.
41 In Memoriam Otto Huiswoud,
[1989:13]. ARA, GvS/KG, No.102/15 June 1959.
References and/or complementary bibliography
Primary Sources
“Archief van de Gouverneur van Suriname (Kabinet
Geheim 1885-1951)”. In Algemeen Rijksarchief (ARA), The Hague
FBI Records
“Documents of the Executive
Committee of the Communist International or Comintern, Fund 495”. In Russian
Centre for the Preservation and Study of Documents. Moscow.
“Documents of the Red
International of Labour Unions or Profintern, Fund 534”. In Russian Centre
for the Preservation and Study of Documents. Moscow.
“Documents of the ‘Service
de Liaison des Originaires des Territoires Français d”Outre Mer’ (SLOTFOM). In Archives
Nationales Section Outre-Mer (ANSOM). Aix-en-Provence.
“Foreign Records”. In Public
Record Office. London.
Secondary Sources
Haywood, Harry. 1978. Black
Bolshevik. Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist. Chicago: Liberator
Press.
Huiswoud, Otto. 1919.
“Dutch Guiana: A Study in Colonial Exploitation”. In The Messenger.
Vol.2, nr. 11, pp.22-23.
Huiswoud, Otto. 1928. “The
Negro and the Trade Unions”. In The Communist. December. Vol.viii,
no.12, pp.770-775.
Huiswoud, Otto. 1930.
“World Aspects of the Negro Question”. In The Communist. February.
Vol.ix, no 2, pp.132-147.
“In Memoriam Otto
Huiswoud”. 1989. In Vereniging Ons Suriname 18 Januari 1919 – 18 Januari
1989. Een Aanzet tot de Geschiedschrijving over Zeventig Jaren Leven en Strijd
van Surinamers in Nederland. Amsterdam: Vereniging Ons Suriname, pp.110-13.
Protokoll des
IV Kongresses der Kommunistischen Internationale. 1923. Hamburg.
Robinson, Cedric. 1983. Black
Marxism. The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. London: Zed Books Ltd.
Short Guide of
the Funds and Collections, collected by the Central Archives of the Party. 1993. Moscow: Russian Center of
Conservation & Study of Records for Modern History.
Turner, W. Burghardt and
Joyce Moore Turner. 1988. Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem:
Collected Writings 1920-1972. Bloomington: Indiana Press.
Woodson, Charles. 1935. How
to Organize and Lead the Struggles of Negro Toilers. Copenhagen: the
International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers.
Information about the
authors
Max BELAISE (University of Martinique,
Martinique)
Max Belaise was
born in 1960 in Pointe-à-Pitre (Guadeloupe). He has completed his Ph.D.
candidacy in Philosophy in the Philosophy Department of the Université Marne La
Vallée (France), and Theology and in History of Philosophy (Sorbonne). He is a
graduate in Pharmacology, theology, and in medical anthropology (France). He is
currently teaching ethics at the Institute of Technology and at the Faculty of
letters, at the Université des Antilles-Guyane (Martinique, France), after
having exercised the pastoral ministry in France and in the French West Indies.
His primary research interests are centered on ethics, medicine, religion and
civilization in the French West Indies.
Gracelyn CASSELL (UWI, Montserrat)
Gracelyn Cassell,
B.A. Library Studies (UWI), M.A. Archives (Lond), and M Sc Computer Assisted
Management Information Systems (UWI) worked in the Montserrat Public Library
from 1982 to 1997 and in the Main Library at the University of the West Indies,
Mona, Jamaica from 1997 to 2005. In August 2005, she returned to Montserrat to
take up the post of Resident Tutor and Head of the University of the West
Indies School of Continuing Studies.
Dr. Maria CIJNTJE – VAN ENCKEVORT
(USM Dean of Academic Affairs, St Martin, N.A.)
Dr. Cijntje-Van
Enckevort was born in the Netherlands. She studied in the Netherlands, Canada,
and Jamaica (UWI, Mona), and has been working in education on (Dutch) St. Martin for the
past 25 years. She has published various textbooks on history and social
studies for secondary education. Her main interests are in the areas of
history, philosophy and Caribbean Studies. She is the current Dean of Academic
Affairs at the University of St. Martin, N.A.
Website: https://consultants2006.tripod.com/maria_van_enckevort.
Prof. Dr. Marc DEPAEPE
(K.U.Leuven-Kortrijk, Belgium)
Marc Depaepe
(1953) is Full Professor at the “Katholieke Universiteit Leuven” (Belgium),
where he is chairing the Center for the History of Education. Since 2004, he is
also chairing the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the Campus
Kortrijk. He is a former President of the International Standing Conference for
the History of Education as well as of the Belgian Dutch Society for the
History of Education. He has a large amount of publications in several
languages. They deal whith four main topics: the historiography, theory and
methodology of the history of education; the international history of the
sciences of education; the history of primary education in Belgium; and, the
history of colonial education in Congo. Since 2005, he is, with Frank Simon,
co-editor-in-chief of Paedagogica Historica. The international journal of
the history of education.
Josianne FLEMING-ARTSEN (USM
President, St. Martin, N.A.)
Mrs. Fleming-Artsen is a
qualified educator and holds degrees in Educational Sciences. She has studied
in the Netherlands Antilles, the Netherlands, and the USA. She has been active
in St. Martin classrooms and school management for approximately 25 years.
Dr. June GEORGE (UWI, St Augustine,
Trinidad & Tobago)
June George,
Ph.D., is Head, School of Education,
The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad, West Indies. An educator with over 25 years of experience at tertiary
and secondary levels, Dr. George’s main interests are in the fields of science
education, indigenous technology and traditional beliefs and practices, and
assessment and evaluation. She has published widely in these fields.
Website:
http://www.id21.org/education/E3jg1g1.html
Milton A. GEORGE (PhD candidate,
K.U.Leuven, Belgium & USM Guest Instructor, St. Martin, N.A.)
Milton A.
George was born in Suriname. He studied in The Netherlands, the UK, and
Belgium. He holds a university teaching degree, a diploma in teaching English
as a Foreign Language, and MAs in Religious Studies, Theology, Canon Law, and
Educational Studies, respectively. He is currently a PhD candidate at the
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. He is conducting a research project
about the history of primary education in St Martin, The Netherlands Antilles,
and doing an MA in Linguistics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.
Website: http://www.geocities.com/milgeorge/official.html
Dr. Francio GUADELOUPE (Head of the
Research and Publication Dept., USM, St. Martin, N.A.)
Francio
Guadeloupe was born on the 11th of May 1971 on the Dutch West Indian
Island of Aruba. After having lived and traveled throughout the Caribbean, he
moved to the Netherlands at 18 years of age. In 1999, he obtained his Master’s
degree in development studies at the University of Nijmegen, based on his
research on the Afro-Brazilian cults Candomblé and Umbanda in Rio de Janeiro
and Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. On the basis of his dissertation Guadeloupe has
published two books: A vida e uma dança: the Candomble Through the Lives of Two
Cariocas (Nijmegen, CIDI, 1999), and Dansen om te leven: over Afro-Braziliaanse
cultuur en religie (Luyten & Babar, 1999). His PhD research resulted in his
book, entitled: Chanting down the New Jerusalem: The politics of belonging on
Saint Martin and Sint Maarten. This dissertation concerns itself with the
manner in which popular radio disc jockeys on the bi-national island of
Saint-Martin & Sint Maarten (the French and Dutch West Indies) employ
Caribbean music, and Creolized Christianity, to put forth all-inclusive
politics of belonging. It is about how on a multi-ethnic and multi-religious
island, where everyone's livelihood is dependent on tourism, all social classes
seek and often times are able to transcend their ethnic and religious
differences. This is done paradoxically by employing Creolized Christianity as
a public religion that does not privilege any of the faiths practiced; not even
that of the Christian churches. It is an ethnography that seeks to demonstrate,
that in a time in which ethnic and religious based identity politics are rampant,
there are alternatives in the world. That there are places where people
understand, because of the circumstances they are in, that taking on an
identity is about creating for oneself a space to act while taking others into
consideration.
Website: http://www.diasporainternational.org/pdf/healing_of.pdf
Prof. Dr. Yegin HABTES (UVI, US
Virgin Islands, USA)
Prof. Dr.
Habtes is professor of Education at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI),
USA, and Executive Director of the UVI’s Center of Excellence in Developmental
Disabilities.
Prof. Dr. Zellynne JENNINGS-CRAIG
(UWI, Mona, Jamaica)
Zellynne
Jennings-Craig is Professor and Head of the Department of Educational Studies
at the University of the West Indies, Mona. She read for her B.A (Hons) at the
University of Hull in England and has Masters Degrees from the Universities of
Leeds and Birmingham in the U.K. She has a Ph D from the University of the West
Indies. A former Professor of Education at the University of Guyana, Professor
Jennings has wide experience in Caribbean education systems, including Guyana
and the Eastern Caribbean and has worked on consultancies for various
international agencies, including UNESCO, DFID and CIDA. Her scholarly work
includes four school texts, fourteen chapters in books, three monographs, forty
six articles published in refereed international journals, book reviews,
editorials, twelve papers presented at international conferences and over
twenty reports.
Jeannette J. LOVERN (UVI, St Croix,
US Virgin Islands, USA)
J. Jeannette
Lovern, Ph.D. is a native of Missouri, in the United States. Throughout her
career, she has taught at the junior high, high school, community college, 4-year
college, university, and graduate school levels. She did her undergraduate work
at Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University) where she
was a Pershing Scholar. She got her master's degree from the University of
Oklahoma. While there, she was chosen for the Oxford Scholars Program at Oxford
University in the UK. She received her Ph.D. in Education from Capella
University in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She completed the Mind, Brain, and
Education Institute at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in
2002. Her specialty areas include Educational Psychology, Multiculturalism,
Literacy, and Assessment.
Drs. Rob PAULUSSEN (OU, the
Netherlands & BAZN Academy for Public Administration)
Drs. Rob
Paulussen, consultant and researcher Linea Partners and associate lecturer in
Public Administration, Open University – Fontys Academy for Public
Administration
Dr. Marilyn ROBB (UWI, St
Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago)
Marilyn Robb is
an Educational Consultant attached to the Caribbean Institute for Research and
Professional Education, Ltd (CIRPEL). She has an M. Ed from Towson State
University, Maryland USA, an M. Phil from the University of the West Indies and
a Ph.D. from the University of the West Indies. She is the Program
Administrator and a tutor for the University of Sheffield Caribbean Program in
Education. She also lectures in the Department of Education at the University
of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. One of her major
consultancies was the “Changing the Culture of the Classroom” project which she
designed and implemented in several Caribbean countries for UNESCO. Marilyn has
also conducted workshops on Social and Emotional Learning and Educational
Change in North America, Australia and several countries in Europe. The
Institute- CIRPEL: Caribbean Institute for Research and Professional Education,
Ltd., an independent learning organization in operation for the past ten years,
offers services in the sphere of education. They are the agents for the
University of Sheffield, School of Education Caribbean Programs. The
consultancy services offered by CIRPEL include support for distance learners,
staff and professional development and collaborative research.
Website: www.cirpel.org.
Dr. Silvio Sergio SCATOLINI
APÓSTOLO (USM Guest Instructor, St. Martin, N.A.)
Dr. Scatolini
Apóstolo was born in Argentina. He has worked, conducted research, and/or
studied in Argentina, the UK, Belgium, Suriname, the Netherlands, Egypt, and
St. Martin. He has made several contributions to the conferences Catholic
Theology in the Caribbean Today and taught at the USM as Guest Instructor
(“Comparative Religions” [together with Milton A. George] and “Introduction to
Metaphysics and Human Values”). Dr. Scatolini Apóstolo holds a Cambridge
Certificate in TEFL, as well as a BA in Ancient Near Eastern Studies (Semitic
Studies), an MA in Educational Sciences, and a PhD in Theology from the
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. He also has an academic teacher’s
degree for secondary education. Currently, he is pursuing an MA in Advanced
Linguistics (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium), and participating in a
Postgradute Course in Caribbean Studies (KITLV, Leiden, the Netherlands) and a
Postgraduate E‑learning Course to become a Professional Expert in Islamic
Culture, Civilization, and Religion (UNED, Spain).
Website: www.geocities.com/silviosergio/index.html
and consultants.tripod.com/phil232
Drs. Iwan SEWANDONO (OU, The
Netherlands & BAZN-USM, St. Martin, N.A.)
Drs. Iwan
Sewandono is the Principal Lecturer in the M.Sc. course on Public Management
and Policy for civil servants in St. Martin, N.A., jointly organized by the
Open University (OU) of the Netherlands and the Fontys Academy for Public
Administration. He is also a member of the Amsterdam Advice Council for
Diversity and Integration.
Prof. Dr. Peter SNOW (Christopher
Newport University, USA)
Peter Snow
received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles and is now an
Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English at Christopher
Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, USA. He has conducted
ethnographic fieldwork and worked as an elementary school teacher and
teacher-trainer on the Panamanian island of Bastimentos in the Western
Caribbean Sea since 1993. His articles on language contact and Caribbean Creole
language varieties have appeared in the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages,
the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, and – most recently –
in the book ‘Politeness and Face in Caribbean Creoles’ edited by Susanne
Muhleisen and Bettina Migge.
[1] In 2005, I published an internal research report
for the OUNL and some committees on strengthening relationships between
educational institutes at the lowest level and employers in the Dordrecht area
in the Netherlands
[2] The so-called February strike in 1942
[3]
Wij Amsterdammers
II, pg. 11.
[4] F. Reno, « L’Europe tropicale », in
La Tribune des Antilles, no 43, p. 22-23.
[5] F. Flahault, Le paradoxe de Robinson,
Paris, Mille et une nuits, 2003, p. 148.
[6] F. Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs, Paris,
Seuil, 1952.
[7] A. Césaire, Nègre je suis, nègre je
resterai, Paris, A. Michel, 2005, p. 42.
[8] Our free translation: “We must accept that
meanwhile the intellectuals and the ideologists were fighting the colonial
domination by many means, they were mimetically perpetuating its teachings.”
J.-M. Theodore, “La production d’outils pédagogiques,” in Cahiers de
l’UGTM-éducation, no spécial, octobre 2002, p. 25.
[9] A. Touraine, “Les Français piégés par leur moi
national,” in Le Monde, no 18907, 8 novembre 2005, p. 37. Our
free translation: “The French republicanism identifies itself with
universalism, which more often implies the rejection or the maintenance in an
inferior position of those who are “different”. Those obstacles to integration
have deep causes […] We are marked by a colonial tradition.”
[10]
Ibid. Our
free translation: “It is no longer acceptable to think and to act as if France
was the depositor of the universal values, and had the right, in the name of
this mission, to treat as inferior those whose characters do not correspond to
the ideal Me. The false consciousness of the French when they talk about
themselves explains the weak opening to the social sciences.”
[11] E. Benbassa, N. Bancel, “Le passé colonial de
la France : un écueil historique,” in Le Monde de l’éducation, no
338, juillet-août 2005, p. 90.
[12] T. Delsham (interview with), “La France a du
mal à respecter la diversité culturelle,” in Antilla, no
1122, 22 décembre 2004, p. 10. Our free translation: “The [French] republic
accepts a technical decentralisation [of its administration]. You will have to
manage the roads [construction], the tourism industry, the formation, cottage
industry, and all else that I forget! But you do not manage the symbolic. You
do not manage the language, the culture, your soul, your future.”
[13] A. Césaire, Ibid., p. 37.
[14] Quoted by Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “Frantz
Fanon and C.L.R. James on intellectualism and enlightened rationality,” in
Caribbean Studies, vol. 33, no 2, July-December 2005, p. 159.
[15]A.-L. Conklin, « Le colonialisme : un
dérapage de l’idéal éducatif », in Communications, no 72/2002, p.
160.
[16] P. Erny, Essai sur l’éducation en Afrique
noire, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2001, p. 243. Our free translation: “Each
culture has its ethos that gives a particular, intellectual, moral, and
affective colour to the education delivered in it.”
[17] A. Césaire, Ibid., p. 41. Our free
translation: “The education that we received and the world conception
which comes from it are responsible of our irresponsibility.”
[18] E. Glissant, Le discours antillais,
Paris, Seuil, 1997, p. 583.
[19] A. Yvan-Augustin, “L’école haïtienne, une
immense machine en panne,” in Le Nouvelliste, no 37407, 13 Juin 2006, p.
33. Our free translation: “Most of the school books we have do not
correspond to the realities of the country. The manuals, till recently,
reproduce the French model, even if they have been conceived and produced in
Haiti.”
[20] P. Chamoiseau, Une enfance créole II/
Chemin-d’école, Paris, Gallimard, 1996, p. 170. Our free translation: “The
Universal was a shield, a disinfectant, a religion, a hope, a supreme poetical
act. The universal was a command.”
[21] A. Césaire, Discours à la maison du peuple,
Fort-de-France, Editions : PPM/SLND, p. 53.
[22] M. H. Léotin, “Agir pour l’éducation,” in
Cahiers de l’UGTM-éducation, no spécial, octobre 2002, p. 30.
[23] J.-P. Sainton, “La caraïbe qui nous
unit : construire une socio-histoire,” in Cahiers de l’UGTM-éducation, no
spécial, novembre 2003, p. 22.
[24] P. Erny, Ibid., p. 289.
[25] F. Savater, Pour l’éducation, Paris, Rivages
poche, 1998, p. 39. Our free translation: “Education is the concrete
mark of the human being put there where the latter was only potential.”
[26] E. Kant, Anthropologie d’un point de vue
pragmatique, Paris, Vrin, 1991, p. 155.
[27] F. Fanon, Ibid., p. 88.
[28]
Ibid., p. 30.
[29] J.-P. Sartre, L’existentialisme est un
humanisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1996, p. 29. Our free translation: “Man is not
only as he conceives himself, but as he desires himself”.
[30] E. Kant, On education (Ueber
Paedagogik) The Online Library of liberty.htm, p. 11.
[31] J.-L. Legrand, “Place de l’anthropologie dans
les sciences de l’éducation,” in Spirale, no 11, 203, p. 15.
[32] Ph. Descola, “Offrir ce magnifique moteur
qu’est la curiosité,” in Le Monde de l’éducation, no 349, Juillet-Août
2006.
[33] M. Cegarra, “Vers une anthropologie de
l’éducation: entre attirance et réserve,” in Spirale, no 11,
203, p. 22. Our free translation: “The education of human beings is
rooted in a specific milieu which must be characterized through the exterior
conditions that will act on it, such as its physical, cultural, and social
environment. It is all about identifying the society’s characteristics in which
the education is developed, from the perspective of its economical system as
much as from the social and cultural point of view.”
[34]
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/anglophone/postcolonial.html
[35] This is one of the strategies that are being
followed at the K.U.Leuven Research Center in the History of Pedagogy in the
Belgian Congo.
[36]
http://www.historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/interpret.html
[37] Taken from MAC general information folder.
Material received from Mr. Clinton Spring, executive director of the MAC while
collecting data.
[38] Baudrillard (2005: 41).
[39] As quoted in Baudrillard (2005: 141).
[40] Nancy (1996: 95).
[41] For an example hereof on Sint Maarten see Sekou
(1997). In Sekou’s book the flamboyant tree is recognized as SXM’s national
symbol standing for complete and absolute independence from the Netherlands.
[42] The term objective culture is borrowed from
the philosopher Georg Simmel.
[43] See Lyotard (2004) and Blanchot (2001).
[44] See Harris (1999: 80).
[45] Castells, (1997), pp. 244-245, 252-254, 259-261.
[46] I will examine the concept of good governance
only looking at local government. This means the object of this article is
‘government governance’ in stead of ‘corporate governance’. (e.g. Bossert,
(2003), p. 16)
[47] I think those two elements are interesting.
Traditionally, good governance gets much attention by focussing on the key
element ‘integrity’ (e.g. democracy and accountability seems to be more
challenging for this paper).
[48] Recently, with an ambitious reform of Dutch
democratic formal institutions (provinces and municipalities), some relevant
research is conducted in which the quality of political decision-making was the
object (Pröpper, and Paulussen, 2004 and Pröpper, Paulussen and
Steenbeek, 2003). For the purpose of this article I will partly follow the
theoretical framework of this research.
[49] See for instance: Behn, R.D., (2001).
[50] Aardema (2002) gives an explanation of this by
using the concept of ‘institutionele amorfie’ (Dutch): the difference between
individual rationality and collective rationality.
[51] This problem gets much attention in literature
on public administration; see, for instance: Wilson, (1989), 11-13.
[52] Farneti and Bestebreur (2004) draw the same
conclusion: ‘Though formal concepts of budgeting accountability lay at heart of
the implementation, it should be taken into account that a critical,
constructive attitude (itself also a result of existing culture) with regard to
the internalization of such (new) concepts in the organization, is needed for a
successful introduction in the organization. This can not be reached by a
legislation programme alone…” (See also the work of Aardema, 2002).
[53] My personal experience is that many politicians
consider themselves a victim of an overwhelming production of policy notes made
by civil servants.
[54] hooks [1994:51].
[55] Gordon, Shirley (1963) “A Century of West
Indian Education: A Source Book”. London: Longmans, quoted in: M. Kassion
Bacchus “Education in the Pre-emancipation Period (With Special Reference to
the Colonies who later became British Guiana).” p. 645.
[56] Hartog [1964:511].
[57] Richards [1967:167].
[58] George [2004:40]; Hartog [1964:491-92
& 505]; for Saba also see Crane [1971:60].
[59] Hartog [1964:502-505].
[60] See Hartog [1964:231-34 & 279].
[61] Hartog [1964:633]; Voges [1990:27].
[62] Menkman [1942:483].
[63] Hartog [1964:483]
[64] Cited in Bor [1981:145].
[65] Dutch society is ‘vertically’ divided in
several smaller segments or “pillars’ according to different religions or
ideologies, with their own social institutions, such as political parties,
schools, broadcasting organizations, etc.
[66] Dei [2006:16].
[67] Fanon [1967:18].
[68] Marcha & Verweel [2003:10].
[69] Ibid., p.121
[70] The fact that the Catholic religion is
not as dominant on St. Maarten, as well as a more oecumenical fellowship
between the various Christian denominations, has also contributed to this.
[71] Clarke [ 2003: 50]; See also George
Lamming, who speaks about “fractured consciousness”
in: In the Castle of My Skin; Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1994; p. xxxix
[72] e.g. Eduard Glissant; Ulf Hannerz.
[73] For an excellent overview of the concept
creolization and its genesis see: Verene A. Shepherd & Glen L. Richards,
eds. Questioning Creole. Creolisation Discourses in Caribbean Culture,
Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2002
[74] See C.L.R. James, Black Jacobins:
Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage
Books, Random House, 1963, [1938], and, Eric Williams, Capitalism and
Slavery, Chapel Hill: University of Carolina Press, 1944.
[75] In a lecture prepared for the Caribbean
Conference on Culture (Jamaica, March 1996) entitled “CLR James and the
Trinidad & Tobago Intellectual Tradition: Or Not Learning Shakespeare Under
a Mango Tree” Selwyn R. Cudjoe acknowledges the “legacies of the 19th
century intellectuals . . . [who] effect[ed] on his [CLR’s] intellectual
development.” That article inspired me to use the flamboyant tree as a symbol
for St. Martin’s intellectual achievements, both past and future.
[76] See Kempf [2006: 152].
[77] See Sekou [1990].
[78] In the future country St. Martin, the
Dutch spelling of the name will be discarded.
[79] Cf. http://www.usmonline.net.
Retrieved on March 10, 2004.
[80] http://www.taalunie.org/_/publicaties/taalschrift/ts98_3_1.html.
Retrieved on 6th March 2004.
[81] Jason Gordon, “Class of paradigms report from
the Caribbean,” in Georges de Schrijver (ed.) Liberation Theologies
on Shifting Grounds: a clash of socio‑economic and cultural paradigms
(Leuven, B: Peeters, 1998) 365 [underlining mine].
[82] William G. Demas, “Change and Renewal in the
Caribbean,” in David I. Mitchell (ed.) Challenges in the New
Caribbean, (Barbados: CCC Publishing House, 1975) v.
[83] Cf. Encyclopedia international
(1963) vol.4, 102.
[84] Idris Hamid (ed.), Out of The Depths, a collection
of papers presented at four Missiology Conferences held in Antigua, Guyana,
Jamaica and Trinidad in 1975, (Trinidad: Rahaman Printery Ltd., 1977) back‑cover.
[85] Cf. Kortright Davis, Mission For
Caribbean Change: Caribbean Development as Theological Enterprise, (Frankfurt
am Main, D: Peter Lang GmBH, 1982).
[86] Cf. Kortright Davis, Cross and crown
in Barbados: Caribbean politics. Religion in the late 19th century,
(Frankfurt am Main, D: Peter Lang Gmbh, 1983).
[87] Cf. Kortright Davis, Emancipation
Still Comin’, Explorations in Caribbean Emancipatory Theology2,
(Maryknoll, USA: Orbis Books, 1990).
[88] Cf. Gerald Boodoo, “Gospel and Culture in
a Forced Theological Context,” in Caribbean Journal of Religious Studies, vol.
17, No. 2 (1996) 3‑19.
[89] Kortright Davis, Emancipation Still Comin’,
103.
[90] Kortright Davis, Emancipation Still Comin’,
71.
[91] Idris Hamid (ed.), Out of the Depths, VI.
[92] Idris Hamid (ed.), Out of the Depths, VI.
[93] Cf. Kortright Davis, Mission For Caribbean
Change, 112.
[94] Kortright Davis, Emancipation Still Comin’,
91.
[95] Kortright Davis, Emancipation Still Comin’,
93.
[96] Gerald Boodoo, In Response To Adolfo Ham
(1), in Howard Gregory (ed.), Caribbean Theology, Preparing for the
Challenges Ahead, (Jamaica, Canoe Press, 1995) 7.
[97] Gerald Boodoo, “Gospel and Culture in a Forced
Theological Context,” in Caribbean Journal of Religious Studies, vol.
17, No. 2 (1996) 11‑12.
[98] Gerald Boodoo, In Response To Adolfo Ham
(1), 10‑11.
[99] Gerald Boodoo, “Gospel and Culture in a Forced
Theological Context,” 16.
[100] Cf. Theresa Lowe‑Ching, “Method in
Caribbean Theology,” in Howard Gregory (ed.), Caribbean Theology, Preparing
for the Challenges Ahead, (Jamaica, Canoe Press, 1995) 23‑33.
[101] Hyacinth I. Boothe, A Theological Journey
For An Emancipatory Theology, in Caribbean Journal of Religious Studies,
1 (1996) 20.
[102] Martin Shade, “Christ the Alpha and the
Rasta: A Reflection On Christology Within The Emergence of Rastafari,” in Caribbean
Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 17, No. 1
(1996) 59.
[103] Cf. Duncan Wielzen, Inculturatie van
de Liturgie. Een kritische analyse van het gebruik van het sranan in het proces
van surinamisering van de liturgie (Heerlen,
NL: UTP MA dissertation, 1996).
[104] Cf. Duncan Wielzen, 66.
[105] Cf. Theresa Lowe‑Ching, 29.
[106] Idem.
[107] Milton George and Sergio Scatolini, “Thinking and
talking about God-the-Father in the presence of Winti,” [Papers from the Sixth
Caribbean Conference of Catholic Theologians], in Theology in the Caribbean
Today, GOD THE FATHER, (1999) forthcoming.
[108] Bishop Anthony Dickson, Opening Address:
Interpreting the Law in a Caribbean Context (Barbados: Canon Law
Convention, October 1993) 2.
[109] Bishop Anthony Dickson, op. cit., 2.
[110] Milton A. George, Het Afro‑Caribische
Concubinaat als Sacramentaal Partnerschap: pogingen naar een theologische en
kerkrechtelijke herevaluatie en aanvaarding van het concubinaat bij de Afro‑Caribische
bevolkingsgroepen [dissertation for the MA in Canon Law] (Leuven: 2001).
[111] Michael Lewis, Canonical Response to Common
Law Unions or Faithful Concubinage (s.l.: s.n., s.d.) 1.
[112] “Gaudium et spes” in Austin Flannery (ed.
General), Vatican Council II. The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents
(Dublin: 1977) 950.
[113] Cf. H. Warnink, “Kerkjuridische visie op het
huwelijk,” in Roger Burggraeve et al. (eds.), Levensrituelen: het huwelijk [Kadoc-Studies
24] (Leuven: 2000) 224.
[114] In fact, it is not marriage in general that is
indissoluble, but a marriage that has been ratified and consummated (matrimonium
ratum et consummatum, can. 1141).
[115] Can. 840.
[116] Cf. R. T. Smith, “Culture and Social Structure
in the Caribbean: Some Recent Work on Family and Kinship Studies,” in M.
Horowitz (ed.), Peoples and Cultures of the Caribbean (New York: 1971),
461.
[117] Cf. M. Horowitz, “A Decision Model of Conjugal
Patterns in Martinique,” in M. Horowitz (ed.), op. cit., 477.
[118] Cf. E. Clarke, My Mother Who Fathered Me.
Study of the Family in Three Selected Communities in Jamaica (London:
1979) 30.
[119] E. Clarke, My Mother Who Fathered Me. Study
of the Family in Three Selected Communities in Jamaica (London:
1979) 30.
[120] Cf. Karel Choennie, Een
pastoraaltheologische herwaardering van het Caribisch familiesysteem bij de
volkscreolen in Paramaribo [STL‑dissertation] (Leuven: 1997)
33. R. Smith, Kinship and Class in the West Indies. A Genealogical
Study of Jamaica and Guyana (Cambridge: 1988) 5‑7.
[121] That is why the persons involved are called in
Suriname: buitenman (the out‑man) and buitenvrouw
(the out‑woman).
[122] Gloria Cumper, Survey of Social Legislation
in Jamaica [Law and Society in the Caribbean] (Jamaica: 21987) 16.
In Suriname, the concubinage is also a social reality comparable to marriage,
cf. W. Buschkens, Het familiesysteem der volkscreolen van Paramaribo
[Proefschrift, Universiteit van Amsterdam] (Leiden: 1973) 175.
[123] Cf. Milton A. George, op. cit., 11-13.
[124] Cf. T. Simey, Welfare and Planning in the
West Indies (London: 1947) 79; S. Keller, “Caraibische
gezinstypen en hun toekomst in Nederland,” in R. De Moor (ed.), Huwelijk en
gezin, Annalen van het Thijmgenootschap 73 (1985) 85‑112, esp.
87; and K. Choennie, op. cit., 100.
[125] E. Clarke, op. cit., p. 102.
[126] E. Clarke, op. cit, 102.
[127] Cf. E. clarke, op. cit., 104-105;
and W. Buschkens, op. cit., 169.
[128] Cf. M.A. George, op.cit., 18-20; S.
Gangaram-Panday, “Het concubinaat in het Surinaams recht,” in Surinaams
Juristenblad (September, 1991) 14; and E. Clarke, op. cit., 108.
[129] O. Lewis, La Vida, London, 1969, 51.
[130] Cf. Marie Zimmerman, Couple Libre
(Strasbourg: 1983) 36; see also J. Gaudemet, Le marriage en Occident
(Paris:1987).
[131]
Cf. E. Jonkers, Invloed van het Christendom op de
Romeinse wetgeving betreffende het concubinaat en de echtscheiding
(Wageningen: 1938) 5.
[132] Cf. M. George, op. cit., 33-34.
[133] Transl. “Should there be a man who has not got
a wife, and has a concubine for wife, let him not be kept back from Communion ‑‑provided
that he be contented in his union with one woman, be it either a wife or a
concubine”. Gratian, D 34. c. 4; see also D. 34. c. 5; C. 32. q. 2.
c. 11.; C. 32. q. 4. c. 9; M. Zimmerman, op. cit., 42; J. Brundage, Sexual
Practices & the Medieval Church () 121.
[134] Cf. Documentos finales, Segunda conferencia
general del episcopado Latinoamericano Medellín (1968) n. III.
“Familia y demografía,” n. 1.
[135] Transl. “(...) we cannot ignore that a great
number of families in our continent have not received the sacrament of
marriage. Nonetheless, many of these families do live in certain unity,
faithfulness and responsibility. This situation poses many theological
questions and calls for an adequate pastoral accompaniment”. III Conferencia
General Del Episcopado LatinoAmericano, Puebla, La Evangelization en el
presente y en el futuro de Americana Latina, (1979) n. 578.
[136] Antilles Episcopal Conference, Pastoral
Letter: Evangelizing Family Life For A New Caribbean, (1994) n. 5.
[137] Hermigild Dressler (ed.), The Fathers of
the Church: Saint Caesarius of Arles. Sermons, vol. 1 (Washington: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1956) 212‑213.
[138] Cf. Ruud Huysmans, “Katholieke kerk en vrije
verhoudingen ten opzichte van haar huwelijksrecht,” in Huwelijk en relatie,
Rechtskundige Afdeling 9 (1983) 45.
[139] Cf. John Paul II, “Familiaris consortio,”
in Origins 11 (1981) n. 81.
[140] Cf. B. Siegle, Marriage according to the
New Code of Canon Law (New York: 1986) 93; E. Caparros,
M. Theriault, J. Thorn (eds), Code of Canon Law Annotated
(Montreal: 1993) 684; J. Beal, J. Corridon & J. Green (eds), New Commentary
on the Code of Canon Law (New York: 2000) 1295.
[141]
Catechism of the Catholic Church (London: 31994) n. 2390.
[142] Bishop Anthony Dickson, op. cit., 6.
[143] Cf. Leonardo Boff, Sacramenteel denken en
leven (Averbode-Apeldoorn: 1983) 61.
[144] Cf. Vatican II, Sacrosanctum concilium [=SC], 59
and 60.
[145] Cf. Javier Otaduy, “Título II: De
consuetudine,” in A. Marzoa, J. Miras & R. Rodríguez‑Ocaña (eds), Comentario
exegético al código de derecho canónico, vol. 1 (Pamplona: 21997) 417‑418.
[146] Black Atlantic is a concept popularized by the
social theorist Paul Gilroy, which emphasizes the importance of slavery and
dehumanisation of Africans and their descendents in the development of
occidental modernity. In addition, Gilroy argues that the mobility of black
intellectuals (organic and academic) signal ways of understanding the
continuing evolution of black cultural expressions beyond the narrow confines
of exclusive racial, ethnic, and national boundaries. This essay, taking as
point of departure members of the Afro-Caribbean working classes, seeks to
complement and extend the critical work done by Paul Gilroy. See Gilroy, Paul.
1993. The Black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness. London:
Verso
[147] The question of church sponsorship is
important, but exceeds the scope and thematic of this paper.
[148]Gordon, Shirley. 1998. Schools of the Free. In:
Before & After 1865: education, politics, and regionalism in the
Caribbean, eds. Brian Moore and Swithin Wilmot, 1-12. Kingston: Ian Randle
Publishers. King, Ruby Hope. 1998. Education in late nineteenth-century
Jamaica: the American Connection. . In: Before & After 1865: education,
politics, and regionalism in the Caribbean, eds. Brian Moore and Swithin
Wilmot, 13-22. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers. Turner, Trevor. 1987. The
Socialisation Intent in Colonial Jamaican Education, 1867-1911. In: Caribbean
Journal of Education, Vol. 14 (1- 2): 50-83. For the Dutch West Indies, see
Gobardhan-Rambocus, Sabitrie Lilawatie. 2001 Onderwijs als sleutel tot
maatschappelijke vooruitgang: een taal en onderwijs geschiedenis. Van Suriname
1651-1975. Zutphen: Walburg Press.
[149] Hall, Catherine. 2002. Civilising subjects:
metropole and colony in the English imagination 1830-1876. Cambridge:
Polity Press. Bacchus, M. Kassion. 1991. “Education in the Pre-Emancipation
Period (with special reference to the colonies which later became British
Guiana). In: Transition (18) pp.20-49. For the Dutch West Indies it is
worth noting on that the historian Johan Hartog reported that, due to the
influence of the missionaries, at the end of the nineteenth century one
encountered in the Windward Islands the situation whereby black children could
read and write whereas most of their white counterparts could not. Whites did
not consider literacy of much consequence, relying on their economic and/or
racial privilege. See Hartog, Johan. 1964. De Bovenwindse Eilanden: Sint
Maarten, Saba, Sint Eustatius. Aruba: De Wit NV. George, Milton.
2004. Transplanting catholic Education on Sint Maarten Soil: a research into
the educational work of the Dominican sisters of Voorschoten on the island of
Sint Maarten. Unpublished M.A. thesis at the Faculty of Psychology &
Educational Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
[150] For thorough studies on these “universalist
blaks,” see Vergès, Françoise. 2001. Vertigo and Emancipation, Creole
Cosmopolitanism and Cultural Politics. In: Theory, Culture & Society,
Vol. 18 (2-3): 169-183. Van Enckevort, Maria. 2000. The Life and Work of
Otto Huiswoud: Professional Revolutionary and Internationalist (1893 – 1961).
Unpublished PhD thesis at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, the
University of the West Indies. Van Enckevort, Maria. 1998. Otto Huiswoud:
political praxis and anti-imperialism. Unpublished paper presented at the
conference “Caribbean Intellectual Tradition,” held at the University of the
West Indies (Mona Campus). James, Winston. 1999. Holding Aloft the Banner of
Ethiopia: Caribbean radicalism in Early Twentieth Century America. London:
Verso.
[151] Dabydeen, David. 1999. A Harlots Progress.
London: Jonathan Cape. Wright, Richard. A. 1998. Native Son. New York:
Harper Perennial. Beecher Stowe, Harriet. 1996. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New
York: Random House Inc. Haley, Alex. 1976. Roots: the saga of an American
Family. New York: DoubleDay.
[152] For a general theory on the rise and
totalising impulse of consumer capitalisms see pages 13 to 100 in Baudrillard,
Jean. 2001. Selected Writings. Cambridge: Polity Press. This reading has to
be accompanied with writings of Caribbeanists that alert us to the continuing
importance of production in the region. See for instance Henry, Paget.
Caribbean Marxism: after the neoliberal and linguistic turn. In: New
Caribbean Thought. A Reader. Eds. Brian Meeks & Folke Lindahl.
Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 325-354.
[153] See Deflem, Mathieu. 2003. The Sociology of
the Sociology of Money: Simmel and the contemporary battle of the classics. In:
Journal of Classical Sociology, 3, (1) 67-96.
[154] For thorough social scientific examinations of
the manner in which black popular culture connects blacks in the various
regions of the Black Atlantic see Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic:
modernity and double consciousness. London: Verso.
[155] (Stuart Hall in Paul, 2005:2)