Dear Editor,
Although I dislike writing letters to newspapers I couldn’t neglect sending these thoughts after reading two recent letters in Stabroek News of August 19: ‘Anti-violence must become…’ by Annan Boodram and ‘We are moving back to an era when education…’ by Clarence O Perry.
First of all, both of these letters are so convinced that changes to social problems are rooted in group thinking and group response, as well as in money to provide an ultimate definition of ‘inequality,’ that they attribute little power to the individual or the personal ability of persons, especially those of lower income, to motivate themselves from within, rather than believe in a fatalistic fashion that one’s personal behaviour and formal educational achievements are the result of little more than paternalistic guidance and opportunity from outside oneself.
In Mr Boodram’s amazing letter, so seemingly altruistic in its call for PSAs, religions, teachers, politicians, sports stars, ‘celebrities,’ village communities, members of the diaspora, etc, to embark on a massive publicity campaign to stop domestic and other forms of violent crime, not once ‒ I repeat, not once ‒ in this lengthy recommendation is there any mention or hint that the root of such wayward behaviour, or its remedy, exists within the very persons involved in it. It is as if this massive public group by the sheer power of its collective existence will inhbit would-be criminal acts of violence. Could it be that such people are already aware that their acts are already condemned and discouraged by society and all those groups mentioned, yet they continue to commit them? How come? Because the perpetrators have not been convinced from within themselves that such acts are not the best for their long term satisfaction. Something occurs within them which demolishes the possibility of other ways of emotional gratification except by violent revenge for the loss of obedience or affection from a partner, or one’s present poor economic situation.
What helps to feed such a short-sighted desire for negative gratification in Guyana today is the massive loss of previous influential styles and methods of media communication specifically related to delivering healthy sentiments, healthy mental attitudes and social values via personal reception of music on public airwaves, films in public venues, and an interest in literature of quality. In order to see clearly why violent and crude behaviour surges in Guyana today, one has to look back at modern Guyanese history from the 1930s to the 1970s at least, when as citizens Guyanese were much poorer, yet much more contented, because of the positive content of media influences they were receiving daily. The evidence is in the newspaper archives for those decades.
A comparison of eras will reveal the nature of positive influences via the medium of classic Hollywood films (which originated from a desire to influence human optimism), vocal and instrumental music, and diverse forms of similar literature. For example, in those decades the presence of ‘action’ films accounted for about 30% of films shown publicly; the 70% majority were concerned with how to get through most of life’s problems wisely, while musicals galore lifted spirits. A film like the musical Oklahoma of 1955, had a hit song called ‘Oh What A Beautiful Morning,’ which I recall vividly had neighbourhood men singing its lyrics while bathing with calabash water! The song’s positive lyrics influenced them, as well as the scene in the film. Similarly, one of soul singer Percy Sledge’s numerous therapeutic emotional songs of the 1960s, such as ‘It Tears Me Up,’ punned brilliantly on the word ‘tear,’ and was listened to avidly by Guyanese young men who had lost their relationship with wo-men. Like Christ, Sledge experienced their pain for them, and took it away each time they heard the song. The same applied to ‘Lonely Teardrops’ by Jackie Wilson, or Otis Redding’s ‘Mr Pitiful’, etc.
If you were a cinema fan it was impossible not to see films with Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, Tyrone Power, Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, Sydney Poitier, or Sammy Davis Jr, etc, in which an attractive gentlemanly manner would never influence violence towards women.
In Guyana today a new generation of males no longer have such films regularly chosen for them via cinemas or TV. In any case the technical means of film and music production have become so easily available that negative, crude and violent music and film productions instigate similar attitudes, so that the same nihilism feeds upon itself in others, and mental stagnation occurs and begins to fester, infecting those susceptible and dangerous male and female psyches existing out there in the national environment.
Good influential examples of films and music still exist in the society, but they no longer publicly saturate minds via public media outlets as in the past.
We cannot escape present productions, so people are left on their own to find and enjoy quality influences. This means that persons have to motivate themselves from within towards such healthy media products; they cannot be dragged to it, they have to discover their blank inner capabilities and fill them by seeking out what can be better for themselves if they can access them public or privately. Mr Boodram’s group remedies target only the already full-grown problem, not its submerged personal root.
On the other hand, Mr Perry’s letter totally ignores the fact that because modern life in today’s Guyana is rooted in colonial and Western definitions and policies concerning ‘education,’ from early historical local periods ‘education’ was regarded as a specialised interest for a Westernised‒imported labou-rers ‒ were not in the ‘class’ that dealt with wages and technical progress as yet, so education came to mean the acquirement of skilled technical labour, not private subsistence agricultural production and the first profits made from its individual marketing. Getting an education in colonial Guiana was linked to a broad incentive to progresss socially; it was a standard to achieve, but not to be given free. And so in order to get into education to compete on a higher level, private agricultural ‘poor man’s’ work was actually a stairway to local social wealth today. Education as a ‘privilege’ served to generate the progress of Guyanese before and beyond the actual possession of such ‘high’ education by many, since in order to pay school fees all sorts of small profitable work had to be found or invented, by every class actually.
Slavery on the other hand introduced a dependence on freeness, which was later converted into an ideological right, placed within an extended context. Lack of self-reliance (read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays) became almost a civil right, and comparisons with others who had more became a habit, which in turn can lead to obsessive observation of others rather than oneself. The increase of teachers and students in independent Guyana is linked to the prior process of fee-paying, which produced good schooling and self-pride. But if no one had to pay at least enrolment fees, how confident would guardians feel about complaining about the quality of education their children are receiving?
As long as Guyanese citizens never abandon their respect for incentives and self-reliance, for total dependence on conventional social definitions of ‘equality’ and ‘education,’ ‘Education as apartheid’ will remain a ‘catchphrase.’
Yours faithfully,
Terence Roberts
