Dear Editor,
This is written for both you and for the staff at the Ministry of Education, who I assume prepare these test papers.
Two days ago I was turning through some previous weeks’ Sunday Stabroek papers in search of Sudoku which I enjoy playing. This of course took me to the Weekend Study section. There I saw a Grade Six Social Studies practice test, which I promptly stopped to read as I have a young relative who will be taking the examination this year.
At question six I halted. This question asked “For how many years was Guyana known as British Guiana?” The possible answers were (A) 150, (B) 152, (C) 160 and (D) 162. Since we became independent and renamed ourselves “Guyana” in 1966, answer A would mean that we were B.G. from 1816, B would mean from 1814, C from 1806 and D from 1804.
The trouble with this is that ALL four answers are wrong. When the Dutch colonies of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice were all finally ceded to Britain at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, only Essequibo and Demerara (the latter often referred to as Demerary) were united as the United Colony of Essequibo-Demerara. Berbice remained a separate colony. The British sent out two governors, one for Essequibo-Demerara and the other for Berbice.
The colonies were united into one in 1831, and were renamed British Guiana. And, you know, there are history books which provide this information. One is a Centenary History of British Guiana by a Guyanese, A.R.F. Webber, printed and published by the Argosy in 1941, to celebrate one hundred years as British Guiana. It would have been very odd to publish a book to celebrate a centenary which would have occurred in 1904, 1906, 1914 or 1916. Another Guyanese, Odeen Ishmael has also written a history which is available on-line at the web-site www.Guyana.org. Both include the change from two colonies, Essequibo-Demerara and Berbice, to one colony, British Guiana, with three counties, Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice in 1831.
I also have a medal which was my father’s, which was issued to commemorate the Centenary in 1931. 1831 to 1966 is 135 years, not 150, 152, 160, nor 162.
Editor and Madame Minister of Education, when I was in school we did no history of B.G. History was the history of the Greeks and the Romans and of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Geography was also the Geography of the British Isles. Nor did we study Guyanese or Caribbean Literature. I am forever thankful to Mavis Pollard who introduced us to the geography of British Guiana and Elsa Gouveia, another Guyanese who introduced all the History students to Caribbean History at what was then the University College of the West Indies (an external college of the University of London). Our reading of Caribbean Literature started with Lillian Dewar, the first Guyanese Headmistress of Bishops’ High School. She heard us discussing the novels of Georgette Heyer as she came into the classroom, and asked, “VA are you still reading that trash?” And advised us to start reading Guyanese and Caribbean writers beginning with Edgar Mittelholzer.
But at that time (I’m speaking of the 1950s), the exams we sat were all UK examinations. Today our students are sitting Caribbean exams. They need to be taught about the Caribbean with accurate information. I do not remember being given inaccurate information about anything by my teachers from primary through secondary schools. But I have come across wrong or misleading information again and again, especially since I started looking at the Primary School Assessments. One was from a teacher who stated that there are 100 centimeters in a meter and therefore 100 square centimeters in a square meter. And, after I pointed out that a square meter is 100 cm x 100 cm and therefore 10,000 square centimeters, she insisted that she had discussed the matter with her colleagues and they all agreed that she was right! And the letter writer who did not want the statue of Queen Victoria removed because it was she who ended the slave trade and freed the slaves. (The Act to end the slave trade was passed in 1807; Victoria was born in 1819; and the Emancipation Act was passed in 1834 when Victoria’s uncle William IV was King). Then there was an article published by the National Trust which spoke of “Magnet Place” (one of the cross streets of Stabroek, Manget Place). And another in Guyana Times which said that Lacytown was named after a hero in the Crimean War – which, as the Crimean War occurred years after that ward of Georgetown was named, is pretty surreal! There is also a Grade Two Assessment Test from 2013, I think it was, in which the students were asked to identify a right angle on a drawing in which two right angles were marked. I was told that it was the angle marked with |_ that was the correct answer. Well, if you teach six and seven year olds that anything marked with |_ is a right angle, they have not learned that a right angle is an angle of 90 degrees. And that a rectangle, which was part of the drawing, has four right angles. It’s not how the angle looks, nor is it a mark which identifies a right angle. An angle of 89 degrees will look like a right angle, but it is not one, and such teaching will only confuse at least some of the children when they move on to subjects like geometry.
Yours faithfully,
Patricia Robinson Commissiong
Kingstown
St Vincent and the Grenadines
Editor’s note: We apologise for the erroneous answers to the social studies question and thank the writer for drawing this to our attention.
