The following is a part of the speech delivered recently by Dr Hollis “Chalkdust” Liverpool to graduates of the Catholic Religious Education Development Institute
For there is simply no room in this whole wide world,
For an uneducated little boy or girl.
Don’t allow idle companions to lead you astray
To earn tomorrow, you gotta learn today.
1967 - Mighty Sparrow
(Slinger Francisco)
Education, my dear graduands, involves knowledge of the cultural context, an understanding of the principles, the form of thought and the mastery of things that make up the culture. You can have all the intellectual skills, all the knowledge of this world and you are culturally illiterate, then you are not educated. I have met dentists, engineers, computer specialists who know nothing of Sparrow or of Leroi Clarke and I tell them they are not educated. To be educated is to be bathed in the refinements of your culture. You must be culturally literate in terms of understanding carnival, calypso, chutney, parang, the Pierrot Grenade, the mas camp, our roti, our idioms, our sayings, our idiosyncrasies, our heritage, our accent. To be educated is to know of Eric Williams, Albert Gomes, Sister Rosario, Reginald Griffith (The Trini who invented the cure for red ring disease in the coconut palm) Lennox Pawan (the Trini who taught the world that rabies came from bats), Black Stalin, David Rudder and that crazy fellow named Crazy. So if you know not of these things, you have to get to them NOW and then pass them on to your charges so as to redefine their sense of self, their sense of identity and patriotism.
Cultural literacy means that you must not only know all these attributes of Trinidadians; you must be able to talk about them, communicate with others on them and pass them on to your charges.
If you the teachers are not culturally literate, then the children cannot be. We are different culturally and we teachers must make the difference in our children’s lives. If I had time, I would go into the number of things that Trinis gave the world besides steelband, calypso, mas and doubles. How many of you know, for example, that it is a Trini who started the Reggae. How many of you know that Michael Jackson learnt his moon walk from watching Trinis when he came here in the 80s? How many of you know that Lord Kitchener’s calypso became the rallying anthem of Ghana’s independence? How many of you know that Trinis are responsible for over 100 carnivals the world over? How many know that the world now says that the pan is the best instrument for teaching children music? How many of you know that it was Trinidadians, Gil Figaro and yours truly who, 27 years ago founded the notable SUNSHINE Awards for Caribbean achievements, especially in the field of music?
To be culturally literate is to understand why Trinis wave their hands at a fete. Why in the first place they fete in a manner different from everyone. Why do they play music without reading score sheets? Why do they wave toilet paper at a calypso show? (A Vincentian calypsonian asked me why do we wave toilet paper?).
To be culturally literate is to understand why Trinis spend millions to celebrate Carnival. It is to understand the anthropology of Sparrow. It is to understand the music of Kitchener. (What school Kitchener went to?) It is to understand why they wear black for funerals and cry without knowing who is in the coffin. It is to understand the mind of Peter Minshall and George Bailey. It is to understand why they parang the wrong house. It is to understand why we spend hours in a panyard. It is to understand why most panyards had a breadfruit tree. It is to understand how, where and why Brian Lara learnt to play cricket. Education is that tool that makes us culturally literate and distinguishes us from others by giving us an identity.
The ball is in your court teachers. Although you have been trained in intellectual values, your learning is not complete until you become culturally literate in things and areas Trinidadian. All of you are literate but now you have to be culturally literate so that you can understand the Trinidad child and you can fashion him or her in a manner that will allow him or her to be bathed with the refinements of the Trinidadian personality.
Replies
Amen and Hallelujah!
This is GREAT!! To Cecil and all others who feel we should dump our Pan language and customs to be progressive.
A tribute to the late Reggae legend and unsung Pan Pioneer Nerlin Taitt
Posted by Glenroy R Joseph on March 3, 2010 at 10:06pm in News
https://whensteeltalks.ning.com/forum/topics/a-tribute-to-the-late-r...
I did not see Lynn Taitt's name in this article.
http://www.scaruffi.com/history/reggae.html
Sparrow makes it clear in his documentary Calypso as Mother Music @ 4:52.