The Colonial system wanted all Guyanese to send their children to school

Jun 10, 2013 Letters

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Dear Editor,
It was with great interest that I read Frederick Kissoon’s letter “Jagdeo’s theory is pure nonsense” in your paper of Sunday 2 June.
It would appear that Dr. Jagdeo is reported as saying that the colonial system didn’t want Guyanese Indians to send their children to school. If he did it is unfortunate. The British colonial powers recognized, after World War 2 that British Guiana would want its independence from Britain. More importantly, it was saddled with the
expenses of two world wars, the cost of rebuilding Britain and a USA anxious for her to shed her colonies.
By the end of the 1940s, with new ideas and new ways of looking at things, the British colonial administration
recognized also that it lacked the ability to penetrate into the lives of a majority of our population and were
therefore having minimal effect on them. Whereas the French colonialists were extremely effective in producing a kind of ‘French African’ in their colonies, the British enjoyed far less numerical success in this regard. By the 1950s, British policies and programmes for education were highly influenced and based on English ideas and institutions and on mass education countrywide without ethnic or other differentiation.
In the 1950s, it was assumed that an educated Guyanese directing the country’s education could raise a significant part of the BG population from their largely uneducated state. By this time it was intended that at least some of the newly educated subjects would fill subordinate administrative posts.
In 1960 Duncan Sandys was appointed Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations. That same year my father, F.W.E. Case, was appointed BG’s first local Director of Education (DOE). At the appointing interview my father was told that he would have a relatively free hand in running BG’s education with support from the Colonial Office in London. However, he was warned that should any problems arise “Do not be surprised to find a bowler hat standing on your doorstep.” His remit, made clear by the Colonial Secretary, was “to ensure that ALL BG
children of school age attend school and benefit from sound education at both the primary and secondary
levels at least.’
It had also been made clear that his performance as DOE would be measured almost entirely by his success in raising school attendance throughout BG. The Question of ethnicity or socio-economic status was never raised. It was clearly understood that ALL Guyanese meant exactly that. Over the years, efforts to encourage education were more than satisfactory from the British point of view and never was it necessary to send a bowler- hatted inspector from the Colonial Office to my father’s Georgetown office. At one stage my father was advised by the Colonial Office to “find suitable ways to admonish and punish parents of truant students as well as parents who elected not to send their children to school for whatever reason.” He subsequently reported that there was no serious level of unwillingness from urban and semi-rural Guyanese, but admitted that a problem may exist with remote Amerindian communities and a clutch of agriculture-based families who saw their male offspring as factors of farm production and their female offspring as unworthy of a sound education. He explained these cultural imperatives to Duncan Sandys who by this time was also Secretary of State for the Colonies and advised Sandys that the indigenous communities and agri-families of both African and Indian, but mainly Indian ethnicity, needed to be convinced that there was real benefit for the community as a whole in educating all their children particularly the females who would in time be able to educate their own offspring. Consequently, the DOE was allowed to pursue a policy of gentle persuasion. He was aided by a small group of enlightened and highly respected Amerindians— mainly Catholic nuns. Where the farming-families were concerned, he pursued an aggressive policy of sensitizing parents and elders to the importance of having qualified doctors, lawyers, dentists and teachers within their own families. This policy worked so successfully that Guyana achieved 91percent literacy, which was considerably higher than many Eastern European countries at that time.
In 1961 the DOE sent out an official directive to regional education officers and school inspectors that “Though you should use all your best efforts, energies and powers of persuasion to get parents to send their children to school, no harsh or oppressive measures would be tolerated.” He called this his “drip, drop” policy. For a very long time copy of this detailed 1961 and other directives were to be found in the archives at London University’s Education department, Senate House where my father studied under the internationally acclaimed Professor of Education H.R. Hamley.
F. Hamley Case

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