“Teach the children the truth.” (Bob Marley)

Mon. May 15, 2023

An old-time English saying advises, “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” It is not clear who first came up with that “gem of wisdom,” but chances are such advice was intended for the ignorant and subjugated population of serfs, slaves or colonial subjects. What happiness and bliss there is to be found in ignorance may not sustain for long, however, and in fact may soon evaporate when the consequences of such ignorance are felt. Life is filled with ups and downs, victories and defeats, and it is in experiencing setbacks and losses, that we are better able to appreciate good fortune and success when it comes our way. There may not often be justification for corporal punishment in school, but, regardless of one’s viewpoint, there are lessons of nature that a young mind can only learn by experience, such as feeling the heat of fire to know it is not something to play with. Just about every lesson learned, has some bad consequences for not getting it right, so that one is motivated the next time around to “do the right thing.” So it is with children, and so it may also be with nations. Ignorance cannot be the best way forward, and any system that perpetrates the ignorance of a people on any subject, is likely to the detriment of the people and their next generation.

As Belize descended into a violent era of drug-trade-related gang conflicts and murders from the early 1990s onwards, a buzz word in the “hood” was that “dehn bwai no happy.” Incidentally, it is hereby proposed that this was precisely the period in our educational system when, in the aftermath of massive UNHCR-sponsored and promoted Central American refugee explosion inside Belize, that the pressure for space in schools soon resulted in escalating dropouts among the poorer classes of mostly African ancestry. So shattering was the new level of ignorance, that there have been credible reports of gang leaders who were still functionally illiterate, something unheard of in the Belize of the 1960s and 70s, for example.

Interestingly, keeping the masses of people ignorant is exactly the “pot of stew” found to be the best diet prescribed by those in control of slaves and subjects in the colonies of imperial powers from Europe throughout the centuries following their “discovery” of the “New World.” Without a doubt, our educational system in the colony of British Honduras, as in other colonies across the Caribbean, was designed to “keep us in ignorance,” to discourage the masses of slaves or subjects in the colonies from developing lofty ideas about human rights and justice and freedom, as well as the true teachings of the originators of the various religions which were selectively repackaged to justify the system of exploitation being forced upon the subjugated peoples. Such a recipe may have worked along with the iron hand of colonial authority, but in the new independent Belize of citizens with high expectations from political leaders in a culture dominated by ignorance, the result has been escalating crime and violence, as many of our youths are lost and confused in their struggle for survival and have become predators upon the very society that should foster their healthy physical, intellectual and emotional growth.

In sports, a famous baseball pitcher, “Tug McGraw”, once said “you gotta believe,” because when an athlete/player believes he can do something on the field, it invigorates and inspires and stimulates his ability and focus to perform at a much higher level than without that faith. Religious folks like to say that faith can move mountains, but we seldom acknowledge that fact in real life, except when an individual shatters all the limits of our expectation, like when a young Cassius Clay “shook up the world” in stopping Sonny Liston in 1964, and again as Muhammad Ali in 1978 when he shocked all the experts in stopping big George Foreman for the heavyweight title. But young Cassius and later Ali sincerely believed in what he was about to do; he was inspired by the knowledge of himself and his ancestral history as the descendant of great kings of the motherland, Africa; and he was comforted and strengthened in courage by the religious teachings of his mentor who prayed with him before he took that lonely walk toward the ring.

There were a few slave rebellions in Belize town during the few centuries of slavery here, but the ring leaders and those who made their break for freedom to the north, were not those who had embraced the religious teachings which were being fed to them by the same slave masters and their missionary friends, whose message focused on “turning the other cheek” and patiently enduring injustice and suffering on earth while waiting for “the pearly gates” and “streets of gold” in the hereafter.

Poverty and backwardness reigned in the Belize settlement while logwood and mahogany exports enriched the “mother country”. With open sewers and narrow streets, there was no real development in Belize town, while iron discipline was maintained with a “hanging judge” and reinforcements from the Caribbean whenever necessary to keep things in check. The “masters” lived high in their white mansions on Front Street or on St. George’s Caye, but the masses of “kruffy” existed in quiet humility, the women and children mostly confined to the swamp settlement, while the menfolk spent the greater part of the year in the bush as “hewers of wood”.

But when the timber industry declined, and unemployment and poverty was rampant in the years following the 1931 hurricane and the Great Depression of the mid-1930s, it was impossible for the colonial bosses to keep the population in check without something to appease them, and so they decided to create some jobs by starting the construction of the Western Highway.

But all the while, in the preceding years and decades, the colonial bosses had managed to keep the subjects at ease with enough recreation to release their energy through sports and an annual big celebration of the Battle of St. George’s Caye. We frolicked and built up a whole tradition of music and patriotic songs, which are still beautiful, but all the while remaining quite ignorant to the fact that it had all started when a descendant of slaves, one Simon Lamb, began agitating to stage a big “freedom” celebration for the fiftieth year, 1888, since the abolition of slavery in 1838. Instead, the colonial bosses quashed that idea, and quickly voted sums of money to sponsor a big “centenary” celebration in 1898 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of St. George’s Caye. It wasn’t until a couple years ago that the UBAD Educational Foundation agitated and succeeded in getting Emancipation Day, August 1st, officially celebrated in Belize.

The above is just one example of the way those in control of the educational system can systematically keep a people “ignorant” of their past. Such a strategy served the slave masters and colonial bosses well, as ignorant people are more easily kept in “blissful sufferation”, meaning that without their knowledge of the system and their past, organizing and unifying around strategic goals are more difficult. But a people who have supposedly shaken off the yoke of colonialism and say we are now independent, such a people should put much greater priority on enlightening the upcoming generation on all that was withheld about the past from their forebears because of the system of orchestrated ignorance that prevailed to keep them in bondage.