Samuel Lochan

There are two educational issues in the public domain now where educational leadership is required and perhaps these two issues are connected.

One issue concerns the role of corporal punishment in schools, the other whether it is the duty of teachers to supervise children during break times, lunchtimes, after school etc.

One Member of Parliament seems to be suggesting that removal of corporal punishment from schools was a bad thing. Unfortunately, I am sure her position resonates with a lot of citizens.

However, I do not think this position is justifiable given our specific history as a society and the insights to be gained from educational theory.

In the desperate search for order the cultural reflex position of the society is: “Beat them! That is what I get and look how good I turn out.”

Kamla Persad-Bissessar and other leaders, including those in the present Government, should be brave and claim this position as the way forward for the society and educate citizens as to the justification for this approach both in our homes and in our schools.

The nature of the task facing us however is how to change behaviour when that behaviour is the “cultural reflex position.” In order to succeed, in addition to leadership in ideas we need programmes that skill parents in new child-rearing practices.

We also need programmes that skill teachers and school leaders in ways of engaging and managing difficult children in schools.

The policy of no corporal punishment has to be concretised into effective change programmes across the board if meaningful change is to be achieved.

With regard to the second issue, it is total madness to have the head of a teachers union saying that teachers are not responsible for the supervision of children during break times etc.

This is a very schizophrenic view of the role of the teacher. A teacher cannot just be the teacher of a subject; he/she is a teacher of the class, a teacher of the school and an educator for the society.

How students conduct themselves outside of the classroom space is important in their formation as people and this has to be the concern of every teacher in the school. If we wish to prepare students for life, then teachers cannot leave behaviours before school and during break as the concern of others.

Even from a narrow standpoint, what the children experience before class influences their readiness for learning inside of the classroom.

Admittedly, there are secondary schools where there has been a breakdown of order and teachers have lost ownership of the school space and have been forced to retreat to the safety of the staffroom.

In some of these environments teachers do not feel safe to intervene in the life of the corridors and byways of the school. However, it should be Ministry of Education policy and the goal of school leaders in such conditions to gradually claim back the school space for teachers.

In such contexts, the stakeholders of the school, including parents, teachers, the ministry, school leaders, need to devise programmes of meaningful engagement of students who arrive early to school and during the lunch periods. If such engagements begin from the time students enter first form then it can become part of the culture of the school.

When I was a secondary school teacher, two teachers were placed on duty each day to assist with supervision.

This meant that each teacher may have been on supervision only once a fortnight. I am sure that many creative solutions relevant to context can be generated by the more than 50 or so paid graduates who may form the staff of some of these secondary schools.

These schools have more graduate staff than some entire ministries.

Lochan is a reader who shared his views on education via email.

The other day I spent a bewildering ten minutes standing behind two women in a supermarket while one of them attempted to get some money out of the ATM.

You know how frustrating it is to be waiting for a quick cash withdrawal while somebody apparently is using a cash machine for the very first time or attending to all their financial affairs right there, right then, rather than in the branch.

You hear the peep peep peep which means they’ve finished — and then they start again.

These days we are encouraged to do this sort of thing online, where we are at liberty to struggle with the vagaries of their “user-friendly” website all day and half the night.

It’s the do-it-yourself age, which the service providers like to portray as being an advantage for the customer but, in reality, is short for “push off and do it yourself.”

That puts all the responsibility on us and has played a part in the rise of the term “techno fear” — being frightened of procedures and devices which may not really be difficult but which baffle us all the same.

The cash machine should really be the least of anybody’s worries but then we all have our weak spots.

It’s all a question of what you’re used to.

I have a car mechanic friend who can handle any problem you throw at him as long as he can do it with a spanner in his hand but give him a modern vehicle on which everything is controlled by a computer and he’s as dumb as I am.

“Use it or lose it” is a saying that covers everything from muscles to the ability to perform simple tasks and it can confront us in any, apparently, simple sphere of life.

I was watching a film from the 1960s, in which everybody was smoking cigarettes — as people did in those days.

One particular Brylcreemed poser went to light a lady’s cancer stick for her with a gadget fuelled by some highly dangerous substance known as lighter fluid.

Gas, it should be pointed out, had been discovered before that time but people still went around with small items full of petrol in their pocket. The method of igniting the fuel-soaked wick was a mechanical one: you snap a trigger down which rubs a textured metal wheel against a piece of flint, thus creating a spark, and simultaneously lifts the cap that covers the wick, enabling the miracle of fire.

Cracked it, lads. Now let’s roast this missionary.

When this didn’t work a couple of times, the smooth guy held the cap down with his other thumb while he applied pressure to the trigger, before releasing it and effectively giving the process a bump start. It worked and his status as cool cat was maintained.

It’s the sort of thing you were expected to know in pre-electronic times, and it made me think about other skills that can disappear if you’re not called upon to use them.

These can vary widely, including (talking of bump-starting) getting a flat-batteried car going by pushing it or rolling it down a hill until it gains a bit of speed and, with the gear lever in second, letting the clutch out, which makes something happen which the defunct battery was supposed to do.

You can’t do this with an automatic, by the way, and this part of the world is full of them.

Those who have only ever owned relatively modern vehicles will, no doubt, regard this as almost Neanderthal in its lack of sophistication but it wasn’t that long ago that damp mornings came with a mournful soundtrack of unhappy engines straining to splutter into life.

Being able to pull off the starting trick made you a resourceful figure deserving of a certain respect.

I’m not sure if the same could be said of the single man’s ability to unhook a bra with one hand but that’s another skill that can be lost through lack of use, in this case, caused by embarking on a long-term, monogamous relationship.

The way things are going in Hollywood at the moment they’ll be bringing up such abilities in court as evidence of a debauched and potentially criminal lifestyle.

Several years ago I used to make a bit of money helping people with their CVs (resumés if you speak American).

I recommended a comprehensive but straightforward list of achievements plus a short section showing you’re a nice person to have around, so I asked clients to name a few things they enjoyed and were good at. Number one among the younger people was “socialising,” which was not really what I had in mind.

But I suppose it is something that can fall by the wayside as life goes marching on.

Over the past three weeks, I’ve said bon voyage to at least four friends who migrated seeking better opportunities abroad. One, a former university lecturer in agriculture, who, fed up of the bureaucracy and lack of funding for, and interest in agricultural research struck out in mid-life to begin all over again.

Currently, a few more friends between the ages of 30-45 are heading out to places where they are being afforded a better quality of life. Key words: “quality of life.” I suppose I can put a few hashtags here: #opportunities #functioningsystems #firstworldmentality #contributeskillstobuildingsocieties #disillusionedyoungtrinidadians #progressiveleadership. Readers can fill in others if they so wish. I can certainly find a whole host of other captions so this should not be a difficult task.

Over the last week, the flooding in South and Central Trinidad in particular, left some of us wondering, exactly what type of diversification schemes have our administrations been thinking about? For instance, the President, this week, spoke about making calypso “an all year thing. When the big boats come, in that context of diversification and tourism, we need to develop our calypso.” Well, I had immediate comments on that but to jump the gun and start ranting about narrow-minded views would be to take the comment out of context. Meaning that, the forum, perhaps, called calypso into question so the President would have naturally spoken about that art form. That being said, I do, however, firmly believe that none of our leaders actually have a clue about this thing they call diversification.

The destruction of valuable farmlands in what residents and farmers described as the worst flooding they have seen is evidently not only about climate change, but very poor planning. While many hailed the great job of connecting the South to the rest of the country and blamed other administrations for not doing enough, today, we are all so well connected that the waters of heaven and hell (apparently) have decided to pour in to celebrate the grand infrastructural “progress” that we have made over the past few years. As one of the farmers interviewed on CNC3 news accurately stated, “you just can’t put down houses and go about your business.” The thing is, our poor planning is just another bit of evidence of how we think.

The foolish public sees only the material progress, they see only what “we party” do for us that “allyuh party didn’t do” and fail to see that houses and roads are just one part of the equation. This is the general problem of blind loyalty to party. It doesn’t ask the deeper questions like: Well where exactly are these houses and roads going to be built? What lands are to be affected? Which land is suitable for building? Which waterways are going to be affected? What is the environmental impact and hence the impact on people, of these “modern” bits of infrastructure?

The atrocious flooding that has destroyed thousands of homes and claimed valuable crops and livestock (so much for the Government’s “go local” scheme) is evidence of what a lack of planning does. And this is just the result of a few days of rain, albeit as the gurus say, rainfall that equates to months of rain. But we all know that flooding has always been an issue. Why, up to now, have we not done something to alleviate it?

How can such a large population of people be so foolish, so blind? I am baffled! I am baffled by the fact that governments continue to dole out tokens and the people continue to take them, bow to the floor and are ever so grateful for these leaders who have our best interests at heart when, in fact, you never noticed that you were holding a bronze coin rather than a gold one. Maybe it’s because you never saw what an actual gold coin looks like. I think this has to be the reason. It has to be the reason we continue to persist in these foolish declarations of loyalty to parties – these two old, tired and tiresome political parties that continue to triumph due to the divide and rule tactics that have become a part of our heritage.

Diversification should have started a long time ago. It should have begun when we actually had a booming economy. Yet, the fact that we are still discussing it and furthermore, discussing it in very narrow terms for instance calypso and Carnival for cultural diversification – and agriculture – whatever that means – continues to reflect leadership without vision. Perhaps it’s time for a change. Perhaps we should start taking Philip Edward Alexander and the PEP seriously. The man at least has a vision and we desperately need a vision. It can’t be worse than the two options that we currently have anyway.

San Francisco. The very evening I arrived in downtown San Francisco, I was shocked to see the big marijuana sign on the moving bus. In bold, colourful letters, the sign celebrated the words, Marijuana Is Here. And indeed, it is, very much so.

Next January, recreational use of marijuana becomes legal in California. San Francisco has a city hall Office for Cannabis. The city’s main daily, the San Francisco Chronicle, has established a new supplement called The Green State, filled with articles on the use, commercialisation, cultivation secrets and research on marijuana for the “cannabis curious.” (GreenState.com)

Its neighbour city, Oakland, is advanced in marijuana policy. Recognising the ethnic disparities in the application of federal “punishment” laws over the years, Oakland has set out new regulations which not only decriminalise marijuana use but also ensure that ethnic inequity in opening marijuana businesses, in getting government grants, etc do not occur. Preparing for its own decriminalisation next January, San Francisco is using Oakland as its “blueprint.” And so the big San Francisco bus moves with some pride, it seems, in saying “marijuana is here.”

The criminological dilemma for our country, and the Caribbean for that matter, is that marijuana is already widely used by many people. And defiantly planted too. The police and courts are kept busy – while the supply side grows because the demand side also grows. And in-between, corruption also grows. Jamaica and St Vincent seem to be smelling the coffee, so much so, that for the rest of the Caribbean, it is beginning to look as just a matter of time. Its supporters point to a new foreign exchange industry, health tourism, jobs, increased taxes, etc. No doubt such a vision energised UNC MP Dr Fuad Khan to publicly call for the “decriminalisation of marijuana” here.

While the use of marijuana for medical and then recreational use is being loosened and decriminalised in 30 states, the abuse of (prescription) pain-killing opioid drugs, according to US government data, has reached epidemic proportions – and still rising.

Last week, President Trump declared it as a public health “state of emergency.” Government data revealed over 64,000 died from opioid overdose last year, making the overdose the leading cause of death for those under 50-years. In 1980, the death figure was 5,000. In the pleasure-seeking culture, opioid use went up to heroin use, then to a deadlier drug, fentanyls.

This is an extreme case that occurs with or without marijuana being decriminalised, claim California marijuana growers, and it should not confuse the “positive effects” of marijuana. Quite a large and growing group across the US, marijuana users and planters point to abuse of alcohol and cigarettes – the latter stuffed with carcinogenics–with both being weapons of mass addiction. It is not use, they claim, but abuse.

So the debate will go on and on, but more and more likely, vocal pressure groups are bringing more and more legislators around to decriminalisation, if not total legalisation. And, even so, for minimal amounts while relieving police and judges from an overload of drug cases. Decriminalisation of marijuana and its connection to judicial sentencing and racial inequity are now serious concerns in criminology.

By far, “black and brown” persons are the highest proportion who face the courts for marijuana use – a fact which received serious policy notice by both Oakland and San Francisco legislators. As a 2015 book entitled Weed the People: The Future of Marijuana claimed, marijuana use is now “a human rights issue.”

In all this, health reservations still exist. Among the anti-marijuana experiments is one by Yasmin Hurd in which she used rats to show not only the addictive powers of marijuana (through tetrahydrocannabinol, a psychoactive compound), but how parents could pass on the addiction to offspring. In this, she cautioned that we really did not know enough about marijuana. (The Great Health Experiment in Weed the People.) But again, the marijuana advocates will say, that was “a rat experiment.” Meanwhile, however, the marijuana bus is moving ahead with its daring sign–making marijuana a challenge for legislators.

How many times have I written here and – before I was granted the privilege of this column— elsewhere, about our chronic abysmal failure to prevent flooding after every heavy shower of rain? What is it that we do not understand about rainwater run-off and clogged watercourses?

I grant you that in the years between 1986, when our country was stalled by flooding which blocked major roads and highways for days, and 2017, where most of rural Trinidad has been inundated by stagnant, non-flowing water for several days, there have been other aggravations. Deforestation, “development,” and destruction have added to the flooding woes in our country. But these instances– caused by the stupidity of man (in the form of greedy developers and incompetent governments) and the “acks of Gord” (the sending, by God presumably, of showers of rain), come in the form of flash flooding rather than slowly rising and then enduring flood waters.

We are a people who claim to be religious but, really, we are drowning in ignorant superstition. None of the religions we purport to embrace condones any of the ignorance which guides—nay, rules—our lives. We are a people dishonest to the point of chronic criminality in all that we do and this includes wallowing in self-imposed ignorance even when we know we are wrong. And we are a people nasty to the core, dumping all our waste into the nearest watercourse. We can never admit our ignorance and our culpability even as our ignorance drowns us in stagnant flood waters.

Following the dreadful, island-wide flooding in 1986, which the PNM government excused as the annual ritual “ack of Gord”, John Humphrey declared it to have been “an act of damned ignorance.” And, of course, he was right. And I echo him today but add that our chronic flooding is an act of wilful damned ignorance. That 1986 flood, along with the floods of corruption we had endured with the PNM during our first OPEC flood of oil money, swept the once invincible PNM from office in December 1986.

And one of the first things that the new government did for the country was to organise a massive clean-up of the physical filth and the clearing of all waterways to prevent future flooding. The Contractors Association was called upon to clear the waterways on a voluntary basis, notwithstanding the fact that nearly every one of us was owed money for completed projects by the outgoing government. I was privileged to have worked on that campaign, and when it was done—all rivers, streams and underground drains were cleared, by volunteered equipment and manpower provided by local contractors. There was no input from the many foreign contractors who had fattened themselves here. One of those who cleared the watercourses was contractor Ashmead Ali, who has volunteered once again, putting his equipment to work for the people, doing what must be done to help citizens while Government said the flooding was no big thing!

And what was the result of that undertaking—local contractors cleaning up the country and its waterways? There was no major flooding in Trinidad for 1987, or in 1988 and 1989. Check the media from those times, and check the rainfall figures, and you will see no flooding, and standard levels of heavy rainfall. Then go to your churches as ask Gord why he did not act and send floods during that period.

So why have successive governments refused to acknowledge, far less implement this action again, say every two years? What is this fear, this rejection of success that hobbles our minds in this flooded land? This pathetic impotence reminds me of the story of the man who was going bankrupt. As each attempt at recovery failed, he began praying to Gord to win the lottery. Each week he failed again to win, and when almost all was lost, he cried out in anguish to Gord from his knees. “Oh Gord, how can you refuse to help me?” And a deep voice rumbled out of the sky: “Help me to help you, my son, buy a lottery ticket!”

The “ticket” needed to stop Gord flooding our country is the cleaning of the watercourses with the equipment and expertise we have throughout the country. And it is the winning ticket! What is this fear we harbour against this major success waiting to be achieved? Why is corporate TT so silent on pushing for an end to perennial flooding? I guess that most of the victims are uninsured, or the insurance industry would have spoken out? Or are they too profitable already to understand, or just too ignorant?

We spend millions of dollars every year, repairing flood damage– millions that could better serve our people if we could spend a little on prevention and the rest on development.

Dara Healy writes a weekly column for the Newsday.

Tonight is the Bongo night

Veni way veni way

Bongo!

We were asked to showcase traditional Bongo dances for a community event to commemorate October, Patois month, celebrate our Patois or Kréyòl traditions, and as part of a growing effort to revive the language as part of our heritage.

The request seemed fairly typical until they shocked us by asking if the songs to accompany the bongo could be sung in Patois.

The Bongo is a dance that celebrates the life of one who has passed from this realm, as they transition to the afterlife. Family and friends gather to remember the deceased, a ritual that is important to give peace to the departed, and to those who come to honour them.

“Following the traditions of the Asante and Yoruba peoples … on the night before the body was buried, as it lay in state at the dead person’s home, a festival involving eating, drinking, singing, drumming and horn blowing took place … the dancers sought to outdo one another with twirling, spinning steps and deep knee bends”. The music would also include rhythms beat on qua qua sticks or bamboo. Fairly long, upright lengths of bamboo would be hit on the ground in varying sequences, or shorter pieces would be held in one hand or placed on the shoulder while hitting it with another piece of bamboo. The style using the shorter pieces of bamboo is still practiced in Paramin.

These traditions evolved during enslavement. Although Trinidad had been under Spanish control for almost 300 hundred years, very little progress had been made in developing a successful industry or a vibrant society. As such, in 1783, the Cédula de Población or Cedula of Population, was a decree by the Spanish monarch to allow French planters, their families and enslaved to come to Trinidad to boost the population and the economy. Only practising Roman Catholics were afforded this privilege.

Under the terms of the Cedula, planters were assured that the more healthy enslaved peoples they brought to Trinidad, the larger the plots of land they would be given. This was in addition to freedom from taxation for ten years and other incentives. Consequently, there was an influx of French speakers from other Caribbean territories such as Grenada, Martinique and Guadeloupe, who brought their foods, religion and of course, their language.

The French language combined mainly with African linguistic forms. Eventually our unique Kréyòl or Patois developed, influencing even the way we speak in English. So for instance, I needed to become familiar with Patois to understand why my grandmother would always warn us “not to count egg in chicken bottom”. I knew she meant do not count your chickens before they are hatched or do not spend money before you get it. But since she spoke Patois, sheprobably would have said “Fò pa konté zé an bonda poul (fau pah con-tay zay ahn bon-dah pool); bonda means bottom, poul is chicken.

Trinidad was politically controlled by the Spanish until the British conquest of 1797, so Spanish was the official language. However, after the Cedula and even after 1797, French, Patois or Kréyòl were the dominant languages. Additionally, increasing numbers of Africans were brought directly from the continent, strengthening the retention of African languages and culture, and their influence on all aspects of life.

Hence, the Bongo, an African ancestral dance and ritual, accompanied by songs in French, with contributions from Spanish, English and even First Peoples languages. On reflection, I realised the request was not really so shocking after all. Only in TT right? Aprezan, mwen ka alé, I gone.

Dara Healy is a performance artist and founder of the NGO, the Indigenous Creative Arts Network – ICAN.