HINDS: Education is the answer

Fitzgerald Hinds, Minister in the Ministry of National Security, yesterday made a call for young people to develop a quest for knowledge saying that a deficiency of education was responsible for a lot of the detrimental behaviour exhibited in society. Hinds was speaking at the launch of the Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series hosted at the National Library by the Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago. Among the distinguished guests were Professor of Literature and Writing at the University of Massachusetts, and friend of Ture, Ekwueme Thelwell and Mabel Charmichael, mother of the Trinidadian born Ture.

“More and more we see that an absence of education and awareness is responsible for the behaviour of some of our people, especially the young. The young people are truly in a state of diaspora not only in the physical and social sense but with regard to their focus in life,” declared Hinds. He pointed out to the gathering that consisted of many young people, that events such as this lecture offered hope to the situation in the country. He criticised the influence of developed countries on the culture of Trinidadians saying, “our brother Kwame Ture said that, ‘While Europe ruled, Africa governed,’ but sadly it may soon be a case of while America rules, America governs. With the influence of all the cable television.”