Ethnic education

A glance at the Advanced Level scholarship results over the past few years would suggest that Indo-Trinidadians are academically superior to Afro-Trinidadians. Of the 200 scholarships offered in 2002, Indo-Trinis took 68 percent of the awards. Of the 16 boys who got National and Additional scholarships, ten were Indo. Ethnocentrists like Maha Sabha leader Sat Maharaj have happily used these figures to trumpet the superiority of “Indian” (ie Hindu) values, while even ethnocentrists on the other side have accepted the numbers and argued that “their” people are in crisis. But you’ve got to be cautious with statistics: context is crucial.

So let’s look at some other stats. A government-commissioned survey conducted in 2002 by British pollster Robert Worcester found that six percent of Indo-Trinis had a university education as compared to five percent of Afro-Trinis, and five percent of Indos had A-Levels compared to four percent of Afros. But when it came to O-Levels, 43 percent of Indos had Os compared to 45 percent of Afros. Main points: while both groups are on par certificate-wise, Afros outdo Indos slightly at secondary level but there seems to be a trend for a minority of Indos to do better in higher education.

A breakdown of CXC passes in 2002 for English and Math shows the following: the national failure rate for English was 36 percent. In the Caroni educational division (where Indo students presumably form the larger percentage), the failure rate was 49 percent. For Math, the overall failure rate was 47 percent; in Caroni, it was 49 percent. Yet, oddly, in the now defunct CE exam in 1999, Caroni primary schools had 31 percent of the top 100 students, with Hindu and Presbyterian schools accounting for 44 percent overall.

These figures must be taken in a context where, according to a recent poverty survey by Ralph Henry, Caroni is the least poor county in Trinidad and Tobago: it has an indigent population of just three percent, as compared to a high of 24 percent in Nariva/Mayaro. More importantly, however, Henry found no significant difference in poverty levels between “Africans” and “Indians” (but I assume he’s talking about Trinidadians, since I doubt he got funding to survey two whole continents).

The point is, if Indo-Trinis were academically superior to Afros, it should be reflected in disparate poverty figures. Now let me freely admit that I am a mathematical moron. But, given the stats from Worcester, the Education Ministry and Henry, it seems to me that the scholarship results do not reflect any sort of general Indo superiority. Instead, a more reasonable interpretation is that a very small percentage of Indo/Hindu students are achieving at the higher levels, but the ethnic tiers below that are both equal and dismal: giving the lie to Sat’s assertion that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Bear in mind, too, that according to the 1990 census Indos make up 40.3 percent of the populace while Afros make up 39.6 percent, so it may well be that numerical superiority is a key factor in the racial disparity among schol winners. Additionally, this interpretation fits the hierarchical culture of Hinduism.

It would be easy to prove or disprove this by checking the marks for students at various grades and doing an ethnic breakdown. Such an analysis might even be useful in helping determine the pertinent factors that lead to academic success or failure. I strongly suspect, though, that the recent success of Indo students in terms of scholarships reveals the usual suspect in our education system: that it caters only to the talented and ignores the needy. And, in every country with a good education system, there is only one common factor: they all concentrate on helping slow learners.

Allowing ethnicity to invade pedagogy not only corrupts learning, but also the construction of a real society. In his book Endless Education, historian Carl Campbell asserts, “It was the deliberate social intention of the Hindu and Muslim founders — unlike the Canadian Presbyterian providers — to strengthen Indian religions and cultures and hence the separateness of Indians, if need be, at the expense of national identity and integration… It seems reasonable therefore to believe, in the absence of empirical studies, that the Muslim and Hindu schools of the 1950s had a more disintegrative function than an integrative effect upon the society, however beneficial they were to Indian communities.”

There is no reason to believe that this goal has changed substantially, although the Indocentrists may find it more politic to pretend otherwise. And, in my view, ethnic education also stymies the emergence of a class of intellectuals (as distinct from academics). As a writer, I find it significant that, among the younger generation of newspaper commentators, the only three persons with an intellectual bent — ie young fogies — are Indo-Trinidadian: Kirk Meighoo, Raymond Ramcharitar, and me. (There’s also Newsday’s Emily Dickson and the Guardian’s Denzil Mohammed, both in their early 20s and not intellectual, but nonetheless well-informed and far better prose stylists than most of the older generation of columnists.) I used to think that my becoming a writer was a choice. When I got smarter, I assumed that my intellectual predilection was the result of genes and personal experiences which I cannot even identify.

But, while both these views still have some truth, I now also think it cannot be coincidental that Kirk, Raymond and me come from Presbyterian and Hindu backgrounds: Indian descent and our forebears’ Christian conversion helping to make us Nowhereians. (Dickson and Mohammed also seem free of ethnic loyalities.) Because it is impossible to be both ethnocentric and a real intellectual: this is why Devant Parsuram Maharaj, also a younger-generation commentator, cleaves to crackpot ideas like ancient India having advanced technology, Hinduism being the root of all civilisation, and there being an “Indian race.” It is also why, despite our broadly similar tendencies, Kirk, Raymond and me have fundamental disagreements and begin from different philosophical perspectives. (Technically speaking, Kirk is an Empiricist, Raymond an Idealist, while I am a Rationalist.)

This Nowhererian perspective was certainly a trait of the older generation of intellectuals, who are mostly Afro-Trinidadians and certainly didn’t consider themselves “Africans.” I do not by this mean that students should not be taught about ancient Africa and India. The problem is, if such information is given with the intention of creating ancestral pride, then what will be taught won’t be history, but myth and propaganda. And the problem with that is that such teaching, far from creating tolerance and understanding, will merely exacerbate the tendency towards group bigotry that is part and parcel of human nature.