Edward Hutcheson
There is a political ad making the rounds, it is based on a painful event; a young lady who lost her boyfriend, because the Police were not stationed at the school. As painful as this story is, what is more painful is the continued abuse of a young persons misfortune for political gain.
There was a time when Policemen only went to a school because a crime was committed, or there was a disturbance that the Teacher or Principal could not handle, but, sometime after 1967, some political leaders took it upon themselves to “straighten out” whatever problem their followers or constituents were having in the Education system.
Members of Parliament in particular were guilty of this social misstep. Some of them went to schools and came away embarrassed because they had to face some of the teachers that taught them. This “involvement” resulted in the undermining of the Teachers authority, especially in the government schools. It would not be long before those children who were students began having children and this would go on for a number of years. Children were not learning so they were “socially promoted”; there was also a “readjusting” of the BJC and BGCSE requirements so that students were able to graduate and have something to show for all of their years in school.
Many employers would tell you that by the mid 1980’s and early 1990’s the damage had been done, and the drug era that ran parallel to this and the earlier period, did not help the situation; and there were politicians who were deemed suspect when the government did an investigation through a commission that was carried out. It is ironic that Hubert Ingraham and Perry Christie would be fired as Ministers in the Government because of their stand against the things that were going on at that time. It is even more ironic that Mr.Christies’s memory would be so short.
If you are a Bahamian, you will need to know the good and bad of your history. This is the only way that you will be able to raise relevant questions and decide for yourself what is best for you. It will be very difficult for any person or group to use you in cause when they themselves may have been complicit in creating the environment that caused your grief.
We are hearing a lot of promises. Some are being made from a place far away, by persons who are out of touch with reality; it is like they are in a far off galaxy somewhere. Others have their heads deep in the sand, speaking into a vacuum of delusional myopia; forgetting that all of us have been in the same demographic for more than a generation. It is good to hear of what could be, but there are realities that will never go away, and no amount of slick talk or misrepresentation is going to change that. We have to see our situation for what it is and decide from an informed perspective.
April 25, 2012
