SOME BASIC ASPECTS OF CARIBBEAN EDUCATION

SOME BASIC ASPECTS OF CARIBBEAN EDUCATION

This section examines the basic aspects of education as seen in the following novels: In the Castle of My Skin (1953) by George Lamming, set in Trinidad in the 1930's; V. S. Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur (1957) and The House for Mr. Biswas (1961), both located in Trinidad, the former in the 1950's and the latter from about 1905 to 1951; To Sir, With Love (1959) by E. R. Braithwaite, situated in London in the 1950's; Amongst Thistles and Thorns (1965) and Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack: A Memoir (1980) by Austin C. Clarke, both taking place in Barbados, the former in the 1950's and the latter in the 1940's; The Schoolmaster (1968) by Earle Lovelace, set in Trinidad in the 1950's; Annie John (1983) by Jamaica Kincaid, located in Antigua in the 1950's; Crick Crack, Monkey (1970) by Merle Hodge, set in Trinidad in the 1950's; and All That Glitters (1983) by Michael Anthony, situated in Trinidad in the 1950's.

1. CURRICULUM

The content of the curriculum on the primary level was strongly religious. It was thought that "this type of education was important in the efforts to build up the needed support for the system" (Bacchus 95). Apart from Religion, Caribbean primary schools taught the 3R's; which stands for Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, and as their

Scholars agree that one of the main drawbacks of the curriculum used in the Caribbean was the irrelevance of most study materials. To be more specific, prior to the 1950's the curriculum did not contain any reference to the history of the Caribbean region or the past of its inhabitants, and it also did not include practical subjects, such as Agriculture, which the students could benefit from. In fact, the curriculum was designed in such a way that would prepare the students to pass the highly valued external examinations. Therefore, this exam driven curriculum caused another serious problem, which was connected with the materials used, mainly a lack of understanding of what students were learning. Furthermore, this lack of understanding was associated with a dearth of practicality and reality apropos the information in their text books: "the pupils are not taught to observe Nature around them...and then see how they [these observations] fit in with the facts given in the textbooks" (Bacchus 103). In other words, the content of the curriculum prepared the students to be able to compete on academic level with the children educated in Britain and consequently giving them a chance of social advancement and better career prospects, but at the same time forgoing the opportunity to further their own enlightenment.

1. HISTORY

For most children slavery was an abstract word, it was only a rumour that some people referred to in passing due to the fact that it had not been described or mentioned in their books. Therefore, it was not considered to be part of their history: "[t]hey had read about the Battle of Hastings and William the Conqueror. That happened so many hundred years ago, and slavery was thousands of years before that. It was too far back for anyone to worry about teaching it as history" (Lamming 58). However, it seems quite ironic because as mentioned previously students learnt about the great explorer Christopher Columbus who had discovered the Caribbean region long before the slave trade began to flourish in this area.

The old woman wasn't wrong. We are slaves. We are still slaves to these two. The empire and the garden. And we are happy to be slaves. It isn't the same as being a prisoner. Nobody wants to be a prisoner. You aren't free when you're a prisoner. But it is different when you are a slave. When you are a slave of the empire and the garden at the same time, you can be free to belong to both. (Lamming 71)

Based on the story of the Sunday school teacher, the protagonist gets the gist of the word 'slavery' but the real sufferings of people who have experienced it still remains hidden to him.

Similarly to Lamming, Clarke the character of the semi-autobiographical novel Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack, says that slavery is not part of their history for several reasons. Firstly, the books which the students use come from Britain and they do not mention slavery. Secondly, slavery happened a very long time ago so not many people can explain what has really happened and finally, for Clarke, slavery is associated only with America and not the Caribbean:

No history book at St. Matthias or Combermere dealt with this shameful Amurcan invention. It was the Amurcan blacks who were slaves, not the English blacks! England would never allow any of her subjects to be held as slaves. It was therefore far, far, far, far back in a past, which we had brushed clean, that there were slaves to be found, not related to us. That is why we despised the Amurcans. Amurca had slaves; Amurca invented slaves; Amurca oppressed black people and turned them into slaves; Amurca lynched black people and killed them as slaves. (Clarke, Growing 154-155)

As he explains, England would have never done such a thing as to keep people against their will, sell them like animals or even kill them. The latter resembles the teacher's belief, in Lamming's In The Castle of My Skin, that slavery does not concern their island, therefore there is no need to learn about it or even mention it with respect to their descendents.

It could be thought that all children experienced the same confusion and lack of knowledge of their history and the African Diaspora as Lamming or Clarke describe. On the contrary, Deborah Mistron in Understanding Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John says that Annie John, the title heroine, is aware of the past (50) and the difficult life that the people of African origin experienced: "[b]ut we, the descendants of the slaves, knew quite well what had really happened ... Her [Ruth's] ancestors had been the masters, while ours had been the slaves" (Kincaid, Annie 76). Accordingly, seeing Columbus in chains reminds her of the hardship and injustice that her predecessors experienced and she is happy that he must have felt the same way as the slaves.

It is obvious, from the above-mentioned novels, that slavery was omitted from the curriculum and children learnt about it from other sources such as from their relatives who either experienced slavery or heard about it from their grandparents, friends or random people in the streets.

However, since the mid-twentieth century, the educational authorities began to initiate changes in the current curriculum including some topics from Caribbean history. Nonetheless, the events were, more or less, described from the perspective of their mother country (Campbell, Young Colonials 205). As Rush points out the books were still printed in Britain because there were not enough educated professionals who would be able to write books which would contain solely Caribbean themes. However, some textbooks which were published after the Second World War were used (Rush 228). Among them were, for example Short History of the West Indies by Philip Sherlock or The History of the West Indian People by E. H. Carter ( Rush 229) who wrote in the preface:

In this book we shall read of the people who lived in the West Indies long, long ago; of the European settlers; of the Africans who were brought to the islands; and of the building up of a new West Indian people. We shall also read of the part the islands have played in world affairs and why they may be even more important in the future. (Carter, Digby and Murray vii)

Additionally, as Eric Williams said "only 'weaker students' studied the West Indian material, whereas 'stronger students' continued to learn English history-an approach that was 'fully endorsed by the community'" (Rush 229).

In Annie John Jamaica Kincaid describes the difference in teaching history at a school in Antigua in the second half of the twentieth century. Annie's course book is called A History of the West Indies and it comprises of the history of the Caribbean as well as the history of Great Britain. Therefore, the negative reaction of Annie's teacher towards the girl's disregard for her school book and the great explorer Columbus, without whom the island would not have been discovered, is not surprising:

It was bad enough that I had defaced my schoolbook by writing in it. That I should write under the picture of Columbus "The Great Man..." etc. was just too much. I had gone too far this time, defaming one of the great men in history, Christopher Columbus, discoverer of the island that was my home. (Kincaid, Annie 82)

In other words, she should be grateful for his discoveries and learn about him without reservation. The above example shows that even though the children learnt about the history of their region, the British influence was still noticeable.

British history in Caribbean secondary schools was mainly taught from the History of England as for example at Combermere. Students were introduced to such topics as "the Battle of Hastings; the Battle of Bannockburn; about Kings who lost their head; about Kings who kept their head; and about Kings whose wives lost theirs; about Cranmer; about Parliament; about a Cardinal, who, I think, became a Chancellor..." (Clarke, Growing 72). The students identified themselves with this conception of history, they believed in what they read because history books were written by educated people in England: "[t]hey were seriously anxious about the times. They had the unlettered man's respect for the written word. There was something formidable, even sacred about a book. Only truth, it seemed, could be put in print" (Lamming 92). Furthermore, the students became so immersed in the history of England that they even re-lived the battles fought in their books. They became allies of their mother country and thought highly of their leaders such as Nelson or Churchill:

So we carried the guns made by the school carpenter, and the .303's from the Boer War, ready to fight the Amurcans of anyone who wanted to pick a quarrel with us, ... We staged mock battles. Mock camps. Mock enemies. We fired our mock guns at mock planets. Dropped mock hand grenades on the Germans and Amurcans in our own imagination. (Clarke, Growing 155)

1. RELIGION

In Crick Crack, Monkey Merle Hodge shows differences in religious teaching at two primary schools, to be specific between Mrs. Hinds school, not a very highly thought of primary school whose main objective is to teach children to read and write, and the EC School. Mrs. Hinds always starts and ends the school day with a short prayer:

Our father ...

witchartin

heavn

HALLE

THY

THY

azititinevn… (Hodge 27)

Similarly, Tee's usual school day at the EC School also starts with morning prayers and singing hymns. Unlike the novels discussed in this thesis, in which all the students used to gather in the hall regardless of their number, the EC School headmistress divides the students into two groups, according to the standard they attain. Then, each group has their own morning prayers, one conducted by the headmistress, the other by another teacher, but the prayers and songs are the same.

Similarly to the EC School, Combermere in Barbados, one of the most prestigious secondary schools, also begins the school day with an assembly where the whole school sings hymns, such as "Rock of Ages", "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" or "Ride on, ride on, in Majesty". As well as Hodge, Clarke, the author, describes a positive atmosphere surrounding the morning worship at school. The students do not question the relevance of Religious Instructions because it is a part of their syllabus. Furthermore, it seems that the positive attitude and enthusiasm of the headmaster helps the students to accept it: "[the headmaster] delighted in leading the bass section among his teachers: tenors, altos and less profundo basses; and so the hymn had to be sung from the beginning again. He could sing a hymn or a song ten times" (Clarke, Growing 10). Besides assembly, a part of the curriculum at secondary school level was Scripture, unlike Tee who only attends lessons devoted to catechism. In this lesson, the teacher does not tell the students childish stories about the God, but the students have to study facts from assigned books for themselves, for example the Act of the Apostles. Then, the teacher asks his students questions on words from the passages to check their understanding and often humiliates them in front of the whole class for not knowing simple details. Another important book that is used in teaching Scripture is the Bible.

In Amongst Thistles and Thorns Austin C. Clarke returns to teaching religion during the morning assembly and describes his fairly negative view. Milton, the title character, also attends lessons devoted to learning religion every morning. However, in this instance, the students do not sing hymns or say prayers but they recite the commandments regardless of their own religion and repeat them until the headmaster is satisfied. Despite the headmaster's belief in the fact that "if we [students] learned the Commandments well, we would all go to Heaven; and be good boys" ( Clarke, Amongst 6), Milton still does not understand why he has to learn something which has no importance for him or his family: "I [Milton] did not know the commandments very well. My mother never told me about them. I could not understand how or why they would apply to me; or to my father, or to my mother. And I did not care about learning them" (Clarke, Amongst 6). What is more, the headmaster tests their knowledge of the commandments and punishes their ignorance by flogging. Other lessons are devoted to different writings from the Bible. For example the headmaster uses the story about three wise men to teach them about England and also Africa. This supports the aforementioned statement that history and geography were taught as by-products of other subjects.

Apart from Scripture, the protagonists also attend Sunday Schools. For example, Clarke in the novel and all his friends, who accompany him to the Sunday School, enjoy learning about the apostles and other figures from the Bible because "Miss Smith made the Scriptures live" (Clarke, Growing 17) unlike the teachers who only concentrate on memorization. Furthermore, she also uses the Bible Stories for Children which made the stories more alive and interesting. Consequently, the children remember more than if copying books or learning by heart passages from the Bible.

Similarly, Milton enjoys a Sunday School run by an English female teacher but is confused and questions the credibility of the teacher when she insists on the fact that children are 'delivered' through a chimney. Though students point out that there are no chimneys in the Caribbean, the teacher still insists on this explanation. Austin C. Clarke explains that the students believe everything they are told by their teachers "because it was English" (Clarke, Amongst 157).

1. OTHER SUBJECTS

English Language, as well as Religion, were the first subjects taught at primary schools after the abolishment of slavery. Both Campbell and Rush say that at the birth of many primary schools Reading was the only subject taught on the primary level (Young Colonials 89; Rush 37) and "[t]he Bible provided the early basis for learning to read in pre- and post-Emancipation non-denominational schools" (Tiffin 45). With the gradual development of the curriculum, dictation became a significant part of teaching, and in addition the English language, namely grammar and poetry. Furthermore, books containing stories or nursery rhymes were widely used (Campbell, Young Colonials 89) and the Bible was no longer the main course material.

In general, as Tiffin says, the major study materials, used by both teachers and students predominantly in primary schools across the Caribbean region, were the Royal Readers:

One of the most influential teaching texts throughout the Caribbean (and elsewhere in Britain's colonies) were the Royal Readers, and/or the Irish Readers and their descendants. These Readers, or very similar versions of them, provided the basic reading texts in most primary schools at least till the 1950's, and into the 1960's at some level. (Tiffin 45-46)

The Royal Readers were a set of books which contained stories, such as "The Spider" or "The Child and the Bird".⁴ During the 1920's and 1930's also appeared other texts such as Nelson's West Indian Readers published by J. O. Cutteridge. Though these Readers were used at primary schools in Trinidad and Tobago they were not very highly regarded (Rush 90). As Campbell says, they were a bit racist: "his Reader Book I had a lesson which subsequently had to be revised after protests. It seems that certain drawings accompanying the lessons made the black people look somewhat like gorillas" (Campbell, Young Colonials 99-100). A similar view was expressed by Ann Spry Rush or Dr. Eric Williams, the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and a highly thought of scholar, who claimed that Cutteridge's stories had "'a negative rather than positive' impact on his life" (Cudjoe). Naipaul in The House for Mr. Biswas also expresses the dissatisfaction with the reading material Mr. Biswas' son faces:

He [Mr Biswas] found fault with all the textbooks. "Readers by Captain Cutteridge! Listen to this. Page sixty-five, lesson nineteen. Some of Our Animal Friends." … "What should we do without our animal friends? The cow and the goat give us milk and we eat their flesh when they are killed." You hear the savage? And listen. "Many boys and girls have to tie up their goats before going to school in the morning and help to milk them in the afternoon." … That is the sort of stuff they fulling up the children head with these days. (Naipaul, House 339-340)

Thereafter, the schools were required to return to using “the Royal Readers, whose Anglo-centric subject matter, they argued, was crucially important for West Indian children's education, for it introduced West Indian children to the European world which, to succeed, they would have to understand" (Rush 91). These Readers were replaced in the 1970's by a new version which included both Caribbean and English themes (Tiffin 45).

Therefore, it is not surprising to find that there was a correlation between the approaches taken towards teaching Reading at primary schools in the Caribbean and in Britain. As Wardle says the children first started to learn the alphabet, then they proceeded to two-letter words (ab, eb, ib, ob, ub), three-letter words (act, asp, box, cur, dog, fin) and after they mastered the aforementioned they advanced to learning whole words and sentences (83).

Tee, the female protagonist of Crick Crack, Monkey, as well as children in England, begin to learn the alphabet first. In the novel, Merle Hodge vividly describes the girl's first writing and reading lesson in which the teacher writes on her slate the letter 'A' and her task is to copy this letter over and over again: "[h]ere, make A for Apple…" (Hodge 25) Similarly, Tee's Reading lesson "also began with A for Apple, the exotic fruit that made its brief and stingy appearance at Christmastime, and pursued through my Caribbean Reader Primer One the fortunes of two English children known as Jim and Jill, or it might have been Tim and Mary" (Hodge 25).

On the other hand, even though the children in British schools also learnt the letters of the alphabet and started with the letter 'A', however, for school children in Britain it did not stand for an apple but for an ant. Similarly 'B', in Britain, stood for bell (Wardle 83) whereas the children in the Caribbean learnt 'B' for a bat (Cutteridge 2). Moreover, each letter was also accompanied by a picture which should help the students to read the English word because they usually did not know what they were reading as all the learning was based on drills and memorization: "It was Duncey-Joseph who had one day stalled for five minutes at g-r-a-p-e-s until, instructed in a roar from Mr Hinds to 'Look at the picture and say what you see!' had looked at the picture, lit up with sudden triumph and announced: "G-r-a-p-e-s - chennette!" (Hodge 28) As soon as the boy sees the picture he knows that the word the teacher wants to hear is 'grapes' as they reminded him of a similar fruit which is grown in the Caribbean.

In addition, the protagonist depicts her afternoon lessons in which she and other students have to recite various nursery rhymes "about Little Boy Blue (what, in all creation, was a 'haystack'?) and about Little Miss Muffet who for some unaccountable reason sat eating her curls away" (Hodge 25). This discrepancy between the form and the meaning causes a lot of confusion because Tee cannot associate the words with real objects from her surroundings, which results in learning the content by heart, as described above.

Similarly, George Lamming, In The Castle Of My Skin, describes the way students learn English from the age of six up to the age of fourteen or fifteen. The difficulty involved and the amount of the information learnt increased from standard to standard. The youngest students begin with learning the alphabet, then they learn two letter words and later short phrases:

a b ab catch a crab

g o go let it go

a b ab catch a crab

go o go let it go. (Lamming 40)

When they get older, the facts they learn become more complicated and besides being able to name all the months and the number of days of each month, they are able to recite a shorter poem or a hymn:

O God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast,

And our eternal home. (Lamming 41)

On the secondary level, learning English and literature was mainly based on reciting poetry, novels, or reading biographies of famous people. One of the most influential poems that students across the Caribbean region learnt and which created quite a lot of controversy was the famous poem "Daffodils" ⁵ by William Wordsworth. Both Lucy in Lucy and Clarke in Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack have to learn this poem by heart. They also share the same view of how illogical it is to learn about a flower that they have never seen, because none of the beautiful flowers growing in the region look like the famous daffodil. However, Clarke the Barbadian novelist, sees it as a requisite part of their education because they are the inhabitants of "Little Britain", as Barbados is often called, and therefore it is essential for them to know the name of this flower:

"What is a daffodil, though? They have daffodils at Cawmere?"

"A daffodil? A daffodil is only the name of a flower, man!"

"But we got flowers growing all over the place, wild flowers and good flowers. In the school garden and out the front road. And why we never call them a daffodil?"

"A daffodil is a English flower!"

"We is English too, man." (Clarke, Growing 56)

In retrospect Lucy hates it because, for her, it is like learning about apples, something she has never seen and which does not have any meaning for her: "Mariah, do you realize that at ten years of age I had to learn by heart a long poem about some flowers I would not see in real life until I was nineteen?" (Kincaid, Lucy 30)

Neither Lucy nor Clarke understood that the flower itself was immaterial to the underlying deeper meaning of the poem and that the poet was describing the pleasure attained from wealth of the scene before him. The words at this stage of their learning were very literal. Moreover, it seems that the poem was never discussed in their lessons to clarify the meaning and check their understanding. In other words, the knowledge of the poem was more important than the understanding.
GEOGRAPHY

Teaching geography was very similar to teaching History or Literature. The students were taught first and foremost about the geography of their mother country and its dominions but the information did not include their own islands. The reasons were the same as in the other instances, the students needed the facts for passing the external examinations which did not contain questions referring to the Caribbean region, prior to the independence in the early 1960's ("King"). Therefore, the children did not find it necessary to learn the geography of their home.

In The House for Mr. Biswas V. S. Naipaul describes the way geography is taught at the beginning of the twentieth century. The children learn about the geography of the British Empire and the necessary information is dictated to them by their teachers who are the main source of knowledge and the children are required to note down everything the teacher says and learn it by heart:

At Lal's dictation he made copious notes, which he never seriously believed, about geysers, rift valleys, watersheds, currents, the Gulf Stream and a number of deserts. He learned about oases, which Lal taught him to pronounce 'osis', and ever afterwards an oasis meant for him nothing more than four or five date trees around a narrow pool of fresh water, surrounded for unending miles by white sand and hot sun. (Naipaul, House 46)

Naipaul also touches upon the way geography is taught to Mr Biswas' son Anand who went to school after the 1930's. The teaching methods were based on copying and memorization of facts, similar to the techniques Lal, Mr. Biswas' teacher, used. However, different schools used different books according to the books used in History and Literature. In case of Anand we can assume that he uses the book written by J. O. Cutteridge.

Similarly to Naipaul, Michael Anthony in All That Glitters portrays the way a young female teacher is teaching Geography. The children also study the geography of the world with specific reference to the dominions of the British Empire: "in the class before this we had used manual Home Far Away, and now we were using People Far Away" (Anthony 152). On the other hand, their teacher, Myra, also teaches them about their own island because she thinks it is necessary for her students to know their own surroundings as "we lived here and should learn about here first" (Anthony 152) before they could understand how vast the world is. The way she teaches about their own island is very attractive and the children enthusiastically listen to the description of all the places they can see there: "[w]e talked about the island of Tobago and about its people in such great detail..." (Anthony 154). She also uses a map to show them the position and she asks her students questions to draw them into the lesson, for example "[f]irst, look at the position of Tobago in relation - in relation to Trinidad. The distance between - is it far?" (Anthony 152-153), and more importantly to ensure that they are thinking about what she is saying. The information they learn about their islands are relevant to their life unlike, the information about the oceans, which the children cannot imagine because they can see only the one surrounding Trinidad: "[a]t Geography, the subject was 'The Five Great Oceans', and Teacher Myra began talking of the ocean right beside us - the Mayaro sea. A lot of pupils in the class were surprised to know it was part of the five great oceans" (Anthony 96).