SCHOOL LIBRARY PLAN

The Ministry of Education’s plan to establish libraries in all of the nation’s primary and secondary schools should seek to arouse interest in schoolchildren in reading, through a strategy of emphasising, where this is practicable,  the selecting of books by Trinidad and Tobago and other Caribbean authors, which would be relevant to them. This is not to say that the works of foreign authors should be excluded. There are several books, however written  by authors from the region, to which children should be exposed. For example, the works of Dr Eric Williams, Vidia Naipaul, Merle Hodge, Samuel Selvon, Derek Walcott, Earl Lovelace, C L R James, Jean Rhys, Walter Rodney, Joseph Zobel, Franz Fanon and Edward Braithwaite would do credit to any secondary school library, whether regionally or internationally.

Any secondary school student, who has received a proper introduction to literature, would clearly be moved by the poems of Claude MacKay, of Jamaica, and Martin Carter, of Guyana. The Caribbean writers are legion, and in addition to the above there are George Lamming, Keith Laurence, Valerie Belgrave, Brinsley Samaroo, Edgar Mittelholzer, Eulin Blondell, Caroline Binch, Grace Halsworth, Louis de Verteuil, Olga Mavrogordato, PET O’Connor, Pearl Eintou Springer, John Agard, Philip Sherlock, Grace Nicholls, Kwailan La Borde, Michael Anthony, WR Jacobs and John Agard. The students would not merely be able to develop a love for literature through exposure to the above writers, whose names are after all a mere handful of Caribbean authors who have graced the world of language, of expression, but their interest would be further strengthened by a sense of being able to identify with them as fellow Trinbagonians and fellow Caribbean people. It is unfortunate, however, that Minister of Education, Senator Hazel Manning should have put forward as a critical part of her thinking on the Ministry’s plan to introduce libraries in schools nationwide, the argument that it would somehow help in solving indisciplined acts carried out by some children at the National Library in Port- of-Spain.

The two things should not have been mentioned in the same breath. As it is Mrs Manning may be misunderstood, by the recklessly partial, to have inferred, however inadvertently, that this indiscipline would now be transferred to the respective schools, which the students attend. And while we are certain that this is not what she meant, the words could, nonetheless, be twisted by those seeking political mileage. The Education Ministry’s plan, however, is light years in advance of the primary school readers of a former Director Education, JO Cutteridge, when Trinidad and Tobago was still a colony. Admittedly, they had created appetites for poetry, art, reading  among other things, yet fell short by Cutteridge’s insistence in inserting in his books the piece, which hinted at no need for advancement of a subject people. Many, who had been exposed to Cutteridge’s books would undoubtedly remember his insensitive not too subtle line: “My father was a blacksmith/When I grow up I want to be a blacksmith too.”  Naipaul and Walcott, both of them Nobel Prize winners for Literature, are a reminder to youngsters in the region that they too can be achiever-exemplars. But it would not be enough to merely place their books on library shelves, unless there are qualified librarians and/or interested educators in the nation’s schools.