By Miranda La Rose
Harold Bascom, self-taught in every sphere of his professional life, is an award-winning playwright, artist/illustrator, stage director and author. Formerly, Bascom was a public service employee who also taught in the secondary and, partially, in the tertiary education systems based solely on the skills and experiences he accumulated over time.
“Somehow my method of learning has rubbed academics the wrong way. I find I have been resented, sidelined and obscured by my fellow Guyanese because they say, ‘Bascom should not be among us because he has no degree’, but I’m okay with that,” Bascom told Stabroek Weekend from his home in Georgia, USA.
The late educator Samuel Small, he said, once asked him to teach creative writing on the University of Guyana’s Distance and Continuing Education programme after reading his first novel, Apata.