A change of scholars

WHERE have all the Afro-Trinidadian scholars gone? We ask this question with the utmost seriousness, indeed with a sense of deep concern, after perusing the list of national and additional scholarship winners for 2004 published in the press yesterday. It is obvious even at a glance that Indo-Trinidians have obtained the lion’s share of the scholarships and, if the subject of Drama is excluded, they have actually dominated the field. The simple statistic tells the dramatic story; of the 21 national scholarships awarded this year, a total of 15 have been won by Indo- Trinidadians. In the four vital areas of Languages, Modern Studies, Mathematics and Science, all the winners are Indo-Trinidadians. One may well conclude that they had little or no interest in field of Drama where they had no winners.

Anyone who has been observing the results of the A-Level examinations and the scholarships awarded to top achievers over recent years will, in fact, now realise that the 2004 list represents the culmination of a trend in which Indo-Trinidadians have been superceding Afro-Trinidadians as the nation’s top scholars. In our view, this can hardly be a healthy development for our country given the underlying tensions that exist between these two major ethnic groups. Because of this, it requires the focus of serious study and debate if the balance is to be restored. Indeed, if the list of this year’s national scholars do not provoke a profound anxiety within TT’s Afro community, a deep seated and honest self-examination and a recommitment to inspiring and helping their young people to achieve excellence in educational pursuits then the future of our country will be so much dimmer and its prospects for social stability less assured. There have to be serious reasons, sociological, cultural and otherwise, why this ethnic imbalance in scholastic achievement has occurred, not as an overnight phenomenon, but as a development occurring over a span of years.

As far as we are concerned, it is a problem that members of the country’s Afro community must inescapably and candidly face, honestly analyse and solve for themselves. In the modern world of rapid and amazing technological change which is affecting all our lives, there should be no need to be impressing members of any group on the essential importance of education both to individual fulfilment and national progress. This imbalance, in fact, seems all the more unfortunate for the fact that little Trinidad and Tobago has long put the emphasis on education as a priority in nation building, providing, on an improving, expanding and readily accessible basis, all the institutions and facilities necessary for its young people to achieve the highest standards. Indeed, the Father of the Nation, the late Dr Eric Williams, never said anything truer or more significant when he observed that the future of the nation is in the children’s schoolbags.

There is a school of thought holding that measures similar to the Affirmative Action programme existing in the United States should be introduced into our country as a means of dealing with the ethnic imbalance in education. We believe this is a bad idea, since it smacks of preferential treatment and even discrimination in a country that aspires to a meritocracy. In any case, the problem faced by TT’s Afro community is not one of overcoming endemic discrimination dating back to the bad old days of slavery. Ours is a different history; leaders emerging out of the Afro-community were largely responsible for ejecting massa, taking the country into independence and forming its government. For decades, both in the pre and post colonial period they provided the country’s top scholars. What has happened since then? Where have all the Afro-Trini scholars gone? In answering that question they should find the key to the problem.