Trying to change history to suit the time

Sep 14, 2014 Features / Columnists, My Column

---

There are many things that bother me at just about every level of my life. One of them has been talked about for a while. It has to do with the number of very young gunmen who roam the streets. I have my take on this. I have concluded that the absence of a male presence in the school system has removed the role model for young men, who then meander through the education system with the barest minimum of academic skills.
Another thing is the way we take care of our health. Many of us get niggles and we ignore them, as I suppose, most people would do. But we do not usually take routine medical checks. The result is that an alarming number of us are affected with stroke.
I have not seen so many stroke victims in this country for as long as I have been alive. I suppose it has to do with our diet and our desire to live like the North Americans, except that we do not have the medical attention deserving of people in a developing country.
Three days ago I went to work and by noon I could hardly walk. My body ached and I felt that I had been hit by a truck. It turned out that I got hit by something almost as devastating. I tried to resist and I must say that within forty-eight hours I was up and about, doing what I do best—work.
People said that I had been hit by Chikungunya, but I merely got hit by a flu bug that is not as devastating. A bit of rest put paid to whatever plans the flu had for me, but while it raged, it did bother me.
Yet these things pale into insignificance when I am forced to read or to edit a piece that suggests that the English and Mathematics results were the best ever and that these results began to emerge in the post-1992 era.
I was overseas when the external examinations results came and as is now customary, the Education Minister, Priya Manickchand, did her analysis of the results. For years she had been reporting that one in five people who wrote Mathematics at the external examinations passed. The results for English were said to be slightly better, with one in three passing the subject.
I decided to raise this issue with a number of people in the Diaspora, and on every occasion they laughed. I did not come from a family of academically skilled people, but I can safely say that those of my siblings who were academically inclined passed Mathematics and English at the General Certificate of Examination.
My friends who are top flight managers in the Diaspora all passed their Mathematics and English. Our many teachers who left these shores all passed these two troublesome subjects. They all said to me that passing Maths and English was routine. Everyone with a modicum of academic skill passed Maths and English.
Even the Education Minister who started school in the pre-1992 era did not find it hard to pass Maths and English. In fact, I am sure that most of her schoolmates did the same, because it was routine. Those of us who grew up in the days when the television was unheard of, found books to be our constant companion.
Our vocabulary grew by leaps and bounds and so did our speech. When I was at Mona in Jamaica, just about every lecturer would say that Guyanese always do well. Rex Nettleford and Roy Augier were always quick to point this out. These people could not have come to that conclusion if indeed they were meeting people who were so poor at English that they could not write what was then the Queen’s English.
And I must ask how is it that the results are improving beyond recognition when the people who are teaching the subjects came out of the pre-1992 era?
I have noticed a worrying trend which has people trying to date Guyana’s history to 1992. Nothing happened before that, and I get the impression that if left unchecked someone would come up with the idea that Guyana became independent in 1992.
As a schoolboy, indeed there were people who had no academic pretentions and would therefore struggle. Those with some potential were taken in hand. We wrote what was then Common Entrance and had to do English and Mathematics.  Unlike today, the examination was not a must, so nobody could tell me that one in five of those passed Maths and one in three passed English.
I am afraid of people who try to rewrite history. Of course our colonial masters did just that when they said that Columbus discovered the so-called New World. He came and met people, yet they would say that he found the West Indies.
The Americans sought to hide the achievements of the Black pilots who became known as the Tuskegee Airmen. To their credit, they eventually corrected the storyline and gave the few remaining men their due recognition.
I was in the Falklands or the Malvinas, and there is a lot to do with the history. The Argentines insist that they were there first and were evicted by the British. The British say that they were there first. Each country has its history of the islands, but there could only be one history.
Beware of trying to change Guyana’s history; of saying that we were a nation of idiots until 1992. People who never went to secondary school were very proficient in English; talk to them.

---

---