I believe I won about seven gold medals for academics at the high school level of St. John’s College between 1959 and 1963. (The late, incredibly gifted Ivan Gillett won all the gold medals for oratory.)

    I did not become swell-headed, the main reason being that inside my family I could see at least two members, my dad and one of my maternal uncles, who were clearly my superiors in matters of the mind. Plus, when the Jesuit scholastic, Alvin Roy, began teaching algebra in my first year at SJC, I quickly realized this was territory where I was going to struggle.

    The education system in Belize in my youth was liberal-arts oriented, you see, in the sense that it emphasized reading and writing, areas in which I was comfortable.

    The point I want to get to is this, that our European masters felt it was important that we, their colonial subjects, should grow up with the opinion that they were superior to us people of color in the intellectual sphere.

    This is one of the reasons it is so important for you to read Malcolm X’s autobiography, because he shows us how much magnificent brain talent was being destroyed in the oppressed black cities and towns of America.

    One of the benefits of slavery for our European slave masters was the fact that our ancestors did almost all the heavy lifting, as it is said, so that European children could dedicate themselves to matters of the mind — research, experiment, etc. The reason the European can go to the moon is because our ancestors were growing and harvesting the cotton and the sugar cane. I’m just saying. The European could push his children into science and medicine and so on. 

    So then, we Belizeans are now confronted with the fact that the coronavirus has wreaked havoc on our education system. Our children have lost a lot of ground.      

    Be that as it may, my thesis here is that we in Belize will never get off the ground educationally as a people unless and until the state takes over education and relegates the churches to their principal focus, which is God and salvation and redemption and so on.

    The scholars will tell you that the reason the Europeans began to educate the natives in their colonial territories was because the Europeans wanted to prepare a native clergy to do missionary and education work for their faiths. I’m not saying there is anything wrong about this. It’s just that this is 2022, and the emphasis for us Belizeans of color has to be on survival in the here and now. 

    My great grandfather on my father’s side was a blacksmith and mechanic. I feel that his skills would be more relevant to Belize’s development than my reading and writing background. Again, this consciousness contributes to humbling me. 

    In these days of computers, internet and social media, no one is paying any attention to Shakespeare and Dickens. These are great writers in the English language whom my generation learned to hold in high esteem, because this was how the education system was in those days. Shakespeare and Dickens used to be big time. Today, who can say?

    Around us, we can see two education systems which have been massively successful, compared to ours. These are the Cuban system and the Mennonite system. You will immediately condemn the Cuban system as communist. So then, what do you have to say about the Mennonite system, wise guys?