We are living in a society that has been getting from bad to worse because we have fallen morally, intellectually and spiritually. Every day we can hear our citizens behaving in a very vile manner by using curse words in their speech. We can hear this on our way to work, in our workplaces, in our own homes, in the police stations, in the schools, and even in some places of worship. What has really happened to our society? Where are we heading?
When I was a little boy growing up I would hear clean conversation in our community. A citizen could have been charged by a police officer and taken to court for using curse words or indecent language. Today we have quite the opposite; our police officers and soldiers are cursing more than the citizens. Thus we have the blind leading the blind in a whirlpool of madness. Since we are now living in a land of the lawless where our educators and law-makers are curse birds, we should stop and think about what will happen to the next generation. It is my opinion that laws about indecent language should be implemented.
On my visits to several schools in our country I would hear students and pupils cursing while they are playing in the school compound. In my days at school such a situation would have been remedied by the ‘wild cane,’ yet many foolish academics are calling for corporal punishment to be removed from our schools. In some schools teachers are unable to deal with students because they are abused verbally both by students and their parents. It’s time we introduced religious education in our school system from nursery to university. When people use curse words in their speech they may feel big or great but they have shown their lower personality in action. Real teaching begins in the home; parents are the first teachers of their children, but because of illiteracy and ignorance parents in every community are using curse words to their children. Husbands curse wives, wives curse husbands, children curse parents. Here is a real moral breakdown that needs to be addressed. We have is too many ‘livehome’ life-styles with no moral, religious and family values.
This new habit of indecent language and curse words is not only in our society, it’s all around us in the Caribbean and the Western hemisphere. In most films today the film stars will curse; also in Indian films there is a lot of sexual immorality and violence. In lots of songs by Jamaican, Trinidad, Barbadian, American and some Guyanese singers, curse words are used. These can be heard in minibuses every day as well as on TV and radio. Many music videos promote vile sexual acts, violence, and lots of immorality that are destroying the moral fabric of our society. Those who help to promote drinking are also encouraging the public and family into drinking alcohol which will motivate people to curse and behave in a vulgar manner.
While many like Petamber Persaud and others are promoting Guyanese literature, which is a good gesture, some of it is loaded with curse words and vulgarity that can destroy our young students who wish to study the subject. I took the time to read a number of books that won the Guyana Prize for Literature. To my amazement, some of them have some of the most obscene passages, curse words, sexual overtones, etc. For example, Ruel Johnson’s book Ariadne and Other Stories is a good collection of stories in the eyes of a schoolboy. Yet this work has lots of curse words, sexual immorality, etc, but was still given the first prize for best first book of fiction. It was judged by lots of professors of literature. It tells me clearly that these judges are giving prizes based on their instincts and not on literary merit. Even the works of Derek Walcott, Nobel Prize-winner, are loaded with curse words which are plainly spelt out. It seems as if these writers are running out of vocabulary.
How can a teacher of literature teach a child a book of literature that contains curse words? How can that child read such vulgar material? Will that child acquire any knowledge from such books? Yet many are advocating that these Guyana Prize-winning books be placed on the CXC English B syllabus. It seems as if our academics have a very shallow mentality in relation to education. What we need for literature is classics from Shakespeare, Virgil, Dante, Tagore, Shelley, Pope, Keats, Byron, Eliot, etc.
I wonder if the Minister of Education ever takes time off to read these Guyana Prize-winning books that our poor government is paying US$5000 for to make a one-eyed writer king among the blind in a broken society of illiterates. It’s about time our leaders, including our religious leaders, wake up to the truth. Mahatma Gandhi wrote: “Literary education without character is sa waste of time. God is truth and truth is God.” What we need is the truth from the Word of God to invade the lives of our citizens so they are given good words to speak to their fellow men.
Yours faithfully,
Rev Gideon Cecil
