That Keenan report

This is one of the ethno-history myths taking root today. I go to the historical record and I find something quite different.

John Morton made this entry in his diary: “On January 1969 went up to Port-of-Spain to propose to the Governor a scheme for the education of Indian children at the expense of the government . . .”

John Darling

John Morton had arrived on February 1868 to begin his mission to the Indians. He had obtained the former American Baptist Mission Church in Iere, he had baptised a few Indians, he had visited the Indian sick on the estates and at the hospital, he had obtained land for an Indian cemetery — Indians were burying their dead in backyards — and he had made a crucial friend John Darling, part-owner of Lothian’s Estate and a North of Ireland Presbyterian. It didn’t take long for Morton to realise that his best hope for converting Indians was through schools.

There was however a major problem: what was called the “ward” schools. These, set up by Lord Harris and first opened in 1851, provided free if rudimentary primary school education. They were secular institutions. Lord Harris had argued that this was preferable because of the number of groups and religions in one country. Religious education was provided by Church authorities parallel to this but was not part of the school curriculum. This public secular primary education had been agreed to by both the Anglican Bishop of Barbados and by the then Catholic Bishop of Port-of-Spain Bishop Smith. For Morton these schools were hardly the vehicle for conversion. As important a barrier for Norton’s vision was that the schools were non-racial. Morton wished Indians in special Indians schools.

Trini Bishop and Irish Bishops

It turned out that the social conjecture was in Morton’s favour. In the commentaries on Bishop Smith’s agreement to secular primary school education, Smith is presented as a rather strange exception to Catholic policy, perhaps because he was a liberal Englishman. The problem with this supposition is that the same position was taken by Catholic Bishops in Ireland and about the same time. One of those bishops was Cardinal Cullen credited with elaborating the Irish post-famine Church structure. Neither Smith nor Cullen saw secular education as ideal. They did see it as the preferred option in their religiously divided countries. In both Ireland and Trinidad there was opposition from some of the clergy and some of the laity.

What changed policy was the suspicion in both countries that this was taken as an opportunity to bring schools de facto under the control of Britain’s established Church: the Church of Ireland in Ireland and the Church of England in Trinidad. This growing suspicion coincided with a tightening up of Vatican policy that Catholics should be educated in Catholic schools. Morton arrived in Trinidad when Catholic dissatisfaction at Anglicans commandeering what were secular schools for Sunday Anglican affairs, was at its height. In addition to this, there was general dissatisfaction among those who could express dissatisfaction, as to what was seen as the danger to morals, that secular schools, without religious education, were likely to be. That this was triggered by Victorian ideas of morality is true. But Victorian morality was everywhere linked to the use of religion for social control. Nowhere was this expressed as bluntly as at the time of the Muhuram massacre: the remedy for revolting Indians was Christianisation and conversion to European dress. Morton found a fertile social ground for his mission schools and he found allies in the Catholic Church, as the Sir Patrick Keenan’s report would illustrate.

Settled residents

By the time that the Revd John Morton arrived to undertake his missionary work it was beginning to dawn on the population that Indians were not temporary indentured labour. Few had taken the option to return to India. The prolongation of their contracted time from five years to ten and regulations making them liable for part of the cost of their journey home, increased the likelihood that they would stay. After indentureship they tended to settle in groups that would become Indian villages. These were usually not far away from a sugar plantation where they could find work. They were encouraged by planters anxious to have a source of stable labour. The concentration of Indians and the interest of planters, was another social conjecture which favoured Morton.

Gordon

The Governor was not Harris, it was Gordon. Gordon, himself the son of a British Prime Minister, was the prot?g? of Gladstone, another British Prime Minister. Gladstone’s family owned a sugar plantation in Guyana and had brought out Indians for indentureship even before the abolition of slavery. Gordon was therefore more likely to listen to Morton than most other governors. Morton would record in his diary, a message from Gordon: “The present system of education has failed to produce the anticipated results.” Morton rightly assessed that this was for him, a message of hope.

The ward system was hardly efficient. It perpetually lacked funds. Supervision of the ward schools was bad largely because of the shortage of staff. There was a continual problem of attendance and of dropouts.

Later in 1869, at the demand of Gordon and the Colonial Office, Sir Patrick Keenan arrived in Trinidad to assess and to report on education and to make recommendations.

Commissioner for Education

Sir Patrick Keenan had been Commissioner of Education in Ireland at a crucial period of Ireland’s history. It is the period after the famine when, partly as a result of the severity of the famine in Irish speaking — and generally poor — areas, many Irish speakers are wiped out by famine or migration. To this add O’Connell’s — the Irish Nationalist politician of the time — favourable view of a switch from Irish to English, and a period when there is a British policy of heightened Anglicisation. In this Anglicisation, Ireland resembles the Trinidad of the time. So does the increasing wealth of the respective middle classes. Ireland was also mainly Catholic.

As we have seen, the same policy of secular schools was being hotly debated in Ireland. In the Irish debate, Keenan had taken a middle of the road position. He would not in Trinidad. Certainly one is aghast at Keenan’s views. He wrote that throughout his stay he has had no need to stay in a hotel. He had been welcomed into the homes of planters. He congratulated them on how well they know their people and indirectly admits that the only Afros and Indos he met were pupils whom he examined. Even in this last case his itinerary was chosen for him by John Darling — the Lothian’s planter friend of Morton, and by Monsigneur Farfan of a Catholic planter family.

Separate Schools

I have quoted Keenan in a former article in this series. He is worth quoting again: “I met a Coolie child . . . I found him in all the best qualities of the mind, to be immensely superior to the Creole of African blood. In powers of discernment and reflection the Coolie ranks high, the Creole low . . . the Coolie can readily recognise the meaning and application of arithmetical processes, the Creole is utterly unable to deal logically with numbers . . . In short the Coolie possesses in a remarkable degree those qualities in which the Creole mind is deficient . . .” Keenan would find that “the mind of the female Coolie is immeasurably inferior to that of the male Coolie . . .”

Did this racism have an impact on Keenan’s embracing of Morton’s separate schools? Keenan certainly embraced them. He accepts Morton’s view that Indian children wouldn’t go to a school with Creole children. Keenan writes in his report: “The Coolie is . . . highly intelligent . . . he is able fully to appreciate the importance and value of education. But he is proud of his ancient lineage, is influenced by the prejudices of caste, and declines to associate intimately or bring up his children in the same school as Creoles of African race . . .” But after the setting up of Presbyterian Indian schools, Indian children still do not attend. One of the jobs of Morton’s catechists was going from home and getting the children out of schools. Even when Keenan, quoting Morton, finds Indians in equal numbers with Creoles in the same class and therefore going to school, Morton’s suggestion accepted by Keenan is that there are enough pupils for two schools: one Creole and one “Coolie.”

The school law is changed

It is Keenan who suggests separate schools and who makes room for estate schools. By 1871, the school law was changed. On the one hand committees and societies could obtain government aid for schools managed by them, but religious instruction was to be kept separately from the secular and there was a strict conscience clause. On the other hand a committee was set up to discuss government aid to parties setting up Indian schools. These schools were obliged to have four hours of secular instruction but unlimited freedom in matters of religious instruction. Even with this Morton preferred estate schools put up with the money of planters. These left him completely free.