Emancipation and education

Aug 04, 2013 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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(This article is an abbreviated version of a Graduation Address to the Guyana Education Trust College)

Guyana’s history has been an eternal contest between emancipation and enslavement. Those who consider themselves superior often seek to inculcate the acceptance of subordination in those they wish to treat as inferior. Enslavement, therefore, need not mean solely the physical confinement of the coffles, barracoons, galleys and plantations of three centuries ago. It can mean also the modern-day mental slavery of subservience and passive acceptance of inferiority.
Education must mean emancipation from any form of enslavement. An educated person is an emancipated person who consciously becomes the guardian of his rights and freedoms and those of others. Even though an educated person can be imprisoned physically, he or she cannot be enslaved intellectually or subjugated mentally.
Emancipation also means freedom from want and the enjoyment of a ‘good life’ “ good food, good health, good housing and good relations with the rest of the community. The emancipated life is a ‘good life.’ It is like an edifice that is erected on four pillars “ education, employment, equality and empowerment.
Education of the young is essential to renewal and survival.  Some may feel, however, that many young adults and children have become an endangered species. Children, who in their early days are imprisoned in broken homes, perverted by dysfunctional families, trained in transgressive habits and battered by physical abuse, will display the effects of their injuries in their misbehavior as adults.
Education of the young is essential yet, every day, boys and girls drop out of primary and secondary schools in Guyana. Some of those who remain are unlikely to be functionally literate or numerate. Most of them are unlikely to bother to enter tertiary institutions such as the technical institutes or the university. Unless this trend is reversed, this country eventually will be besieged by a terrifying horde of ignoramuses.
Employment for too many young adults still means waged labour instead of private enterprise. When private corporations contract or collapse or the public service retrenches, workers become unemployed. This creates a vicious cycle of poverty and ignorance. Unemployed people are most likely to be unable to feed their children, buy textbooks and send them to school. Children who do not attend school are most likely to end up uneducated. Uneducated children are most likely to become unemployed or unemployable. Thus, the cycle continues. The consequence of one problem becomes the cause of a subsequent, sometimes worse, one.
Equality is the basis of self-esteem and respect for other people’s beliefs and culture. People of different ethnic groups should enjoy the same civil rights in a free country. They must demand and receive equal access to the country’s resources and equal opportunities for self-development. Men and boys must be taught to respect and treat women and girls as equals. Politicians, policemen, magistrates and other officials must be taught to treat all citizens as equals. Progress would be impossible unless the dignity of its vulnerable citizens – especially women, children and minorities – is respected, in a free country. Whenever the powerful group disrespects or discriminates against the powerless groups there will be social conflict, disorder and crime.
Empowerment means more than scratching an ‘X’ on a sheet of paper every five years. Empowerment is not a lottery based on the hope that, once a party accumulates the largest number of ‘Xs’, its supporters will win the prize of governmental office and its opponents will be marginalised.  Empowerment does not have to be a contest of victors and victims. It should be a process by which people discuss, debate and deliberate on issues and make the decisions for the common good.
Emancipation must free the people from the enslavement of discrimination, domination and abuse of their rights and freedoms. Guyana is not an island. It is part of a world in which communication technology and economic interdependence have transformed human life with staggering speed. Many small countries like ours, with higher standards of education, have succeeded in providing a higher quality of life for a greater number of their citizens.
Opportunities for employment, especially for young school-leavers, have been shrinking. Educated people, as a result, have raced to migrate in staggering numbers even to smaller countries where the quality of life is higher. Many who remain feel that they have no opportunity to attain the ‘good life’ in the land of their birth.
Emancipation, therefore, was not simply a historical event that occurred in the distant past. It is a living experience that must be continuously regenerated. Education, similarly, is more than a finite act of passing examinations. Education is not merely the accumulation of credits or of a few academic years that conclude with graduation. It is a lifelong process that must be continuously augmented.
Emancipation and education are not free gifts. Both must be assiduously earned, zealously pursued and jealously protected.

 

 

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