Dear Editor,
I note the Sunday Stabroek editorial of September 20 ‒ ‘Wanton destruction’ – in which the failure of the competent authority to save for posterity the “hundreds of documents stored at the former Bedford Methodist School” was roundly condemned. The editorial net was cast quite wide, but there was, in my view, a rather unfortunate reference to “the irresponsibility of a group of workmen.” I do not think it fair to categorize those workers in that situation as irresponsible.
The editorial seemed to imply – and, indeed, I inferred – that some of the documents would have been worth saving “since they were useful and there was no information on the Bedford Methodist School in the archives.”
As I recall, sometime after the Bedford Methodist School was closed, the building was used as one of the more than a dozen offices/sections of the Ministry of Education in Georgetown. There was such a colossal problem with space in that building, that when the filing cabinets overflowed, files and other documents were stored on the floor. Those of us who had to visit that location on education or trade union business had to access the upper flat by picking our way – in single file! – through the hundreds of files and other documents that were on the stairs. To me, therefore, the materials now being discarded may well include personal files of teachers and reports about incidents at schools other than the Bedford Methodist School. Culling took place from time to time, especially after the building was abandoned again and the roof started to leak.
Those who know me well, know of my passion for record keeping and for care of things written on paper. I suppose the genesis may well have been the values drummed into us in the Roman Catholic schools of a bygone era, where not only our text books but also our exercise books had to be covered with paper. Those who could afford used thick brown paper; the rest of us used newspaper. Perhaps those values have disappeared along with a love for poetry and other forms of the written word.
I remember some years ago, as a member of the Teaching Service Commission, looking through a western window of the TSC building and seeing, sometime after Ivor O’Brien demitted office as Secretary of the National Sports Council and a new person was in post, hundreds of files being slung unceremoniously through a window of the Department of Sport (then located where the TSC is now) and into a truck in the yard. They were on their way to the incinerator! So, National Sports Council files so carefully kept over the years and cherished by Deryck Whitehead and Ivor O’Brien went up in flames through the conscious work of human hands. I suppose there is now not much of a written record of my files on the early days of the Inter-Guiana Games, or the experiments about making cricket bats using local wood and bamboo; or all-weather cricket pitches and running tracks using rice dust and cane peeling. Basil Arno, BL Crombie and Quintin Taylor (among others on the Council in those days) must be turning in their graves.
The treatment of the materials at the former Bedford Methodist School does not shock me. It is a social phenomenon. And a social phenomenon is never ascribable to a single causative factor. Drawing attention to the law may not help much. Some people know not, and know not that they know not. Some others again just do not want to know. Some few are unteachable and unreachable.
Two years ago, I assembled three cartons of educational archival materials – some probably the only copy in existence – and sent the materials to an organisation along with a three-page summary and suggestions for the disposal of the materials. What has happened to the materials since then? Least said, soonest mended.
Just as your editorial writer, I feel that, whatever the case with the materials at the former Bedford Methodist School, “it is not a good start for a new government when the sorry tale of our archives which stretches back more than a century continues along the same well-worn path.”
Yours faithfully,
George N Cave
