What can happen in 50 years? Quite a lot!

The following is a speech given at the Tobago Youth Festival by Professor Courtenay Bartholomew on Friday January 16, 2004.

Tobago did not share the same early history of Trinidad. For although discovered by Columbus, it did not become a possession of Spain. James I claimed the island for England in 1608 but the Dutch settled in Tobago in 1632. Tobago then became a bone of contention among the British, Dutch and French until it was finally accorded to Britain in 1814. And so, for this and other reasons, the Dutch Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago of the late 1960s, Dr Lichtzeld, chose to live in Tobago, not only because of its Dutch heritage but also because he thought it to be a more peaceful and beautiful island than Trinidad. He was a distinguished writer, a scholarly and dignified man, and when in 1969 he invited Dr Mc Donald Jorsling, the Medical Director of the Tobago Hospital at the time, and myself for drinks on Christmas morning in his well-appointed residence on a little hill overlooking Scarborough Bay, one of the last things he said to us when we were leaving, was that in Tobago he always sleeps with his doors and windows open. It was the era when if a crime or a major burglary took place in Tobago, it was duly suspected to be probably the doing of a Trinidadian!

As one of my favourite television newscasters of the BBC, Richard Quest, in one of his advertisements asked towards the end of it: “What can happen in 30 seconds?” And after a pause and with a rapid close-up shot, he replied solemnly: “Quite a lot!” What has happened in 50 years in Tobago? The answer is: “Quite a lot and much more than that!” Surely, Tobagonians like my friends Toby Mc Intosh and the Latour family, just to name two of many that I knew, would not have wanted to be alive today to see what their beloved island, once a paradise, is becoming. It is not that a similar fate has not befallen most of the world’s countries and today’s indiscipline of the once-disciplined colonial England is but one example, as manifested, among many other things, by the sometimes unruly and uncivilised behaviour of its soccer fans. But the British did leave us with a legacy of a good education, not only in Trinidad but also in Tobago and the standard of education was such that you were able to produce great scholars like JD Elder, President Arthur NR Robinson, Eurich Bobb, Victor Bruce, Dodderidge Alleyne, and so many others. But today, in both Trinidad and Tobago, the present day standard of education is such that 50 percent of students have recently failed Mathematics, but much worse, English, in the last CXC examinations. In fact, I find it quite appalling and disturbing when I listen on television news to some of the inarticulate responses of the youths of today to questions posed to them when compared with the intelligent and well-spoken replies of most children of the first world countries.

There were also the days in Tobago, as there were in Trinidad, when schoolmasters were regarded as true masters in every sense of the word and indeed were respected, and the majority of them, in turn, honoured and respected their positions of authority and leadership. However part of the degeneration of the society in Trinidad and Tobago must be placed on the lap of some of the teachers of our youth. But let me quickly modify that criticism by recognising and acknowledging that there are many good, principled, and hard working teachers. However, there are some others, who, among other things, including frequent absenteeism, do not themselves speak properly and pass on their language deficiency and slang to their pupils. Now, with all due respect to St Mary’s College, that great institution of learning and of religious teaching and discipline in my era, and which most graciously honoured me recently by making me a member of their distinguished Hall of Fame (which I appreciate), nonetheless, my most cherished alma mater is still Nelson Street Boys’ RC Primary School, which prepared me for St Mary’s in the 1940s. It was the era when the playwright Arthur Roberts and Prince Ferdinand were successive headmasters and where we learnt to appreciate at an early age good books, good music, good manners and also to debate and to observe good discipline.

But I sometimes fear that some of you young people today would not understand about what I am saying because you have been born in a totally different epoch and the gold standards which we had in our time may be quite foreign to you. And so, what can happen in 50 years? Quite a lot! For example, in 1945, the greatest film production of that decade was Gone with the Wind, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. It was a magnificent epic and still is. But some people thronged to see the film just to hear what was a revolution in movie script writing at the time and was considered to be an unconventional and risqu? remark. It was Gable’s (Rhett’s) retort to Vivien Leigh (Scarlet O’Hara): “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!” Obviously not censorial but enough to raise eyebrows at that time. Would you believe!

The famous Swedish actress, Ingrid Bergman, conceived a child out of wedlock in 1950 with her Italian movie director, Robert Rossellini. The couple were later married but moralists and fans in America (of all places!) expressed outrage at this and denounced her as immoral. In fact, Senator Edwin Johnson condemned her publicity as “a powerful influence of evil.” If there were a world of today with the principles of yesterday, 30 percent of pregnant women will be ostracised from society! What can happen in 50 years? Quite a lot! The license for today’s pornography couldn’t possibly be granted in days of yore, but today you do not have to go to the cinema. You only have to stay in the privacy of your homes and look at the cable networks and be “privy” to the most vulgar, violent, crude and pornographic films, which are fit only for a “privy”, to use the word in another accepted sense. You young people also live in a world where since 1980 the number of pornographic websites on paedophilia has risen 1500 percent, and you live in an era where no longer are the soothing and artful music, both classical and popular, played on the airways. It is replaced by loud and jarring rock and roll, and jump and wave music with inane lyrics which have one purpose and one purpose only, namely to excite the animalistic passions of the animal we call homo sapiens, who are being less and less sapiens.

Eric Eustace Williams never wanted Trinidad and Tobago to be a tourist isle because, as he said, he did not want his people to be a nation of waiters. There is debatable merit to this. There is nothing wrong with “waiting and serving”, but there is indeed a difference between serving and servitude. It must be accepted, however, that the tourist industry brings with it certain gains but also certain ills and I do not have to identify those in any detail to you here in Tobago. Which brings me now to one of the greatest ills in the world today, that is, HIV/AIDS, about which there is still so much ignorance and so much uncaring and stigmatisation. In fact, it is most disturbing that after 23 years since it was first reported, there is still so much ignorance about this disease. We have become such an uneducated people, not only in Mathematics and English, but sometimes I think that some of us are almost unteachable. For example, I was shopping in a Chinese grocery in Charlotte Street last week and I heard two workers talking loudly at the back of the shop with great authority about AIDS, but with equally great ignorance. I was for a moment tempted to intervene but, rightly or wrongly, decided to keep my quiet and suffer silently.

But there are reasons why they are so. Now, we are what we are because of what we are taught, what we read, what we see and what we hear. What we see on television is wanton pornography and the promotion of sexual promiscuity and condoms. Even our locally-produced plays are written with an abundance of trite scripts replete with sexual twaddle. What we sometimes hear on the daily talk shows on the radio, sometimes by people with less than two O’ levels, and sometimes by others of debatable moral principles, and what we sometimes read in the newspapers, particularly by a few precocious young writers with little experience of life and indeed of sex and sexual matters, who are allowed to print their force-ripe tripe by their editors and chief executive officers, are partly responsible for all this. This is because what is seen and heard on the radio and television and read in the numerous newspapers of the islands frequently shape and pattern the behaviour of our youths — and adults. And so, we are now on to kidnapping because, we are “mimic men”, to quote the name of Naipaul’s book.

Our statues tell our story. Tobagonians, I am told, like to be known as a biblically-oriented people and, in fact, I am also told that verses from the Bible are often quoted on political platforms. There is also a little bit of that in Trinidad, also for possible questionable intent and political gain. But there are quite a few verses which are quite relevant to today’s pornography and child sex abuse. They read: “Whoever welcomes one such child for my sake welcomes me. On the other hand, it would be better for one who leads astray one of these little ones, who believes in me, to be drowned by a millstone around his neck in the depths of the sea.” Let the cap therefore fit where it should! Now, in our research survey on hepatitis B in Trinidad and Tobago in 1982, we found that hepatitis B infection was very much more common in Tobago than in Trinidad. Hepatitis B is a sexually-transmitted disease. Recent statistics also suggest that there is a higher prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Tobago than in Trinidad. Of course, we do not know the correct figures because many are not tested, many are afraid to be tested in Tobago and many also do not know that they need to be tested although they are HIV positive, because they look so healthy.

To date, there are 67 people with HIV/AIDS from Tobago, who come by boat, few by air, to the Medical Research Centre in Trinidad for treatment and care and they are quite welcome. Our job is not to judge as none of us is without great sin and as physicians and nurses, it is our mission to cure or to prolong lives. Those who come all say that they prefer to travel overnight to Trinidad rather than be treated in Tobago because of your insularity, mauvais langue and scandal-mongering in the towns and villages, as recently exemplified by that highly publicised “letter of names”. This must stop, if only because the “Good Book” also says: “What terrible things will come from the world through scandal! It is inevitable that scandal must occur, nonetheless, woe to that man (or woman) to whom scandal comes!” We have a problem in Tobago and Trinidad. I am no wayside preacher but in Proverbs 22, it says: “Folly is close to the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.” But that rod of correction must be first wielded (not necessarily physically) by parents, who, in many instances, are no longer disciplinarians and teachers, and must therefore accept much of the responsibility of the indiscipline of today’s youth. Moreover, there are too many single parents, who cannot or are unable to rear their children properly, sometimes because of their own personal indiscipline, but at times also because of a lack of education.

We live in a society today when Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s criticism about the carnival mentality of the Caribbean people is more valid than ever before. It is not only a mentality. It is an obsession — an all-year-round obsession with something which was initially good and entertaining, largely participated by the men of the society. It is now predominantly a bacchanalian festivity, dominated by scantily-clad women, who are prepared to pay $1,500 for a bra and panty outfit, but only with a different colour than last year’s. The importance of this carnival mentality and obsession is reflected in several ways. In London, for example, you will see statues of Lord Trafalgar, Sir Winston Churchill, G K Chesterton, Lord Nelson, and the like. Not that these performers are not great artistes, whose work I enjoy most times, but it is most interesting that the only statutes erected over the past six decades in Trinidad and Tobago are those of Francisco Slinger and Aldwyn Roberts. It tells the story eloquently.
There is a series in the Guardian with the caption: “For and against sex education.”

Here are a few extracts written by some people: “Being a teacher, I definitely see the need for sex education in schools, not just in secondary schools, but in primary schools as well. Pretending that sex does not exist in young people is not going to help at all. A lot of parents fail to educate their children. All they say is ‘don’t have sex, wait till you are married’ and as a child, all that goes through your mind is ‘why?’ So it goes in one ear and comes out the other. Reason being your friends are influencing you.” Another wrote: “They should not only be teaching about safe sex but also be required to be teaching about abstinence.” There are certain truisms about some of these comments, in spite of them being misguided in parts. It is certainly telling us that the clergy is not doing their job well, neither are the parents, who no longer teach their children that they must choose their friends carefully. That they should be teaching about “safe sex”, Archbishop Edward Gilbert gave the answer to that when he said: “It is not the responsibility of the Church to teach how to sin with great degree of safety.”

You have a strong Christian tradition here in Tobago, and so, I now pose this practical and theological question to you. If Christ were to return on earth today, would He preach the gospel of condoms or abstinence? Answer that question yourselves and behave accordingly as to what you think His response would be. I leave you to make your own decision on this. With respect to sex education, the question also arises as to who is going to teach the children about sex and what are they going to teach. But in today’s world, one may also have to wonder whether in some cases it may not have to be the students who would teach the teachers about sex! As far as I am concerned, and you could criticise me as much as you want, sex education classes to children should take less than a minute.

The brief lecture should go like this: “Dear children, abstinence, abstinence, abstinence — until you get married. That is the lesson of the virus of AIDS. Amen. Class done!” The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow, and so, God save this country if the youth are not brought back on the right track. It is not for me to lead that battle. It is for you in Tobago. I will be leaving in a few hours’ to face the problems of Trinidad and they are bad enough there! The Dutch Ambassador, who lived in Tobago in 1968, said to Dr Jorsling and myself: “You know, I don’t have to close my doors and windows here in Tobago.” It was Christmas morning. The next night someone burglarised his home for the first time. The burglar was not a Trinidadian! I thank you for inviting me to participate in your youth festival and I now look forward to your fish broth, Tobago style.