52 years educating several generations…Ameer Bacchus is a ‘Special Person’

Feb 03, 2013 News

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“Many of my friends who started as teachers didn’t stick to the job—they left, moved on and went to other jobs, migrated—but they were not really there—I was there, because I loved what I was doing and it made me happy to see my students succeed, and while they succeeded and moved on, I was still there grooming the next set.”
By Leon Suseran

It’s quite easy to see why this week’s featured individual would be considered a ‘Special Person’. Ameer Bacchus gave 52 years of his life to teaching, 38 of which were spent in the public education system…quite a feat, especially since most teachers today opt out of the system as soon as they are eligible to do so, without looking back.

Ameer Bacchus looked back. In fact, he may have looked back too often and for too long; this kept him in the education field for many additional years after his retirement in 1995. Popularly known as ‘Sir Bacchus’ to many of his students, he insists he enjoyed every minute of his decades-long teaching career.
CHILDHOOD DAYS
Ameer Bacchus was born at Plantation Albion on the Corentyne and lived a simple, ordinary life as a country boy, assisting his parents in the farms.
“Those were good days. There were no ‘luxuries’ such as televisions, cell phones, good roads, water, radio, electricity, but everyone was contented and happy,” he fondly reflected.
He also talked extensively about ‘estate life’.
“All we had then—my uncle had a gramophone with records that he would play and he had was a radio—everybody else in the estate did not have, and many afternoons, people would come and sit to listen to my uncle’s radio, that was the kind of life. At night, we lit our hand-lamps and by 7:30 [pm], everybody was asleep because people had to wake up early.
“I went to school all the days, barefoot—because children did not wear footwear—that was a different era… barefoot to school. We didn’t have pens like what you have now—we had stick pens and we had ink powder and desks with holes on top for the ink well. We were content with whatever was available then, we were satisfied and we were happy—the whole idea is that you had food, clothing, shelter and school,” he reminisced.
His family later moved to Fyrish, and he assisted in his father’s shop and rice-field.

“In the afternoons after school, we had to go and get grass… go into the farm and cut a bag of grass so that the donkey can get grass during the night. On rainy mornings, I would usually bail out water from the flooded nursery. Life today, is far, far different—that was real country life!” “Sundays were all about being in the farm, weeding and preparing for planting. We had lots of chores that we attended to… and Sunday was our farming day, not like today when Sunday is a sporting day—we used to weed all around and cleaned the farm.”
Amidst all the chores, Ameer attended the Albion Canadian Missionary School and later, the Fyrish Congregational School. Due to his financial position, he could not have afforded to attend JC Chandisingh Secondary.
“I didn’t get to go because my father could not afford it, so I remained in Fyrish Primary.”
He was successful at the Preliminary School-leaving Certificate Exam and also the Gardening Exam at age 15.
TEACHING
Afterwards, he wrote a Pupil Teacher Appointment (PTA) Exam at Fyrish Primary School, a preliminary exam one had to write in those days to become a junior teacher. He was successful at the exam at the tender age of 16. This paved the way for his first appointment. But there being no vacancy for teachers in the area, he worked in his father’s baker shop, in 1956, making bread and cakes and delivering same to buyers.
“I would load up the bread and cakes and pack them on the bicycle and deliver to a number of shops.”
A few months later, one of the customers, Rev Noah Evans, a Pastor from Wales in the United Kingdom, and Manager of one of the church schools—who had the power to appoint teachers—pulled young Ameer in for a chat.
On February 16, 1957, upon delivering a loaf of bread to the good Reverend, “he gave me the good news—‘turn out Monday morning to start teaching’”.
“I was shocked and pleased at the same time. That very afternoon, I went and delivered the bread all about and took the same money and bought clothes to start working—shirt, shoes, pants, ties—and I came home and I gave the good news to my mother.”

His first working day was February 18, 1957. Little did he know, he was in for the long haul—and that he would be spending more than half a century in that profession, educating young minds and making a tremendous difference in many lives.
Even though he was employed as a Pupil teacher, there were four qualifying exams that one had to write to be appointed a full-fledged teacher. Ameer passed them all. As a result, four years later, he was appointed and confirmed Assistant Teacher at Fyrish Government School in 1960. As a Pupil Teacher, he earned $50 per month, which was considered a lot of money back then. He also completed his studies at the Teachers’ Training College and graduated a Trained Grade 1 Class 1 Teacher in 1973.
After moving to Cumberland, Canje, he obtained a transfer in 1967 and was stationed at Cumberland Primary School under the headship of Mr. Henry Ching. There he worked from 1967 until he retired in 1995. He was re-employed at the then Vryman’s Erven Community High School where he taught Mathematics for six additional years. Following that, he worked at the Rohan V. Chandinsingh (RVC) Private School in New Amsterdam, again as a Math teacher.
Later on, he worked at another private school in the town for three years by which time, his wife, also an educator retired “and we decided to open our own school in 2006 right at home here”. In 2010, the school was closed “for lots of reasons—many—including my wife was not so well to be with me in the school all the time, etc”. He subsequently retired completely from teaching in January 2010.
If one were to do the Math, it would be evident that Mr. Bacchus spent a whopping 52 years teaching, and he commented about it. “It’s a lot because you don’t find persons wanting to stay that long in teaching.”
So why exactly did he stay that long in the profession? He stated that he was “caught up” wanting to help his students. He referred to the movie ‘To Sir With Love’.
“Ed Braithwaite was caught up—he wanted to leave but he couldn’t leave. He was always thinking of helping the next set of students and that’s what kept me going. Many of my friends who started as teachers didn’t stick to the job—they left, moved on and went to other jobs, migrated—but they were not there—I was there because I loved what I was doing and it made me happy to see my students succeed, and while they succeeded and moved on, I was still there grooming the next set.”

His students, he related, have moved on to several dignified fields in life such as medicine, pharmacology, education and the civil service. He fondly remembered teaching the past Director of National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD), Mr Mohandatt Goolsarran. “I helped him with his Math and he picked it up and moved on to University and graduated, teaching Math, so many of my students have moved up the ladder to high positions and I feel happy that I was able to give them that groundwork.”
NOT ABOUT THE MONEY
Teaching back in those days, Mr. Bacchus recalled, was not so much—if at all—about the money or remuneration.
“Teaching then—people looked at it as a profession—you were more dedicated and concerned about the progress of your students and took home work to mark. How many teachers today take home children’s work to mark?” he questioned.
“People go to teach today because they want a job, and their focus is how much they are getting out of this job, whereas in the ‘old school’, it was not about the money…how much you were getting, rather it was about how much you are giving, to the students.”
Mr. Bacchus opined that if teachers’ salaries are doubled tomorrow “you are not going to performance hinges on their salaries.
“It is all about your commitment, dedication and love for the job—your concern for your students… or you’re just doing this thing because at the end of the month you are getting a salary. If that is the case, then your best will is not go into it.
“You do not focus on teaching as a stepping stone to jump to somewhere else, rather, when you get into it, it is because you want to do it, to teach, and so I got in and stayed, and I became a teacher all the days of my working life. Whatever I was able to do in terms of helping children… evening lessons, Common Entrance lessons—I helped high school children and teachers going to training college; teachers who wanted to enter training college. I did it all. I helped them with their Math skills and sharpened same so that they could have applied to and entered the Cyril Potter College of Education.”
FOND MEMORIES
Of the many good times he experienced on the job, our ‘Special Person’ mentioned two. Those were the days when teachers were mandated to wear ties, “and then the talk came around that teachers were not bound to wear ties because we lived in a tropical country, so one day I went without my tie on, even though I had it in my bag in the staff room, and the headmaster asked me for it and I told him I left it home, so I had to crawl into the staff room and put it on!”
It was the colonial days, in British Guiana, and the headmaster, he stated, would attend work with his tie, and male teachers had to wear it too.
Mr. Bacchus also fondly recalled forgetting his Notes of Lessons book one day and he was sent home by his headmaster for the essential school record that is normally used in the classroom during teaching. To this day, Mr Bacchus has also maintained a friendship with a former teaching colleague of his, Mr Burchell Profitt, a friend of over five decades.
“We are still friends for over 50 years and he is the only friend I have had for so long.”
LIFE AFTER RETIREMENT
Our ‘Special Person’ is enjoying his retirement these days, doing light chores around the home; playing with his grandson; listening to music; watching Indian movies and also being on the computer.
“I have the time for myself to look after my home and my cars, my family, my children—their welfare.”
He fully intends to enjoy the remaining years of his life. “I now have to lookout for myself—I have worked, even as a child, going to school, busy with house chores and on the farm and rice- fields and business. The time I have now is for me…to enjoy the rest of the years I have to live and to live it my way! I am now having it my way; no bells ringing—I don’t have to set a watch or set the alarm anymore in the mornings,” he said jokingly. “Now my time is my own, and I am free to live my life as I want to live it. I am enjoying my free time now.”
For his sterling contribution to the education sector, Mr. Bacchus was awarded a plaque of honour in 1994 by the Region 6 Department of Education.

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