Guyanese of a certain age will remember the days when all textbooks, in every level of our school system, were published overseas. The majority came from the United Kingdom and were written by academics who had, or claimed to have, the necessary expertise in the subject presented. Pupils would have been familiar with seeing the imprint of publishers like Longman, Macmillan, Collins and the Oxford University Press in their textbooks.
That was a time when the major examinations were London-based. Therefore, all of the Literature, History, Geography, Economics, whatever the subject, had a UK/European perspective. Even when books were written about the Caribbean, they had a frame of reference that was not necessarily completely based on fact. For instance, millions of students of that era read and believed the lie that Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ the West Indies. Their school books also failed to mention that Columbus and other Europeans brought diseases with them, hitherto unknown to this part of the world, that killed the natives they came into contact with. Then there were the sanitised versions of the transatlantic slave trade, none of which attempted to include the viewpoints of slaves and their descendants. There were many other omissions; these were among the most egregious.
As the rejection of these narratives by Caribbean scholars became more strident, some publishers established Caribbean subsidiaries, and engaged academic authors from within the region. After the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) – formed in 1972 – began to take control of the major examinations around the late 1970s, local publishing houses were birthed. Ultimately, Carlong Publishers and Ian Randle Publishers (Jamaica), Royards and Caribbean Educational Publishers Ltd (Trinidad and Tobago), to name a few, also began to produce and distribute school texts that were relevant.
Textbooks have always been expensive. Prior to CXC, those published in Europe and elsewhere tended to be hard to come by in Guyana. Students from upper and middle-class backgrounds might have had access to all of the titles on their booklists; their lower-class peers, not so much, unless they were fortunate enough to win one of the few textbook bursaries or scholarships available at the time. To compensate, many of the teachers took the time to write out lengthy passages on chalkboards that students could copy off and thus complete homework. This, of course, preceded the arrival of the photocopying machine to this country. No doubt, it also improved many students’ handwriting expertise. Yet, with all of these extreme deficiencies, Guyana’s education system then continued to operate at peak level; the country produced countless top level scholars and academics.
While there were flaws in the revamping of the system that occurred in the 1970s, which brought all schools under government control, a bright light was universal access to textbooks. The government, through the Ministry of Education, purchased all of the books and students were able to ‘borrow’ them for the school year. There were penalties affixed to the loss and/or destruction of textbooks, but one shortcoming was that there was no apparatus in place for rebinding and repairing those that were returned damaged. In the end, losses coupled with the lack of adequate foreign exchange brought an end to that. Still, thousands of students benefited and flourished as a result.
Then there was Guyana’s period of ignominy when the government, in 2012, was forced to admit that it had been procuring pirated textbooks to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, in violation of copyright laws. ‘Free’ textbooks were still being distributed at this time, but they were invariably in black and white, which meant that colour references were lost on the children using them. The dumbing down in education was racing along, but who cared?
Given the recent contention over the inexactitude regarding Chinese Landing in the Social Studies textbook published by the Ministry of Education for children in Grade Three, the answer is no one. The Columbus stunt pulled by whoever wrote the inaccuracies printed therein and sanctioned by the ministry, heavily underlines the innate danger in not having impartial academics prepare school texts.
As its name implies, Social Studies involves the study of and prepares students for social/civic life. It embraces history, geography, economics, government, human rights, and the interactions of individuals, families and communities. Most importantly, it is based on truth. The now withdrawn textbook “Guyanese in the World” clearly failed to conform to the ethical standards on which school texts must be based. There were so many other examples that could have been used instead of the Chinese Landing one chosen that one wonders at the impudence and obfuscation.
While as it did in 2012, the Ministry of Education admitted its shortcomings, it should go beyond that. Since there was a failure in its “quality assurance mechanism” in this instance, it stands to reason that it could also have failed in the past. The ministry, therefore, should commit to a neutral review of all the textbooks it has published thus far to check not only for accuracy, but also grammar and spelling. The ideal situation going forward, of course, would be to have nonpartisan educators (not necessarily Guyanese) write any textbooks the Ministry of Education intends to provide to the children of this country, or would that be expecting too much?
