No Minister of Education has ever had the audacity to challenge the status quo in Belize’s system of education, or mis-education, if you will. (And remember, there was a supposed “Kremandala” Minister of Education from 1998 to 2003.)
There are people who are happy with the education status quo in Belize, and leading the list among these happy people are the Roman Catholic churches and schools. The Catholics worked hard to become the leading educators. They did not commit any crimes to reach the top. Everything was legal. When Rome first entered British Honduras about 140 years ago, the Anglican Church schools were number one. The Catholics entered into good, old-fashioned competition, and they became the cream of the crop in education.
Where there are winners, there are also losers. Those of us who live and work on the Southside have seen that something is wrong for a long time now. Every year, from time immemorial, the Ministry of Education’s budget is increased, and every year, certainly for the last 25 years, things have become manifestly worse on the Southside where the education of our children and youths are concerned.
Once the primary window of educational opportunity for a child is lost, and we refer, for argument’s sake, to the years from a child is 5 until he or she is 15, it quickly becomes more difficult to educate the child. The reason is that sexual reproductive issues begin to complicate the situation, and you on the Southside will understand exactly what we mean.
In the modern world, as competitive as it is, you cannot teach a child enough in 10 years to compete in the globalized economy successfully. So when we say years 5 to 15 constitute a primary window of educational opportunity, what we mean is that this represents an absolute minimum of skills training. If you wish to have your society break out of the poverty cycle, then you have to do what Cuba did, which is to say, increase the amount of years during which the state is providing training and education for its young people.
In Belize, half of our children do not even get the 10 year minimum of training and education, so on the Southside we have been watching innocent babies routinely become hardened criminals, as predictably as the night follows the day. Historically, you see, the Southside was Anglican (and Methodist), and so, when the Catholics took off fifty years ago and the Anglicans collapsed, relatively speaking, the Southside people became big losers.
UDP Education Minister Patrick Faber’s recent attempts to tinker with the education status quo have begun to meet serious and organized resistance from the Catholics. The political implications are, ultimately, more important for Prime Minister Dean Barrow than they are for Mr. Faber. As Rufus X said on the Kremandala Show on Tuesday night, if the Prime Minister has to choose between electricity monopoly BEL and Public Utilities Commission chairman, John Avery, it is Avery who will be sacrificed. Similarly, we think that if Mr. Barrow at any point has to choose between Rome and Mr. Faber, it is Mr. Faber who will lose.
Both Mr. Avery and Mr. Faber are believed to be completely loyal to Mr. Barrow, but politics is not a tea party. People are sometimes hung out to dry – for the good of the party, for the good of the government, for the good of the nation.
Educationally speaking, Belize is in a trap, a trap which was manufactured by Belize’s most powerful politician from 1956 to 1984, the Right Honourable George C. Price. It was no secret that Mr. Price was a passionate Roman Catholic. He had traveled to Mississippi, and then to Guatemala, to study for the Catholic priesthood. But then his father died, and Mr. Price returned to British Honduras. Could anyone in his/her five senses not have expected that Rome’s schools in Belize would get the inside track under Mr. Price?
Under the educational system of Belize, a lot of our taxpayers’ money has been wasted over the decades. We say “wasted,” because, in our secular and nationalist opinion, the good of the Belizean people is more important than the interests of any specific religion. Religion, however, is not a matter of reason or nationalism. Religion is a matter of faith, and faith sometimes becomes so passionate it is selfish, exclusive, and of a closed mind. When things religious enter the conversation, sometimes it is impossible for the discussion to continue. And so, we rest our case.
All power to the people.