By any measure, William de Weever Wishart (1873-1955) was one of this country’s most outstanding citizens. Winning the British Guiana Scholarship from Queen’s College in 1890, he earned his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degrees at Edinburgh in 1895 and the Diploma in Public Health from Dublin in 1910.
As a private medical practitioner, Dr Wishart’s specialities were child welfare and child mortality. As Georgetown’s first Municipal Health Officer, he fought relentlessly for better sanitation, initiating many of the public health measures still in force today.
He lived to see his only daughter transform his medical clinic on the ground floor of his rambling, three-storeyed wooden house at 236 Camp Street in Cummingsburg into one of the most innovative institutions for children’s education of the day. The house that Dr Wishart built was not only commodious. It also possessed a copious supply of good books and music and was managed by good, generous and genteel parents.
This was the environment into which Winifred Margaret Wishart was born on August 5, 1915. This was the cradle in which her love of learning was nurtured during her happy and comfortable childhood. Taught to read by her mother even before she went to school and searching among her father’s books for information, she was eager to learn.
She attended the sedate St Rose’s High School run by the Ursuline nuns at the corner of Camp and Church Streets, just a block away from her family home. It was while in the sixth form that Winifred Wishart’s world view was immutably moulded and her destiny was determined for good. She had dropped out of the Latin class and occupied herself during this spare time by supervising the recently-established Montessori class at what was then the St Agnes’ Infant School. Watching four and five-year-olds at play and arranging materials of various shapes and colours, Winifred Wishart discovered her vocation. There and then, she decided to work with young children.
She went up to St Margaret’s College in Edinburgh, Scotland, in August 1933 to be trained as a kindergarten teacher in the Froebel method, because Montessori training was not available. She had already been influenced by Dr Maria Montessori’s scientific method of creating environments which foster the fulfilment of children’s potential and of teaching in a way which emphasised social interaction, the education of the whole personality and respecting children’s individual differences. Friedrich Froebel’s method of teaching, by comparison, was rooted in the premise that children are essentially active and creative, rather than merely receptive; it emphasised self-activity and play in child education. Winifred’s philosophy was influenced by both the Montessori and Froebel methods.
Back home, and even before attaining the age of twenty years, Winifred Margaret Wishart established St Margaret’s school – named after the college she had attended, not after herself as some thought – in January 1935. Through her parents’ generosity she received furniture, financial support, classroom space and lots of encouragement. Located at her parents’ home in Camp Street where the school still stands today, and starting as a kindergarten of seven pupils, her greatest challenge was the scepticism of a citizenry schooled in the staid Victorian pedagogy of benches, blackboards and slates.
She met these challenges with exceptional energy and a passionate devotion to the education of children, according to her lights. Her vision never dimmed.
Her marriage to Robert Buchanan Hunter, a sugar planter, obliged her to leave the city to live on the Corentyne Coast with him. St Margaret’s closed in July 1943. A few years later, though, her husband contracted a chronic illness and the family returned to Georgetown. Winifred taught at the newly-opened Anglican St Gabriel’s School in Queenstown in 1951 but, in response to the requests of several parents, she was persuaded to reopen St Margaret’s in 1954.
Attendance was augmented unexpectedly by the Ministry of Education’s decision to abolish the preparatory forms in the government-owned Bishops’ High School and Queen’s College. This meant that admission would be based on the competitive Common Entrance examinations which private students would have to write as well. St Margaret’s had to keep abreast of the times and, from 1962, pupils were taught for those examinations. In the same year, also, pupils were prepared to participate in the British Guiana Music Festival, triggering anxieties among apprehensive parents that cultural activities would impair their children’s studies.
Their fears were unfounded. Students did well while the music festivals lasted up to the early 1970s and yet performed creditably at the secondary schools entrance examinations, usually taken as the yardstick of primary school performance in this country. This vindicated Winifred Hunter’s firm belief that cultural activities and academic studies should not be separated. In her words, “These were the happy days when children sang songs, painted pictures and danced their way through school while managing to learn to read and write, to add and subtract, and to spell correctly at the same time. Most importantly, they were encouraged to think.”
Supportive of her staff and students, Winifred Hunter nevertheless ensured that her personal high standards were met. As times changed, she took a term off to visit England to gather fresh ideas and learn new teaching techniques. When she returned home, she held workshops for staff members to improve their pedagogic practice.
Apolitical by disposition, Winifred made a strategic decision to avoid party entanglements but was always supportive of national policies. At one time or another during the combustible 1960s and 1970s, leaders of all the major political parties – People’s Progressive Party, People’s National Congress, and United Force – confidently sent their daughters to be educated at St Margaret’s.
For her inestimable service to education, Winifred Hunter received the national award of the Medal of Service in 1975. This was a high point of her career and for the school which also celebrated its 40th anniversary that year.
Ironically, the educational edifice into which she poured so much effort throughout her life was shaken the next year with the passage of the Constitution (Amendment) Bill in September 1976. As a consequence of this legislation, the government was enabled to take over hundreds of preparatory, primary and secondary schools. With the vote in the National Assembly and the stroke of the President’s pen, the state assumed control of education, as the slogan boasted, ‘from nursery to university.’ As with all other private schools, St Margaret’s fell under the government and staff had to be appointed and paid by the Ministry of Education.
By this time, of course, Winifred Hunter was 61 years old and, under government regulations, slated for retirement. The ministerial bureaucracy did not immediately offer her a contract although she continued teaching conscientiously. In fact, she worked for over a year without being paid! She suffered in silence, receiving her overdue emoluments only after the intervention of Mr Desmond Hoyte, then a minister in the PNC administration, whose daughters happened to be St Margaret’s students. Disappointed, but not angry, Winifred Hunter retired in 1978 and eventually migrated. She died on September 26 in Jamaica.
Winifred Hunter’s philosophy of life was founded on the firm belief that early education should bring forth the best in young human beings. She was a kind and caring person, often permitting students who were delinquent in paying their fees to continue attending classes. As might be expected, her favourite charity was the Children’s Dorcas Club, once headed by her friend Ms Mildred Mansfield. A devout but not dogmatic Christian, she worshipped at the St Andrew’s Kirk.
Winfred Hunter was cultivated and charming with an infectious enthusia
sm for education. She ensured that her school was not a place of dread for children but an exciting experience. Everyone who worked with her regarded her with affection and respect.