So what is the big deal about the Caribbean Examination Council that it should want to have its history written? Admittedly, in the ordinary run of things, examinations are that necessary evil that we must all endure and perhaps nothing can be more boring than the history of an examination board.
But Cambridge Assessment has written its history and after all it is a few hundred years old; CXC is only an infant 40 something. So what it so special about CXC that it would enjoy display, the conceit of its own written history?
Two elemental reasons: firstly that it is ‘ours’ and that should mean something. Cambridge would have been nothing more than just another national examination board had it not been for the expansive assertion of Bri-tish Imperialism that recognised that the cultural hegemony of the Empire must be anchored in the minds and very being of the colonised and that its examinations needed to be the sole and single yardstick that would give currency to that process. Whereas Cambridge was the ideological yardstick of the British imperial project, CXC was the counter – hegemonic expression of the political struggle of Caribbean people to shape their identity and to give value to that process.
A leading expert in assessment Allan Hanson (1994) asserted that “The individual in contemporary society is not so much described by tests as constructed by them,” but this is true whether we are speaking in historical terms or in contemporary terms.
The second reason is that this history of CXC as our esteemed Professor the Hon. Errol Miller reminds us is “an act of responsibility and accountability to Caribbean people and their governments.” He has repeatedly express the view that:
The Caribbean Examinations Council is one of the great accomplishments of the English-Speaking Carib-bean in the era of self-government and independence. CXC’s success resides in what its products are: common regional standards for the assessment of the cognitive outcomes of Caribbean secondary education that are recognised globally. The success that CXC is, has come about through functional regional corporation.
What makes this story of the past so important for the future is that fact that the groundwork for the establishment of the Caribbean Examinations Council was being laid at a time when the West Indies Federation had only just fallen apart. This political context created insuperable psychological, conceptual and operational challenges for those visionaries who were bent on building something of regional value from the broken bricks of the Federa-tion.
In that regard, therefore, CXC could be considered to have been the re-emergence of the dream from its shattered fragments, but shorn of its political naivete and shaped to functional utility. I am reminded of Walcott who in reflecting on the nature of such challenge said “Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than the love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.”
When you read this history you will find that the compelling narrative excavated by Professor Bryan is far more that a story of educational accomplishment:
It reiterates that immense perspicacity of the founding parents of Caribbean independence and the farsightedness of the vision that they articulated.
It documents the dynamic and the contradictions and the effort to create and to ground the CXC in the regional and national landscape pointing to the struggles and the compromises that shaped the thing as we have come to know it.
It highlights the fact that there are important lessons in this narrative for the weakening regional integration project. Reflecting on the story of CXC from where I now sit at the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), here are the lesson that I take away:
Success happens when dreams gain substance and aspirations start becoming tangible benefits – the history tells a tale of increasing confidence as students’ performance in CSEC proved to be on par with the GCE and this grows exponentially as international acceptance of the certification expands.
Real vision is not about painting a picture of the possible, but is about making possible what lies beyond the horizon – if the region had stuck simply to the possible, we would have ended up doing what some other countries have done paying an external examination board to offer a locally branded certification but with local educators doing the work.
In seeking to supplant an exogenous initiative with something regional or indigenous in a high stake arena, the new initiative must be conceived and implemented to standards and in a manner that manifests superior quality – this we see happening time and time again. CXC was the first regional and international exam authority to make school based assessment an integral element of its assessment model – to be subsequently adopted by Aus-tralia and then only lately by Singapore.
An inescapable dimension of that effort must be a level of engagement with stakeholders that allows for the articulation of aspiration as well as the ventilation of fears – too often we mistakenly think that public sensitisation is about explaning change to the public when it should equally be about listening to public perceptions and modulating change to adjust to these perceptions without abandonment of vision.
When something is built on a fundamentally solid foundation, that bedrock makes future innovation easier… too often in our historical experience, progress is impeded by taking two steps backward for every step taken forward: too frequently we breakdown what was inherited in order to build from scratch something that is itself less enduring.
We must never allow the sum of our fears to exceed the capacity of our potential.
What is the supreme historical political irony that bedevils us? It is that logic of regional integration is continually undermined by those who know better but are intent on promoting insular nationalism. Professor Miller cites the founding chairman of CXC Dr Denis Irvine who stated that “One of the major challenges of CXC is trying to encourage national development simultaneously with Caribbean integration.” Professor Miller proceeded to note that “However, reading the history of CXC provokes the hypothesis that nationalism is the major challenge to Caribbean integration. Indeed, this seems to be more manifest in the larger countries – Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago than in the smaller countries and in the Western Caribbean more so than in the Eastern Caribbean”.
The history chronicles the many twists and turns in the long road to the establishment of CXC and its efforts to consolidate its presence. Read it for yourself and you will be astounded at the fact that even in the advanced stage of formation of CXC, there were those who were insisting on an extended period of tutelage for the fledgling institutions under the controlling hand of Cambridge. This is the educational equivalent of a country seeking to declare independence from a colonial authority but asking that this same authority oversee the initial phase of independence!
Ultimately, it is essentially a question of mental emancipation…..Do we have the self-confidence, the courage to define ourselves in a highly contested global space? The immortal lesson of Bob Marley is that we can. We can never get there by imitation by only through the valuation, the enrichment and the enhancement of that which is authentically ours.
Our politics is infected by inter-territorial suspicion because there are those who will understand that it is easier to be a big fish in a small pond that to become a skilful navigator in a sea of wider opportunity. The march of globalisation in today’s world is unstoppable and so relentless has been its momentum that even in countries that stand most to gain, efforts to contain it have conceded that the only alternative to unbridled globalisation is regional solidarity. And so all over the world we see geographic alliances of different configurations seeking to create regional protection for individual countries.
As challenging as our own effort to reassemble the fragments of the broken dream of regional unity has been, it is necessary to learn from the history of the things that have succeeded in bringing us closer together (such as CXC rather than to be shackled by the differences that continue to divide us.
I would like to end with profound thanks to Professor Bryan for this extraordinary labour of love and commitment and for this act of memory that can protect us from the ghosts of the empire that still inhabit the corridor of our insecurity. It is those shadows of interior doubt which mislead us to believe that we can never create anything of value and which prevent us from truly becoming the indomitable global citizens that we are destined to be. It is my hope that as we read this history, we will discover within the subtext, the lessons that can light the contemporary darkness in which we have found ourselves.
Dr Didacus Jules is the Director General of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and former Registrar of CXC.
