Obituary
Olga Irene Bone, former Executive Director of the Guyana Book Foundation, Co-ordinator of Education Renewal and Assistant Registrar of the University of Guyana, died on July 27, aged 88.
Olga Bone had two passions in life – to provide educational opportunities and to promote human rights – for everyone. Her entire adult life was devoted to children’s education and to protecting women’s rights. Indeed, after the unexpected termination of her employment at the University of Guyana in the midst of controversy in 1980, her interest in both intensified.
It was in her retirement that she became co-founder of Education Renewal, a small non-governmental organisation that worked for the improvement of children’s education. Conscious of the collapse in education standards, she was able to mobilise a number of like-minded volunteer teachers – among whom were Andaiye, Fr Tim Curtis, Karen de Souza, Maylene Duncan, Kathy Ford, Bonita Harris and Vanda Radzik – to conduct free remedial classes in English and Mathematics for ‘at-risk’ secondary school children. Two-hour sessions were held twice weekly on Christian Church premises – Christ Church vicarage, Holy Rosary Parish Hall, St Pius Church, Sacred Heart Presbytery and elsewhere – because public buildings were not available owing to the political situation at the time.
The initiative caught on and, by 1989, Sr Hazel Campayne led a fund-raising campaign with help from the Catholic Agency For Overseas Development and the Scarborough Fathers in Canada. The infusion of funds allowed the volunteers to extend the programme to become a three-year, August vacation project located at centres in Enmore, Leonora, Linden and New Amsterdam. At each centre, small libraries, with books donated by the Canadian Organisation for Development through Education, began to sprout.
Together with other educators – Agnes Jones and Mavis Pollard – Olga Bone transformed Education Renewal from a casual group of volunteers into a formal non-governmental organisation. Not only did it continue remedial classes into the early 1990s but it was given the additional responsibility of distributing huge shipments of books from the Canadian Organisation for Development through Education.
It was largely through the clarity of her vision and tenacity of purpose that Education Renewal not only survived the deficiencies and difficulties of the depression of the 1980s but became the basis for the establishment of the Guyana Book Foundation in the 1990s. Olga Bone served as general manager of the foundation until a permanent officer was appointed and she remained an active member of the Board of Directors until last year.
She never really retired. When given the opportunity, she continued to teach voluntarily at three community high schools – Dolphin, Houston and St George’s. She also took the time to write three small books – Our Children, Our Schools; Essays on School Management and Revision Manual: Basic Calculation – which were distributed to several primary schools. Commonsensical and functional, some of the ideas contained in these little books dealt not with grand strategic models for restructuring the education system but with simple topics – teacher recruitment; teacher leadership; school administration; classroom order and disorder in schools. Those issues were problematic twenty years ago and still are today.
She was concerned particularly about community high schools of which she wrote: “With few exceptions, the overall conditions of our community high schools is that of rundown, ill-equipped, under-staffed and over-crowded institutions which cater for more than 50 per cent of the annual 15,000 to 17,000 students who write the Secondary School Entrance Examination. As a group, these students therefore represent a significant percentage of our human resources which we cannot afford to waste.” Olga Bone always knew what she wanted and became a teacher at the age of 15 years. She graduated from the Government Training College for Teachers as a Class I Trained Teacher in 1941 and plunged into the profession she adored. She taught at St Patrick’s Anglican School in Rose Hall, Canje; All Saints’ Anglican School in New Amsterdam and the Bel Air Lutheran and Redeemer Lutheran Schools in Georgetown ending that phase of her career as Head Teacher.
Olga Bone was born on September 17, 1920 in the pleasant, breezy little village of Palmyra in East Berbice, about 5 km from New Amsterdam. She attributed her imperturbable disposition to the happy home in which she was bred. Her formal education commenced at eight years, at the All Saints Anglican School, in New Amsterdam, but owing to the informal learning at home, she was not at a disadvantage. At the age of twelve years, she was sent to the Cumberland Methodist School to be under the tutelage of Mr Sydney King whose nephew − now Eusi Kwayana − was his namesake. During the 1930s, that particular rural school enjoyed an enviable reputation for good results and she would be one of its star students.
A late starter but quick learner, Olga Bone placed first among candidates for the Pupil Teachers’ Appointment Examination in 1935 and started to teach. She repeated her brilliant performance at the Entrance Examination for the Government Training College for Teachers in 1939 astonishing many urban males who never recovered from being outperformed by an unknown country girl.
She graduated as a Class 1 Trained Teacher in 1941; gained the Diploma in Education from the University of Birmingham in 1959 and the Master’s degree in Education (Measurement, Evaluation and Statistical Analysis) from the University of Chicago, in 1963. She also attended a Summer Course in Educational Testing at Princeton University in 1970.
She served as District Education Officer in Georgetown, East Bank East Coast and West Demerara and Chief Test Development Officer. Later, she was appointed lecturer and Head of Centre of the Ministry of Education’s In-Service Teacher Training Programme. She pioneered the establishment of the Ministry of Education’s Test Development Unit in 1971, and served as the country’s first Chief Test Development Officer. Olga Bone was then appointed Assistant Registrar of Examinations at the University of Guyana in 1974 and served until 1980 when her employment was suddenly terminated, most certainly on political grounds. She always recalled that 1980 was an unforgettable year − one of disappointment, decision and determination. Her house was searched by the police who came upon an empty .303 inch rifle shell − the sort that Kitty schoolboys salvaged by the score from the mud on the old Volunteer Force rifle shooting range in Thomas Lands, a short distance away. For the possession of this harmless object, she was arraigned before the court but, mercifully, acquitted. It was an example of her equanimity and resoluteness to remain to help to make Guyana a better place, rather than migrate, that saw her through that provocation.
Never a firebrand, she was a strong advocate for the human rights of all. During the tough times of forceful police action against the Working People’s Alliance and their associates in 1980, she did join the Women Against Terror chaired by Mrs Sheila George, wife of the Anglican bishop. And although she was always supportive of women’s and human rights’ causes championed by the Red Thread Women’s Organisation she declined to spread herself too thinly by joining many of the groups she supported. She did, however, become chairperson of the Cyril Potter College of Education Foundation Society, pioneered largely by alumni of the celebrated 1941 ‘seventh batch’ of what was then known as the Training College for Teachers. A lifelong adherent of Lutheranism, she remained a devout Christian and worshipped at the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Campbellville. A soft-spoken, sincere and serene woman, she never lost her lively sense of humour even in times of personal adversity. She was a great teacher and moral guide and was widely respected for her friendliness and helpfulness to those in need. Irene Bone, née Lowe, was born on September 17, 1920. She married Dr Louis Bone in 1945 but the marriage was dissolved in 1975. Her five children survive her.