Literacy leaders

In an advertisement to mark Literacy Week in Trinidad and Tobago, NALIS asserted, “In the 21st century, a broader range of literacy is demanded to achieve success.” It was no longer enough to have Basic Literacy, said NALIS, you also had to be literate in Science, Multiculturalism, Visual Images, Economics, and Information. This puzzled me. I have closely observed people like Patrick Manning, Basdeo Panday, Sat Maharaj, Winston Cuffie, and Abu Bakr, even though these Visual Images tend to make me nauseous. But all these men are, in various ways, highly successful individuals. Yet none of them, as far as I can tell, is literate in the above subjects: unless there was a misprint and NALIS really meant multiCULTuralism, eCONomics, and MISinformation. But, even if there wasn’t a misprint, I doubted NALIS’s sincerity. I myself meet all their criteria but I am not, by Trinidadian standards, really a successful man. I don’t drive an expensive car, I’m not affiliated to any religions or ethnic organisations, and I don’t possess psychic powers. All I have is my intellect and naturally curly hair. And, personally satisfying as this may be, it’s not enough to get you invited to the kind of cocktail parties where they have free shrimp.

How, then, to resolve this paradox? In order to be successful, according to NALIS, I have to become literate. As a newspaper columnist with no particular area of expertise, I have tried to educate myself in all the subjects mentioned above. But I have done so according to developed-nation standards: and this, I see now, was my big mistake. What I should have done is educate myself according to Trinidadian standards. And I suppose the best way to do that is to follow the example of those persons who are local leaders in the areas listed by NALIS. Take Information. As a journalist, you’d think I would be literate in this area. But I’d assumed that being competent in conveying information required me to be sceptical, rigorous, and factual. But, when I looked at the truly influential purveyors of information in TT, I saw that I was dead wrong. Instead of developing my writing skills, I should instead have learnt to speak with a pseudo-British accent, like George ‘Umbala’ Joseph. Instead of trying to expand my knowledge, I should instead have remained ignorant about everything, like Ricardo ‘Gladiator’ Welch. Instead of trying to promote the most effective political and economic policies, I should have cleaved to discredited leftist ideologies, like David ‘MOTION-less’ Abdulah. Because you cannot be considered Information-literate in TT unless you embrace wrong and harmful ideas.

This is why I’m also not literate in Science. Mind you, I’d thought I was. I’ve read Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and many other works. I understand the basic concepts in physics and biology and, while I still couldn’t figure out how strapless gowns stay up, I considered myself to have a good layman’s grasp of scientific principles. But I know now where I went horribly wrong: I didn’t put political science on my reading list, mainly because I don’t consider politics to be a science. Had I done so, I would have discovered, like Selwyn Ryan and Kirk Meighoo, that NEAAP president Selwyn Cudjoe and GOPIO president Devant Parsuram Maharaj aren’t merely racial demagogues, but actually represent hordes of Africans traumatised by not getting jobs and education based on kinky hair instead of qualifications, and droves of Indians equally traumatised by their lack of National Awards. So, had I been a true Trini scientist, I too would be invited to sit on Vision 2020 committees and been highly paid even for inaccurate polls.

Which brings me to Economics, which I have struggled to grasp for many years. I read Paul Krugman’s The Accidental Theorist, Gary Becker’s The Economics of Life, and Paul Ormerod’s Butterfly Economics. I familiarised myself with concepts like comparative advantage, labour theory of value, and laissez-faire. Yet when I tried to take comparative advantage of women with labour value and laissez-faire underwear, I was rejected like a two-dollar bill: proving that I didn’t really understand economic theory. But now I see that, in order to be an economic expert in Trinidad, I didn’t need to understand free trade, just free up. For it is this which explains CEPEP, WASA, the NWRHA, and Mr Manning’s mysterious trip to Cuba. And what about multi-culturalism? I know how to eat dhal-and-rice from fig-leaf and I love cowheel soup. Additionally, I backed up my experience with theoretical and historical foundations, immersing myself in books like Donald Brown’s Human Universals, Dan Sperber’s Explaining Culture, Thomas Sowell’s Conquests and Cultures, Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence, David Landes The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. In fact, I was under the delusion that the only person in this country who understood culture better than me was critic Raymond Ramcharitar, who knows words like “pabulum” and “lachrymose” and who can spy a PNM plot faster than Pearl Eintou Springer can write bad poetry in the language of the oppressor.

But I know now that I was utterly mistaken. In order to be culturally literate in Trinidad, I needed to play the harmonium, close my sinuses, and join the Maha Sabha. After that, I could have pretended to respect dem Creole, while trying to ensure that “my people”, who must never ever be Trinis, got advantage over the other side. Only then would I be considered qualified to pronounce on cultural matters and been a guest on Gayelle. Being a creative writer, and therefore a contributor to culture, was clearly not enough. Indeed, I was also under the delusion that being a novelist at least qualified me in Basic Literacy. But the National Library didn’t even ask me to do a reading for Literacy Week, and I am grateful to them. I hate being deluded, unless it’s by a shapely woman with a tight skirt and loose morals. But perhaps this is why being a professional writer doesn’t make me literate here. Judging by whom the Library did ask to read, I instead need to become a self-absorbed female columnist who believes that only homosexual men could be offended by her poor prose. Ah well. I guess I’ll always be an illiterate in this country.

E-mail: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com
Website: www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh