Love of Self Part I: Learning from our Mistakes

The more I observe the progression of civilization, particularly that in the USA, and juxtapose it with my country's reaction, the more I realize that we have a serious self-love problem. Is Dominica imitating - for better or worse - the political and socioeconomic actions of the United States?

Before we can answer that, we must put into context the substantial influence that colonization by the British and French has wrought upon us. Our educational systems, our currency, our dialects, our lineage, and even our religions have been marred by our transfer from the symbolic arms of these imperial states, among others. Had we not been so colonized, had we not been one destination among many along the slave trade route, the Dominica we know and supposedly love today may very well have remained an undiscovered tribal nation dominated by native Indians. The British gave and continue to give us a large part of the educational sequence we mandate for our children, the French undertones of our Creole patois, dance, and food are unmistakable, we still use the Queen's money, undoubtedly mixed and unmixed Negroes form the majority of our population because of the intermixing of slaves, Indians, and Europeans decades and even centuries before any of us were born, and we cannot deny that it was the Europeans who stripped our ancestors (Negro and Indian alike) of their own beliefs and "gave" them the Bible, which we uphold fastidiously. Conversely, I make no qualms about the immense good that colonization has done for Dominica. Without it, I no doubt would not be typing these words....if I would ever have been born, for that matter. This, therefore, is nothing more than an observation of how, despite being granted "freedom" and "prosperity" by (and from) European states, we look predominantly - and oftentimes unconsciously - to our westward neighbour for our developmental cues.

The Bight of Biafra, from which 62% of Dominican slaves are said to have been imported.

EDUCATION

Education has become a vital and, I dare say, overrated facet of life and what it means to be successful in Dominica. The British model treats formal education, in my opinion, as a privilege for those who are prepared to gain specialized knowledge in certain fields through extensive application and discipline. Its origins seem to reflect that aspect of education in ancient Greece, which distinguishes formal education (primarily for men, largely excluding women and labourers) from informal education (mostly skill-based, targeted at women, children, and slaves) but treats both as being indispensable to society as a whole. The British had embraced this and so had we in turn. An objective look at the shift in our national curriculum attests to this. You see, a college education is a comprehensive look into various areas of academic study that makes a graduate capable of understanding concepts that both show how 'socio-politically' refined he is and allow him to make intelligent personal decisions. To exclude informal education, however, is to create generations and scores of people who "know a lot of things but don't know how to do a lot of things".

Similarly, America has its educational background rooted in the reforms implemented by Whig party politician Horace Mann, who was himself inspired by the Prussian system of education and of whom it is said that "No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends." (Cubberley, 690) We in Dominica (and the rest of the Eastern Caribbean, it seems) have stopped reading past the word "universal" in this quote. In attempting to following the USA's footsteps, we have made education for our children into something that is so universal, it is mandatory, but it is neither non-sectarian nor free, and it does little, I assert, to promote any kind of efficiency, virtue, or character when those who are thrust through it are thereafter released into society.

Johann Julius Hecker memorial in Berlin

Not only does our small population not feasibly allow formal education to be free but it also does not give rise to a balanced society. The Prime Minister has expressed a vested interest in ensuring that every household in Dominica has a university graduate. Considering the fact that university-level degrees are not required for the majority of jobs actually available on island and that the average Dominican household consists of 3-4 individuals, this is a most unrealistic expectation. The importance of education and its correlation to long life and nationwide prosperity are beyond argument; however, the misconception that only formally educated persons make valuable contributions to society is going to be our downfall if we do not recognize and rectify it. Simply put, 1 out of every 4 Dominicans cannot be a lawyer or doctor  because 1) we do not have the resources to pay them, 2) that leaves too few patients or clients to justify their presence, and 3) (above all) there are other careers just as vitally needed in our country. Yet the majority of scholarships and educational opportunities offered to Dominicans lead to degrees in primarily the STEM, business, and law fields. The proverbial "brain drain" and the current unemployment/underemployment rates prove just how devastating this is.


Likewise, education in Dominica is far from non-sectarian, what with the normalized trend of children's school choices being based on their catchment area (another British tidbit), religious denomination, and certainly financial status. The ugly truth is that schools, due to private or government funding (or lack thereof), have varying degrees of access to resources that directly and strongly impact the quality of education of their students. This is partly why Catholic schools and schools near the capital city have better retention rates and performance outputs than smaller, public, or remote schools (for statistics, click here).

Logo of the DAAS, which speaks of the history of Island Scholars.

We have also seemingly abandoned our responsibility to carve out socially responsible young adults. Commerce and Civics have all but disappeared from Dominican curricula, technical subjects are both stigmatized and unregulated, and agricultural education is so frowned upon that those who have the natural skill for it are ashamed to pursue it. Have we forgotten our roots (pun intended)? Or are we pretending that all children are academically inclined? Some of the richest people in the world are not degree holders but savvy businesspeople. Not that higher education hurts, but it should complement informal education that teaches wisdom useful outside of classrooms, newsrooms, and polling booths. The fact is there are more Dominican youth who know how to solve quadratic equations than who can arrange cutlery for a formal place setting, more who know Pythagoras than who know how to file taxes, more who can write five-paragraph essays than are comfortable doing job interviews, and more who know to conjugate verbs in foreign languages than how to change a tire or sew a button back on.

Finally, the most outrageous sign of our departure from a well-rounded educational experience in an attempt to emulate the United States is the implementation of the National Assessment and Universal Secondary Education (USE) Act. Never has a system of institutions been so glaringly unprepared to deal with the ramifications of its own half-baked scheme. We saw that America allowed ALL of its children to attend college, regardless of their prior performance, chose to ignore how miserably their educational system is failing (especially for minorities) in spite of this, and still adopted for our 5-figure population a policy meant for a 10-figure population. Now, the graduation rate for US colleges hovers at around 50% for citizens, meaning about half of the people who put themselves into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt end up having nothing to show for it, except the loss of years of gainful employment they suffered while instead struggling with course-loads. Our high school and college retention rates tell a similar story. Children who are more inclined to practical, informal education that would facilitate their obtaining livelihoods to let them support themselves are instead forced - by law and expectant overseers - to ingest facts that do nothing at all for their futures. The National Assessment, coupled with USE, has resulted in such phenomena as:

• teachers having to manage classes consisting of students with widely varying capabilities and needs;
• remedial students feeling out of place, discouraged, misunderstood, and ostracized by their more capable peers;
• "smarter" students being held back as teachers take the time to help others "catch up";
• students lingering in the educational system for far longer than necessary (without exaggeration, some in high school in their twenties) as "promotion" becomes necessary to prevent crowding, even though learning milestones have not been met;
• comparative studies of remedial and non-remedial students becoming more convoluted and meaningless;
• national productivity declining as the number of qualified workers decreases while the number of under-qualified workers increases

...and I could go on and on. And all of this to what end? Contrary to the old adage, America is not going to be flattered by our imitation of its failing educational system, unaware as it is of our very existence.

If you have a story to tell, statistics to share, solutions to suggest, or just a different opinion to express, let it loose in the comments. We love to hear from you!