Chucky and Anika’s plea

This value change for young people is so critical today that I am even prepared to use for commentary Anika’s plea and Chucky’s motivation rather than the stinging protests against our Carnival “naked vulgarity,” the confusion over which route to take, the quarrels over prize money, the definition of calypso and according to third-placed Selvon “Mistah Shak” Noel and fourth-placed Hollis “Chalkdust” Liverpool, the suspicious, arbitrary process of calypso judging.

The predictability of all this seemed so certain that after a series of Carnival interviews, television host Hema Ramkissoon felt moved to sum it all as the usual “Carnival bacchanal.” Anika Collin’s public plea for respect to what social science and trade unions call “the working class” was an unusual presentation, especially from a teenager. Anika’s plea helps remind us of a permanent weakness in society’s value system. Essiba Small wrote: “Anika celebrated the garbage collectors, seamstresses, hairdressers, masons, whacker men — professionals who may not be doctors or lawyers but who still contribute greatly to society.” (Express, Feb 25)

Coming fourth and sponsored by Oral Communications Inc, stylish Anika brought as examples of unheralded craftsmen, a gardener, a carpenter, even a plumber to tell the world that such workers deserve respect too, that everybody needs them - sometimes desperately. Even doctors, lawyers and politicians need them. Anika was putting into song one of the most troublesome issues in social science — the unequal distribution of “respect” in society and the injustices committed in the competition for it. Her song will trouble us briefly, bothering our social conscience but just temporarily. Ask any parent what they would like their child to be. And why. Which attract “respect” the most —money, power or honesty? All three don’t always go together.

Of course, the Ministry offers much more than landscaping, carpentry or plumbing. With the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT), it has reached as far up to opening an aviation school. This process of vocational training and industrial diversification is an old but golden story. Old in the sense that in 1957, for example, three years before this country gained independence, the PNM government appointed a Committee on General Education which recommended a greater emphasis on vocational training to help drive the government’s industrialisation programmes and the decolonisation process itself. This is a challenge which still exists today and to which this column will repeatedly return.

Calypso champion, Roderick “Chucky” Gordon, is prepared to deal with the world as it is. He recognised the way society distributes its cherished commodity - respect. After winning the 2014 National Calypso Competition, he said “hard work” does it. With business in mind, he plans to use the $1 million first prize to open his own music studio. He already has a BSc in Social Work and moving to achieve a graduate degree.

But in all this, he publicly matched his own value system to that of his society. Admitting his “determination to succeed” and debt to his father (late former calypso judge), Chucky explained to the media: “It is a bitter sweet feeling, working so hard for something and the man who set the foundation not here to see it. I worked hard for this in his memory and I tried to execute everything he taught me” (Newsday, March 4) At 26, Chucky has not been sleeping, not even allowing demography to stand in his way. His mother, Glenda Gordon sent a message to the nation when she exclaimed: “And we are from Success Village, in Laventille.”

If only Anika’s plea for “respect” and Chucky’s motivated mind-set could find a firmer place among our youth population, delinquency and youth crime would lose much ground. The growing lack of respect for the privacy, property and safety of others is having crippling consequences for the society. The mental waywardness and career slackness possessed by many youths make them quite indifferent to the core values of society. Such lack of respect and mental waywardness contribute immensely to what is now widely described as “a lawless society.” From this Carnival season, Chucky and Anika did provide some relief, even some hope.