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Separating education from religion

EditorialSeparating education from religion
Dr. Leroy Taegar told the February 2007 monthly meeting of the UBAD Educational Foundation (UEF) that 80 of the 111 primary schools in the nation of Belize are Roman Catholic. Most of the remaining schools are Anglican or Methodist. Almost all the schools are managed by a Christian denomination.
 
The Government of Belize spends more money on education than on any other portfolio subject in its annual budgets, but the statistics show that half of all the Belizean children born each year do not reach the high school level. In this modern era, for all intents and purposes, half our children, which means half of our young people of any age group you choose to consider, are uneducated. Meanwhile, a small group of our children are educated to a very high level – tertiary and beyond.
 
Such an educational system as we have in Belize, is therefore an elitist system.   A small percentage of our children do very well. This is what all our politicians and bureaucrats congratulate themselves on at every turn. Meanwhile, half of every group of Belizean children become candidates for criminal careers because they lack the education necessary to compete in a modern economy.
 
The question we should be asking ourselves as a people, is if we are getting the best value out of the tax dollars we spend on education. But in Belize, to ask such a question is to run the risk of being considered an infidel or heretic. Belizean education has become so dominated by religion that the question of education efficiency cannot be considered without the angst of religious faith.
 
The intensity of the religious denominations has established a climate where we cannot consider our education efficiency in a rational way. The system that presently exists is treated like a sacred cow, because it is run by the holy people whom we expect to guide us to eternal salvation in the hereafter. The church-state system then, if you think about it, is how we assure ourselves salvation in the after life while things continue to fall apart for us in the present reality.
 
We spend a lot of tax dollars on non-school programs trying to save the half of our children who barely know to read and write, to prevent them from becoming criminals who will prey on the law-abiding, productive citizenry. The penitentiary is bursting at the seams with prisoners. In the urban centers, we are afraid to walk the streets at night. Belize has a serious sociological problem. We can’t really educate half of our children, so every year without fail, several thousand children begin a brief experience in school which leaves them with a chip on their collective shoulder.
 
There it is, the fundamental problem which is staring us right in the face, and we can’t even begin to acknowledge the problem because we don’t want to risk our chances of heaven. A rational man would conclude, we think, that education has to be separated from our denominational religions before we Belizeans even reach a point of looking seriously at the problems.
 
At this newspaper, we feel that the present system works well for the preservation of white supremacy, because an inordinate percentage of the Belizean children who don’t reach high school are black. That is why the prison population is so startlingly and excessively black. Because of the long-standing and entrenched racism in our society, there is a willingness to accept the situation at it is, because there is the unspoken belief not only that black people are inferior intellectually, but that irresponsible and absentee black parents are to blame for their children’s lack of education and resultant criminal tendencies.
 
In post-colonial Belize it has become the refrain of the politicians and the bureaucrats – “The church system of education has worked well for us.” The question that needs to be asked is – who is “us”? Are there any Belizeans for whom the church-state system of education has not worked? This is a rhetorical question in the black community. We see such people every day. We accept implicitly that such people are to blame for their dysfunctionality. That is why we labour every day to pay the tax dollars to maintain the present system. The system is not to blame, you see, because the system is a religious one, and religion is all good.
 
The shackles which imprison us are beautiful in the eyes of the master, because the shackles are invisible. The chains are mental. No crusader can accuse the master of human rights violations, because it is we who insist on doing it to ourselves.
 
So the beat goes on. There is no Belizean politician who can even begin to challenge the system. The system is etched in stone. In Belize, church-state has become as inevitable as taxes and death. So, Belize should be the most moral and law-abiding nation on planet earth, because we are the most religious nation on earth in the way we educate our children. But we have become a filthy and decadent people. We are wallowing in crime and immorality. We don’t want to see something that is staring us right in our faces. In the words of James Brown – “Like a dull knife, it just ain’t cuttin’,,,”
 

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