What we don’t use we lose

Feb 17, 2013 Features / Columnists, My Column

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By Adam Harris

People are either academically inclined or as endowed with manual skills. The Creator ensured that people are there to undertake whatever is necessary to keep the race alive. As a lad growing up there were many parents who recognized that their children did not have the necessary skills and openly stated “Ah gun send he fuh learn trade.”
That was not unusual and certainly was not confined to the boys. The girls were sent to learn to cook or to sew. The result was that across the city were schools to cater to the special needs of this category of Guyanese.
And the system worked. There was not as much money around then as there is today. Such people were easily employed because in those days the joineries always wanted people and there were always those Guyanese who wanted their dresses sewn.
Many a young woman to this day will remember going to a seamstress and ordering a dress. The seamstress was no academic so she relied on her skills and her imagination. They made a comfortable living and everyone was happy.
The Guyana National Service came and offered even more scope for the less academically inclined. There were criticisms of this organisation. The more enterprising saw it as Forbes Burnham’s way of “mixing the breed”. National Service, they said, was intended to mix the races so that in the end Guyana would have a race of people who were neither Black nor Indian or Portuguese.
That people believed this bilge was testimony to the fact that people were inclined to believe that anything coined under the Burnham administration had some nefarious purpose.
Others spoke of the military training. They told who would listen that Burnham was training young people to defend him. What people failed to recognize was that the country had a surfeit of skilled people, many of whom went on to become contractors and to employ other young people who did not have what it took to become doctors and lawyers and civil engineers.
Many of these people are making a handsome living in their adopted country. Such is their proficiency that the people in those countries see Guyanese as being among the most skilled in the region. And as the country’s reputation grew for producing skilled people, so too did the desire of the administrators to do even better.
The result was the multilateral school, with facilities for both the academic stream and for the technical stream. Today, the multilateral schools have all been reduced to normal schools, because there was no focus on what became known as the Industrial Arts. This was rather surprising given the need for people in the automotive industry, the construction industry, and in the electrical fields.
I did not realize that we had reached rock bottom when it came to possessing skilled people until this business about no Guyanese labourer being skilled enough to gain employment on the Marriott project. I know that Guyanese are in the local shipbuilding industry, in the construction industry, and even into road building.
Be that as it may, I am amazed that the country is not placing focus on technical education. A few years ago I was in Korea and I happened to visit a school. There I saw boys and girls, side by side, coping with technical things, most of which I did not understand. The country was preparing itself to be ready for any developmental task.
Those children I saw then are adults and I am certain that they are keeping their country in the forefront of technical development. I am not aware that Korea is importing labour in the technical area. In fact, that country is exporting some of its skills.
The development of technical skills is the difference between wealth and poverty; it is the difference between unleashing criminals on the streets and peace and stability.
The harsh reality is that Guyana does not need to reinvent the wheel. We talk about the amount of money we spend on education, but are we spending money or pouring it down the drain?
When I was in teacher training there was a group pursuing technical education. One of the members of that class, Andy Moore, is around and willing to help, but there are hardly any takers.
Many of the others are overseas and they are living like kings. Last summer I visited some of them and could not help but be impressed at their lifestyle. All of them sang the praises of the technical education they got in Guyana.
And while they were developing their skills, Guyanese were swarming all over what has become the Pegasus. I saw that structure going up in 1968. In that same year, there were Guyanese working on the Soesdyke/Linden Highway and on what is now the Cheddi Jagan International Airport. We obviously had skills galore, because these were all large projects.
It may be that I am wishing for times long past but if the truth be told, I know that we still have skilled people around, but the government refuses to recognize them. If that is not the case, the government is pawning its integrity and pride at the altar of expediency.
We fail to use the skills we have and we are going to lose them. It was the late Ptolemy Reid who told me, “What you don’t use you lose.” Think about it.

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