Joey Gaskins: How Not to Be A University: Lessons from the College of the Bahamas Playbook

I believe that while the contribution of the university to the economy is an important one, there is a higher purpose. Instead of taking a utilitarian view, I want to reflect on words of Wendell Berry, an American scholar, economic critic, activist and farmer. He says, “The thing being made in a university is humanity...what universities, at least the public-supported ones, are mandated to make or to help to make is human beings in the fullest sense of those words — not just trained workers or knowledgeable citizens but responsible heirs and members of human culture.”via thebahamasweekly.com - How Not to Be A University: Lessons from the College of the Bahamas Playbook.

thebahamasweekly.com - COBUS: "Let's Build a University Where Students are Afforded Quality Education at Low Cost"

This is worth reading from beginning to end: thebahamasweekly.com - COBUS Press Statement.The press in general has focussed on one small part of the document, that relating to the House of Assembly; the original title of this document online is "COBUS: 'Would like an apology from the Speaker of the House and Royal Bahamas Police Force'", but that is only part of the concerns of this press release. The refusal by the RBPF to admit members of the College of The Bahamas Union of Students to enter the House of Assembly (doubly ironic, given the fact that that day's proceedings were dedicated to Sir Randol Fawkes, the father of the labour movement in The Bahamas and a supporter of all unions) puts broader issues of democracy into question, and it is those issues that are at stake here, not the relatively trivial call for an apology. The apology is incidental. The question is the value we place on the young adults in our society who have chosen to educate themselves at home,, and the value we place on their place in our so-called democracy.In regard to that issue, here is what the President-Elect, Alphonso Major, had to say:

We have many questions about what that transpired that day: what laws gives them police such authority to pick and choose who enters into the House of Assembly? How exactly were we a threat? Who exactly was in danger? Or is the crux of the matter simply that any time a group of educated College students assembles to stand up for something within this country, they are immediately perceived as a threat that must be contained. Even if there was intent to disrupt the proceedings which we maintain we did not have, Members of Parliament disrupt each other all the time within the House of Assembly - why aren’t they being denied access to the proceedings?Is this still a democratic nation that we live in where fundamental rights apply? -- Alphonso Major, President-Elect

But that was not all that transpired at the press conference. Indeed, the meat of this release treats the proposed cuts in subvention to the College and the resultant raising of fees. If you are not a student at the College of The Bahamas, I challenge you to read the whole thing before you come to any conclusion.Some of the highlights, for me:

In the absence of substantiated data, it is our goal to bring these inefficiencies to your attention, and to show all that a solution can be found through our critical assessment and assistance by providing practical, logical solutions, not as idealists: rather as students who recognizes the direction where we as a College should beheading and who wish to insure our futures within the nation as a whole, even before we consider transitioning to University. -- Donovan Harding, PR Director-ElectLet us build a University together one where students are afforded a quality education at low to no cost! We must build on the 21st Century learning skills with the technology and resources that are needed to move the country’s level of education from the bottom of the list to the top with Barbados, Singapore and Finland. -- Ernesto Williams, outgoing COBUS President

Once again, go read it. The whole thing. I challenge you.

It's NaPoWriMo

and I have been writing a poem a day.For the last two days, the poems have been in commemoration of the iron lady, the Baronness Lady Thatcher, who ruled Britain during the time I lived there (and, of course, before that too). Others have given her kudos, and she has to be admired for her ability to transform her party and to transform her country and to do it all as a middle-class woman in the conservative party. These things made her great. But I remember apartheid, and I remember how she almost destroyed the British university system, and how she made Britain unwelcoming for British expatriates and overseas students alike, and I remember poll taxes and VAT and greedy millionaires and a general bleakness about the places I went in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a general unwelcomingness for people who were different, like people of different races or even, Maggie Thatcher and the Queen notwithstanding, like people who were not male. And I remember the fact that when I lived in Britain surveys of the British people revealed that the majority of them were planning to live somewhere else. And I remember the Falklands, as I remember Grenada, and I remember thinking how far the mighty empires had fallen, when greatness was sought by invading/fighting over small islands.So these are my limericks in commemoration of the Iron Lady.No, I was not a fan. But one couldn't help noticing how formidable she was.I call them Thatchericks.1.Dear Maggie detested all whiners,Hated unions, protestors, and signers.As they marched in the streetShe said "Shoot at their feet--And aim higher if any are miners!"2.An iron-boned woman named ThatcherResisted attempts to dispatch her;She glared as they triedAnd ignored those who cried;The truth was, nobody could match her.3."Like Maggie," said ex-Prez De Klerk,"We're sure global sanctions won't work."—But wait, Nelson's free,SA's gone ANC;Thatcher's stand's a historical quirk.4."Here's the thing," opined Nelson Mandela,"We all know I'm likable fella.Maggie Thatcher's just wrong:We can't all get along.And by jove, I'm the fella to tell her."=====================RIP Margaret Thatcher.

Happy Easter

Here is a poem.It is not new, but it is Eastery.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Long Island, Bahamas: An Easter Meditation (two of the 5 parts)4. Easter Sunday: RemembranceThe congregation’s young and old; few in between.A young man shakes my hand. His palm is hard—a worker’s palm—and hopeful for a wife.We honour woman-courage on this day:an empty tomb before Black Mary’s gaze.The women who aren’t girls all let themselves wear fatthat cloaks hard muscle, big hearts, brass voices.Their eyes are soft. Their green-eyed childreninhabit skins the shades of sand, of soil,of treebark, eggshell, cedar, earth, red loam.The braveheart women weep, and laugh.The rain falls with the Gospel.Christ is gone, the angel sings,and the silver rain falls down.5. Easter Monday: The North SideThis Atlantic: bluer than sacrament, brighter than pain,supplier of buoy-pots, candlewax, quilt-scraps, wrecks,ballastbricks for chimneystoves, old tyres for shoes,string and winecasks and even, maybe, bones—the things ships cast off when passing byor sinking down.The resurrection side.A blue hole swallows the unwary, offers upits perfect mystery. A thousand feet from shorea shelf dives undersea a thousand fathoms deep.The North Side ridge looks down. The water’s stripesbleed turquoise, blue, and indigo.You stare into the risen sun until you know.

Transforming Spaces 2013

I was going to write about it but I fell asleep.It's been that kind of day.

Abaco Islands

We remember islands by memories and photographs.  After a lifetime of driving by car on the Abaco Islands in the Northern Bahamas, I have begun to erase old memories and photographs of beaches and water, for stories of dusty roads and lonely towns.  Today, I remember the Abaco Islands by their interiors.

Abaco Islands.

The narrative is interesting though not wholly accurate (i.e. children of illegal Haitian immigrants are not Bahamian citizens, as one of the meditations suggests) but the images and the perspective are worth checking out. Found the essay via StumbleUpon, a webresource I don't use nearly enough, but which I plan to use more often.

A little bit from the Bahamian diaspora

Bahamians in the recent past are not famous for leaving their homeland. We tend to think of ourselves as a nation who has to put up with immigrants, but which does not have to worry much about emigration.

This is certainly changing. While we are by no means able to compare ourselves with the diasporic tendencies of our Caribbean neighbours, young Bahamians are choosing more and more to emigrate to other lands. A lot of it has to do with a lack of opportunity at home, with a lack of space to be different, to be innovative, to be young. Let's admit it: our society stifles difference.

We tend to forget, though, that when we study our history, Bahamians have been migrants in the past. If we study the twentieth century alone, we will realize that Miami was built by Bahamians, Key West is the "Conch Republic" because it, too was settled by Abaconians and Eleutherians, and Bahamians travelled for work to Panama, Cuba, South Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

I was reminded forcefully of that just over two weeks ago, when I received the following email:

Dear Dr.Bethel,

My name is Tom Quirk. For the past few years I have been researching civil rights incidents in my old hometown of Scarsdale, New York. For the past few months, I have been researching the story of The Cockburn Trial, which took place in 1937.

I was wondering if there was any chance that you were related to Pauline Cockburn. Her maiden name was Bethel. Her father was named Ernest Bethel. Her husband was Joshua Cockburn, a ship's Master who was the first Captain on Marcus Garvey's Black Star Line ship The Yarmouth, which was rechristened The Frederick Douglass.

Whether you are or not related to Pauline Cockburn I have attached my most recent draft of my article in case you have time to read it. If you are too busy, sorry to bother you. I obtained your email from your blog.I am a high school teacher in Lexington, Massachusetts. I have posted three articles about civil rights incidents that occurred in or near my hometown between the years 1937-1963 on my website: Thomas-Quirk.com.

Sincerely,

Tom Quirk

Now I've never heard of Pauline Bethel or Ernest Bethel, but I do know a little bit about Joshua Cockburn. He was, as Tom Quirk observes, one of the captains on Marcus Garvey's Black Star Line—though not, apparently, the best ally for Garvey to have. I was fascinated to know more about him (and about his wife too), so I corresponded with Tom Quirk.

It turns out that Tom has done considerable research into the Cockburns, who eventually emigrated to the USA, where they became residents of Scarsdale, New York. I offered to share that research on this blog. Watch this space.

Nightmares and Dreams

I had a dream last night which was really a nightmare.

In it, I received a phonecall directing me to go to the cabinet office. Dutifully, I went. It was early in the morning, and I didn't have to wait as long as I expected. Not long after I arrived, someone came and led me into a back room. There were people in the room I didn't know, mostly young politically weighted professionals. They introduced themselves to me. Most had heard of me but we had never met. We observed each other warily.

Then into the office walked several old friends, people with whom I spent many days in my twenties. They were brothers, and they were working for the government.

"You're with me," said the one I knew best, whom I'll call John.

Turns out we were the publicity / public relations / negotiating arm of whatever work was being wrought within the cabinet office. This day, the work was a long-term meeting with foreign investors. I found myself rather liking the investor in question, who was a European of some sort and who was proposing a major land development somewhere on New Providence. At the same time, though, I found myself hating the job itself, hating the project, hating the government and its policies which were poised to sell yet more of our patrimony to yet another profit-seeker. I said only one thing in the negotiations that we conducted all day. I can't remember what it was, but it was something that was self-evident to me but that no one had thought about, and it had to do with the long-term implications of proceeding with the development as projected, and it seemed to change the way in which the development would, well, develop.

At the end of the day, when we were finally finished (fourteen hours or more of time wasted selling Bahamian land to external interests) John told me I was invaluable and I needed to be in all of the meetings from here on in. Thank the lord, that's when I woke up.

All day I've been happy. Happy and relieved that I no longer work for government, that I no longer have to spend my days doing things I absolutely repudiate for the sake of a job, that all I have to combat the injustices our governments perpetrate on the people they supposedly serve is my mouth in a closed room.

And I recognize the feelings I had in the dream. They were the feelings I had--exactly--when I sat in the room I sat in while government officials discussed with resort officials the way they wanted Sidney Poitier to be recognized, the way they wanted to rename the bridge. I had been summoned to a meeting about which I knew nothing. My presence there was little more than an embodied stamp of approval on something about which I had not been consulted, had not even been wholly informed. I was there so that politicians, presumably, could say that the "Co-chair" of a non-existent committee had been consulted, nay, present, during negotiations. They're the feelings one has when one has been silenced.

My waking up was liberation, because I now work for the one government corporation whose freedom of speech is enshrined in its very act. I know, of course, that speaking too liberally can still be punished, can still be silenced, but at the same time my employer is governed, indeed, constituted, by a law that promises "academic freedom". That is why I support the students who have begun to criticize the government (the government that many of them trust(ed), voted for, and may even still wish to support) and the administration of the college. That is why I do not share the media and public opinion about that criticism--that it's just another example of the college's unruliness.

I support the students without wholly agreeing with all their demands because what they are doing is right, what they are doing is not partisan, and what they are doing stems from fundamental principles. I do not support their harnessing or dismissing of their actions by any political faction, because what they are fighting for is beyond any party good. They are fighting for their future, and that is not shaped or bound by any three-letter profanity that I can think of; and they know that, in the words of Dia da Costa,

the very construction of political culture needs to be changed, the method and purpose of government and democracy need rethinking and reorganisation. Political economic culture cannot be about individual and party gain because that amounts to reproducing and reducing social life to liberal democratic and market epistemes. (da Costa, "Theatre as Space of Political Economy")

The students have had the audacity to imagine a different world, and to act as though they are right to want to live in it. More power to them, I say.

A little something to make my day

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBkyf2OsLf4&w=480&h=270]Novie, Fred & strings

Forty years and maybe more, or falling off the balance beam

Birthdays
are meaningless
except to measure the process
of maturing.

Pat Rahming, "Still and Maybe More -- A Trilogy"

Need I say it? I am overcommitted, and I am feeling compromised, and am consequently conflicted and a little angry at both myself and the system which governs us. I feel like I'm swimming underwater and there's a pressure building up inside (or is it outside?) my head that is uncomfortable, to say the least.

This post is one small step towards equalizing the pressure.

Compromise

The feeling of compromise comes from the fact that as long ago as August 2012 I was asked to serve as co-chair of the fortieth anniversary of independence committee. Back then, in the golden haze that surrounded the change of government, there was a sense of excitement regarding this anniversary. It's not always an excitement that stretches across both sides of the political divide; often I get the sense that supporters of the PLP tend to make a whole lot more of being independent than supporters of the FNM, but maybe that's an assumption. Certainly there was a measure of scepticism about a big-time forty anniversary celebration. It's a scepticism that I understand. After all, it's not the fortieth anniversary that usually gets the attention, but the half-century, and rightly so.

I even share some of the reservations about a fortieth anniversary celebration that I have heard expressed. No need to go all out on this one; fifty is coming up. Now this is something that I happen to believe, to an extent. Fifty is coming up, and fifty should get most of the attention; true. But when I hear the easy and (forgive me) lazy comments that we don't have the money to waste on celebrating the fortieth anniversary of our independence something happens along my spine and up the back of my neck. I suppose if I were a cat or a dog that's where the fur would be standing up on end. I have very little patience in this uncontested oh-so-Bahamian habit of suggesting that spending money on national events is somehow a waste of time; and the more reading I do about our history the more my hair stands on end.

Money more sacred than people

We come from a tradition where it has been an unquestioned truism that money is somehow more sacred than people. It's more sacred than ideals, and it's more sacred than collective identities. It is an attitude that pervaded our governance all throughout the twentieth century. Back in the 1920s, the debates surrounding the establishment of a public high school that would make it possible for Bahamians who were not white to have even a hope of a high school education were fuelled by this question of affordability; opponents of the establishment of a government high school (who were, unsurprisingly, pretty exclusively wealthy and white) argued that it would be more cost-effective to establish a reformatory school for children (a sort of work-house perhaps?) because there was nothing in the colony for educated black people to do. (Apparently the idea of creating space for educated black people to exist was not something that was affordable either). Back in the 1940s, the argument for not paying the Bahamian workers on the Windsor Field project American wages was that the colony could not afford the consequent raise in wages that those workers would expect from all of their employers.  Back in the early 1960s, the debates attending on independence which inevitably accompanied the changes that were being made in suffrage were countered by the idea that the colony could not afford the cost of creating its own diplomatic service or its own military—things that, strangely, less than ten years later were suddenly affordable. In the 1980s, for some reason our nation was unable to afford the cost of maintenance of public buildings, or of supplying them; those of us who came of age in that era will well remember the persistent shortage of basic amenities in public offices and buildings, from chalk to toilet paper in our schools, from drugs in our hospitals (this during a time when banks were turning away deposits of cash owing to the success of a very different drug trade) to books in our libraries, from docks on our family islands to places of public renewal (think Jumbey Village) in our urban communities.  And in the 2000s, we were unable to afford an investment in CARIFESTA which might have energized our cultural economy and rejuvenated our tourism product and given us the potential to take advantage of the most vibrant parts of the global economy, culture and tourism, today (though we were more than able to borrow ourselves into an economic depression to deepen our harbour and build roads in New Providence alone—things that make you go "hm").

Bahamian money: more important than Bahamian people.

Forty years of independence

So I am not likely to jump on the naysayer bandwagon and argue that we can't afford to celebrate our nationhood by commemorating forty years of independence. On the other hand, though, I am equally unlikely to ratify half-baked and wasteful decisions. I hope that I've made it clear that I don't believe in principle that celebrating our independence is either half-baked or wasteful; but there is such a thing as context, and context changes many things.

My personal challenge is simple. Each week I am called to attend a meeting of  the (recently formed) fortieth anniversary committee. Despite having been asked to serve as its chair in the middle of last year, the committee was appointed in January 2013. We are expected to sit around a table once a week to discuss activities for the year. At the same time, though, as I write, a document is circulating around my place of employment (the College of The Bahamas, for  those who may not know) which calls for fairly drastic budget cuts. These are cuts being imposed upon that institution by the government of the Bahamas, in the form of a (perhaps unprecedented?) reduction of the government's subvention: a 10% reduction in 2013-2014, rising to 25% reduction in 2014-2015—the same government who has asked me to co-chair a committee that plans activities in honour of our fortieth anniversary of independence. They are cuts that will not simply require the trimming of some fat at what is already a fairly lean institution, but will certainly require the letting of some blood as well—and, if rumours about 2015 and beyond are to be believed, the chopping off of a limb or two. At the same time, 2015 is the year by which my institution is to be a university. Add to the mix the fundamental conservatism by which the institution has come to be governed internally—according to philosophies that privilege central control over shared governance—and also add the ways in which protests have generally been made within that institution—by personal attack, divisiveness and a pitting of one constituency (faculty, for example) against another, and you will understand that the balancing act with which I am currently faced appears impossible.

Falling off the balance beam

On the one hand, I understand the desire to recognize our fortieth anniversary of  independence in some tangible and uplifting manner. Among other things, in this country where our history is as well-known as the speaking of Latin, it has a practical significance that in some ways trumps the symbolic significance that our fiftieth anniversary in 2023 will have; it is the last major anniversary of independence when the people who will shape the Bahamas of the future can converse and work together with the people who laid the foundations of the Bahamian nation (and here I'm not just talking about the political leaders). That we celebrate it appropriately, to my mind, is imperative.

But on the other hand, when we are being asked to "celebrate" in a climate where one of the most solid achievements of our forty years of independence, the College/University of The Bahamas, is being asked to cut services which are already woefully under-funded and under-supported by successive governments, the question of what is appropriate looms large. And the irony of my personal situation is not lost on me. I know one thing for sure: that if the College is forced to cut 25% of its budget in an attempt to meet the shortfall it will face from the 25+% cut in government subvention, the independence that I am called to celebrate will lose much of its meaning not only for me, but also for the generation of Bahamians to come, whether they know it yet or not. 

Yes, Virginia, I'm still alive

... and more to the point still standing, and still able to lift my arms (albeit with some effort).

Sperrit rushed this new year in, with gold paint, newspaper fringe, carnival masks and hats. We were: 3 drums, 2 bells, a conch shell, a scraper, and a bicycle horn. We had one lead dancer and two free dancers. One person had never rushed before. I think she had a good time. I had not rushed on Bay Street in 25 years, and hadn't rushed at all since 1994. I did not die.

I'm waiting for photographs of which I approve to post them.

I apologize to all those who tried, I'm told, to catch my eye on Bay Street and in Rawson Square. I was (1) in the zone; and (2) concentrating on making it to Elizabeth without falling out and embarrassing myself. If I rush next year (which depends on whether Sperrit goes out on Boxing Day (NOT rushing) or New Year's (will be rushing) I may be far more sociable.

But hear this: I had me a good ol' time.

For the Fiftieth

Just woke up.Let me backtrack. These holidays are my fiftieth: my fiftieth Christmas, my fiftieth new year's day celebrations. Not that I have much memory of the first of either (I have photographs of both, and a very fleeting series of memories of the former, which I know I spent in Delancy Street in the upstairs apartment that now belongs to my friend Leria McKenzie, and which involves the receipt of what was then a gigantic stuffed panda bear), but the numbers won't let me lie. They are my fiftieth.Just so people don't get confused: I was born in March 1963, which means that the Christmas season of 1963-4 was my first. Next spring I will be fifty, ten years and four months older than our nation. This, I realize, makes me an "elder" these days. I was on Clifford Park with numerous other Bahamians at midnight on July 10, 1973, which makes me part of the independence generation, part of that group who bears responsibility for building, or not building, this nation.This is a long way of saying that this New Year's Day I will be rushing, not reporting, judging, administering or studying Junkanoo. Let me be clear. I will be rushing hardcore scrap, as I have always done. This year, for the second or third time in my life, I will be rushing in newspaper. I have been told, though I do not agree, that to rush scrap is "disrespectful" to "real" groups. It's New Year's Day, however, and this is a parade that I regard as scrap's parade, that I regard as having been hijacked from ordinary people's participation for the love of Junkanoo and of music by the big groups (don't worry, I'm not going to fight about it). I am not rushing to be pretty; I hope at some point in the parade to sound good. And not, by the way, to expire before I make it back to where we started from.So happy new year all. This year will bring changes. New years always do. I wish blessings on all my friends, allies, colleagues and sparring partner. Have a good one.

Christmas and other holy days

I'm sitting here waiting for video to import/be recognized from the iPad to the iMac. It's taking a little time. Not sure why, but I'm assuming that it's because it's video, and I ought to be patient. This is not something at which I'm awfully good, being patient. Never have been, and once upon a silly time, when I was young and idealistic and not  a little stupid, I prayed for patience. I thought the quality would be conferred like a gift, that I'd wake up one bright morning, suddenly and miraculously patient. Not a thing like it. My patience has been tried ever since. If I'm any less impatient than I was thirty years ago, it's because experience has brought the understanding that not everything is as important as it thinks it is.I'm writing this because Christmas Day is drawing to a close and it's one of the oddest that I've spent in my life. It's not the oddest—that distinction would go to  Christmas 1992, which I spent with one cousin and one aunt in England, and which had its high points but which also was quite special enough for me to decide never to do it again. I say it's odd because Christmas—this would be my fiftieth, now I come to think of it, now I look at photos taken of my first Christmas—has always been a time for our family to get together and just to hang out, just to be together. For the past 12 years, too, it's been a double family experience; Philip and I have had two Christmas dinners to attend every year (except for that Christmas in 1992 when I was in Cambridge, marooned with my aunt and cousin). This Christmas, we're down to one.But it hasn't been a bad one. It's been quiet, and less active than normal, but the last two days have been oddly peaceful. I visited the graves and took plants—not flowers, but plants—to them. On my mother's the poinsettia planted last year is still growing east of the bougainvillea we planted for my father and south of the rice fern we also planted for him. Those we planted as a family—Mummy, Eddie and me. The poinsettia was planted last Christmas, and on Mummy's birthday this year we planted a flowering aloe plant, which is flourishing and will take over the eastern end of the grave. My mother shares the plot with my father and his family: with him, his sisters Ruth and Eunice, his brother Irvin, his mother, her mother, and presumably her father or grandfather too. It's two graves side by side, one double, the other single, and there's a clan of people within. This Christmas we planted a flowering croton and I have a jasmine plant for the new year. On my grandmother's grave, which is far less populated, holding only my grandmother and grandfather and my uncle the bishop, we placed a palm. The lilies that were planted last year are still thriving, along with one of the crowns of thorns we placed there for their birthdays (the other died). That grave is concreted over, so we place plants in pots on it. The palm can cast a little shade, assuming the owners don't come and collect it. We've got another for the eastern end of the grave for the new year.In the garden, two of the orchids are putting out shoots, and one of them didn't bloom last year. My vegetables are coming back well from the hurricane and the aftermath. The basil is thriving, in bushes easily four feet tall, the onions I put down a fortnight ago are happy, the new pepper plants are competing with one another, and one of the new cucumber plants has flowers on it already. The tomato plant is giving us cherry tomatoes, and the aloe plants are fattening up. The bromeliads and orchids I harvested from my parents' garden are also growing, and I'm looking for flowers from them soon, and the roses we planted in honour of our mothers are budding again.I love the quiet of this time, and I love the light, and I love the movement of the air. And so it's been a quiet Christmas, and a different, new sort of Christmas, but I'm not complaining one bit.

Deep work

There are times when things change, slowly, silently, below the surface. As a writer I've come to know and understand those times. They're times when nothing one writes is worth the paper it's put on, or, to use a more twenty-first century image, the bandwidth it occupies. Word after word says nothing. Thoughts bud and die, or they don't bud at all. Images don't reveal anything; they're just images. Meaning is wiped away from the world.People give these times different names. The writers' name is block, and it's not a bad way of describing it. It's like trying to find your way out of a dark oppressive cellar and finding locked doors at every turn. It's demoralizing, and ultimately frightening in its own right.As a writer, I've learned that there are two things one should recognize and accept about these times. One is that they are often utterly deceptive. What you think is a drying-up of creativity, of passion, of urge, is often simply a fallow time, a winter resting that gives way to a productive and fertile spring, if only you just trust it. Stuff is happening beneath the surface, changing and re-forming at the unconscious level, and your creativity is often undergoing a fundamental change. The other is that you need to trust this truth, and keep working. When every logical and conscious thought is screaming that you are finished, dried up, you might as well walk away and not look back, you need to keep working somehow. Even if everything you turn out is sheepturd, you need to keep working. Build a bonfire later, when the deep work is finished and the shoots are climbing to the surface. But keep working, just to keep your hand in, just to keep your mind sharp, your muscles toned.Yes; this is a matter of faith. But it's worth just a little belief in what you have no evidence of at the moment for the reward that will come if you're faithful.So it is with life. Sometimes what happens with creativity happens at every level, reaching as far as the breaths you take, making you wonder what would happen if you just stopped breathing, if you just closed your eyes and sank to sleep for a long, long time. Doctors call it depression and there are drugs that deal with it, if you want to take them. It's just possible, though, that depression is similar to writers' block, that it's just a fallow time, and patience and trust and faith in the turn-around, in the future, lead to springs that parallel the creative rejuvenation that follows blocks. And so it's also possible that you need to trust in that spring, even when all the evidence you have tells you that this isn't winter, it's death. And you also need to keep working somehow, to keep going, to keep getting up and doing things, finishing little things, mastering what you can until the big things happen again.It's a question of trusting yourself, your spirit, your personal resilience, your other mind/your heart/your soul to do its owndeep work somewhere where you can't see or feel it, trusting that somewhere deep and silent some secret kind of healing is happening in its own time if only you can believe in it.Here's to writer's block.Here's to deep work.Here's to spring.

Dying of the (US) White

Not trying to make people feel uncomfortable here. But racial and gender transparency and white male privilege in the USA can no longer be taken for granted.  To wit:

Increasingly, the message in America is clear: If your organization or project is a myopic den of white homogeneity, or if your strategy for success includes trying to gin up fear around people who are different, you are destined for irrelevance, and nobody will care how rich you are, or who your daddy is, or at what ivy-draped liberal arts school you cut your perfect teeth. Those who haven't learned that lesson are mocked, shunned, or, worse, totally ignored. Either way, they don't win elections.

Cord Jefferson & Gawker.com - Dying of the White: Requiem for the 2012 Election.

So how does that translate for the Bahamas? Well, my advice to all politicians, past, current and future, would be not to take the status quo for granted. In the USA, the white rich male norm is being challenged. People are pointing out, rightly, that by the mid twenty-first century American whites will be a real minority. Wealthy white men are a minority now. Expect for something similar to affect the mainstream political class in the Bahamas, be it PLP or FNM, as time moves on. Expect it to happen to those who rely on cries of immigrant invasion, women as the property of men (think the marital rape exception), culture as peripheral, or the Christian nation fiction here at home.  This is not the time for business as usual. Usual is slipping into the past.

Barack Obama's second term

I don't predict political results, because I don't like making mistakes, but I'm beginning to think that maybe I should. I knew in 2008 from the moment that he announced his presidency that Barack Obama would be a two-term president; I had a feeling in 2007 that the PLP was going to lose the election, and had a feeling as early as 2011 that the FNM was going to lose in 2012. I had a feeling that Obama was going to have a tighter race this time around, but had no doubt whatsoever he was going to win the election.It's not hope that makes me feel this way; it's something else. It's the sense that we live in a revolutionary time. Let me be up front here. I buy into the idea floated by Marshall McLuhan that the medium is the message, that modes of communication transform society. Reading his The Gutenberg Galaxy changed the way I thought about the world, and taught me to watch the way in which human beings communicate with one another to help to guess what kinds of decisions they are going to make.The world—not just my Bahamaland, not just the USA, but the world—is currently going through the greatest revolution in communications since the printing press. The digital revolution has changed the way in which information is shared and processed, and it has made the prediction of outcomes in any election unstable. Most political prediction machines are fundamentally anchored in the twentieth century and have not fully adjusted to the universe of social media, where conversations about politics are not limited by political party, national boundaries, or even ideological leanings. The world is talking to one another, ideas are flowing more freely than ever before, discussions are being held outside of the various centres of discussion, and individuals are making up their own minds. The expenditure of money is important, there is no doubt about it, but it is not the deciding factor in any democratic exercise. The deciding factor are the millions of conversations that are happening online, between people who may not be connected in any way beyond their phones, and these conversations are not yet being closely enough monitored to be able to make any decision on political outcomes.Beyond that, and perhaps in part because of this true spread of democracy (as opposed to the pretend spread of it as touted by the USA)—the ability, finally, for individual citizens to make their own contributions, through places like FaceBook and Twitter, to make their opinions known—the ideological temperature of the world is swinging to the left. I don't find this surprising, given the erosion of social and economic landscapes for the ordinary person around the world, and given the fact that it is pretty accepted by the global community that the current so-called recession is the culmination of years excessive right-wing economic policies.The other thing that I find notable is the demographic of the social media universe: it's younger, more diverse, and more radical than the mainstream media. It looks more to me like the faces that are appearing in the shots of the various crowds gathering at Democratic Headquarters across the USA than it resembles the faces gathered in the Republican ones. It is this situation that led, I believe, to the election of the first African-American president of the United States of American in 2008. It's this that led to his re-election this year, which, despite the noises being made by the non-conceding Republican party, is pretty well a given. And it's what's underpinned what I read as a general swinging of the world and the default of ideology to the left, from the far, far right.So I haven't been surprised at all by recent election outcomes. I haven't been looking for people to hold onto their seats, or for governments to change; I've been looking for a swing to the left in every case. And that's what I've seen; and that's what I expect to continue to see for years to come. For me, that's no bad thing.

Critical Consciousness: Displacing the Banking Concept in Education

By guest blogger Erin Knowles

Edward Said states: “Much as I have no wish to hurt anyone’s feelings, my first obligation has not been to be nice but to be true to my perhaps peculiar memories, experiences and feelings”.

With that said: The teaching and learning experience is often characterized by boredom, disinterest and apathy. It is not uncommon to hear the tasteless remarks of fellow students highlighting the drudgery and monotony of classes.

When I was asked to present on some aspect of transition from College to University, a plethora of ideas flooded my mind but I deemed the state of pedagogy one of marked importance, both to the progression of students and by extension the progression of the nation.

Paulo Freire presented two theories in education that require explication, analyses and juxtaposition to determine the extent to which one of his theories can contribute progressively to the transition of the College of the Bahamas to the University of The Bahamas.

Freire being one of the most influential pedagogical theorist, focuses on the necessity of a literate population. He posits that to be considered truly human, people must enter into a state which he calls critical consciousness. This state of critical awareness allows people to see themselves as subjects in the world instead of objects.

Opposite to that we have what I theorize exists here, not in totality but limited to particular schools, at the College of the Bahamas. An oppressive institution based on the Banking concept. This according to Freire is characterized by:

• the teacher teaches and the students are taught;

• the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;

• the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;

• the teacher talks and the students listen meekly;

• the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;

• the teacher chooses and enforces his (her) choice, and the students comply;

• the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of action through the action of the teacher;

• the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;

• the teachers confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which he or she set in the opposition to the freedom of the students;

• the teacher is the Subject of the learning process while the pupils are mere objects.

(Freire, 56)

Keeping in mind these characteristics, in Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism he specifically outlined between ‘colonizer and colonized there is room only for forced labor, intimidation, taxation, self complacency, brainless elites, degraded masses and many more’ added to that Cesaire explicitly states “relations of domination and submission turn the colonizer into a classroom monitor and the colonized into an instrument of production (42.)

Based on the banking concept it is easy to see how teacher occupy the role of oppressor and student the oppressed.

The banking concept in education allows the oppressors to control the actions, thoughts, and realities of people. It provides a facet by which the elite can dominate and promote a “culture of silence”. Students are NOT allowed to question and when they do it complies with the limited ‘content’ the lecture allows.It is aptly titled the banking concept simply put according to Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Education becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat" (58).

If for some reason, you still are undecided on the purpose of the foundation that I laid lets bring it home.

Culture is not a static set of customs, religious beliefs, social attitudes, forms of address and attire, and foods; rather, it is a dynamic inclusive process of transformation and change laden with conflicts to resolve and choices to be made both individually and as a community therefore contributing to a nation.

The banking concept not only limits the span of individuation within students, it ensures an institution produces clones. If a school in no way challenges its students to synthesize, analyze, interrogate, I fail to see how that school can produce critical thinkers, educated citizens or nation builders.

Bear with me as I digress: For five years I’ve entered a variety of courses where the standard is mediocrity. I remember walking into numerous seminar sessions where the lecturer walked in, opened a folder, taught, closed the folder and left; 50 minute deposit – TRANSACTION COMPLETE.

Every exam, discussion, presentation required me not to challenge, think, explicate, hypothesize, not to interrogate, instead it was the main goal to cover enough of the chapter or enough information provided by the teacher so as to rehash the exact same information on an exam or a presentation in order to get an A.

It is no secret we inhabit a post colonial space, how are we as future generations expected to recreate, develop, change, agitate dominant hegemony, if the very foundation that should engender the desire to do so, continually and consistently, deposit enough asinine information to ensure we remain oppressed?

You know the funny thing is Mr. Alfred Sears our council chairman said in a meeting on Tuesday, that Politicians say the most stupid things and are not questioned, not by the lawyers, not by doctors, not by anyone. And I realize that we have been so conditioned through this concept in education, as Cesaire states, the elites are brainless and the masses degraded.

Tompkins categorizes Freire as an exponent of "literacy for social change" because Freire argues that unjust social conditions are the cause of illiteracy and that the purpose of adult basic education is to enable learners to participate actively in liberating themselves from the conditions that oppress them.

How?

The second Freirian theory is that of Critical consciousness that result from problem posing, it is the action of the oppressed by which they take control of their situation and become critically aware of social, political, and economic oppression. It is the power to change an existing reality into a new and improved reality.

Freire emphasizes that critical action is not only being aware of the reproducing process of the status quo, but also taking action to develop a more equitable society. Nevertheless, it is important for critical educators to seek possibilities for both teachers and students to take action which effectively contributes to the development of a more equal and tolerant society.

With problem posing education, “no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught (Freire, 67). He also emphasized that the students already have wisdom and invaluable experiences, which might not be articulated or shared in the classroom. Now in the banking concept, it is completely different, students are essentially the epitome of a blank slate at the teacher’s mercy. Students can already be viewed as depositors as well, the teacher’s crucial roles are to learn from the students, welcome and appreciate their perspectives, and engage in the dialogical process. Not knock every other perspective because its not your own.In addition, being a learner along with the students, the teacher shows how knowledge is constructed and shared by the group through dialogue. In this way, learners become the creators rather than the recipients of knowledge. They became subjects as opposed to objects of their world and learned to recognize hegemonic forms of control for what they are and together find ways to resist them. The Freirian approach to education contributes to a reconceptualization of literacy as socially constructed rather than skill-based and initiated “problem-posing” as a model for enabling learners to become critically conscious active agents in shaping their own realities.

Whether the content is academic or not, consciousness-raising through critical issues requires a deep level of engagement both from students and the teacher. It is crucial that the content be immediate and meaningful to students so that they become aware of both the reproductive nature and the possibility of resistance to problematic content. As Pennycook cautions, it also requires teachers’ investment at the level of desire. Developing critical consciousness doesn’t mean “a rational, intellectual explanation of what is wrong” (340). Instead, it requires of a teacher a deeper level of engagement with beliefs, experiences, identities, and desires both of the teacher and the student.

Therefore we would NOT have the issue of English Education majors, yes, English Ed majors, blatantly stating they DO NOT like to read or write….because now they would be able to make some connection between the information learned/read to lived experience resulting in some self gratification and critical analysis, making reading meaningful.

They talk about using teaching as a vehicle for social change. We tell ourselves that we need to teach our students to think critically so that they can detect the manipulations of advertising, analyze the fallacious rhetoric of politicians, expose the ideology, resist the stereotypes of class, race, and gender; or, depending on where you're coming from, hold the line against secular humanism and stop canon-busting before it goes too far.

According to Fanon and The counterinsurgency of education “The pursuit of critical education through anticolonial perspectives requires that learning promotes and sustains new, creative and original ideas about what constitutes schooling and education.” For this to take place, critical educators will have to ground themselves in a firm knowledge of the importance of educational transformation that links schooling and education to the broader socio-economic transformation of society for the benefit of all learners. Education should be seen as a social good in itself that should not necessarily be dominated by the needs of a particular sector of society.

Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of students as conscious beings, and consciousness as critical consciousness intent upon the world. They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of individuals in their relations with the world. Then and only then will we have a transition not only from College to University but from student to critical thinker, from a stagnant nation to a progressive one.

Works Cited

Cesaire, Aime. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum, 1970

Freire, Paulo. Teachers as Cultural Workers, Westview Press, 1998

Freire, Paulo. and I. Shor . A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education, Bergin and Garvey Publishers, 1987.

Pennycook, A.. Introduction: Critical approaches to TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 33(3) 1999: 329-348.

Said, Edward. Out of Place: A Memoir. Routledge. 1999

Tompkins, Jane. Pedagogy of the Distressed. College English 52.6 (October 1990): 653-60.

Sidney Poitier, Independence, and respect for Bahamian artists

I have been involved in the performing arts, and specifically in theatre, in The Bahamas for over thirty years. Like many in my generation, my involvement began as I entered high school, continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s and blossomed in the 21^st century. For all of that time, my mentors were great Bahamians who, sometimes at considerable personal sacrifice, had committed themselves not only to their own personal development in the arts, but to sharing their skills and training generations of Bahamians who came after them.Four names come immediately to mind:

• Winston V. Saunders, playwright, actor, director, producer, whose leadership of the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts between 1975 and 1998 laid the foundation for what has more recently been called the “golden age” of Bahamian theatre, establishing a regular Repertory Season, and allowing for the production of some forty original Bahamian plays;
• Philip A. Burrows, actor, director, and Artistic Director of the Dundas Repertory Season from 1981-1997, whose training and expertise not only assisted Winston Saunders’ vision for the development of Bahamian theatre, but who made international standards of production and performance synonymous with Bahamian standards, and who trained, both through workshops and through working with actors in productions, scores of Bahamian actors in the craft of theatre;
• Cleophas Adderley, composer, singer, director, whose musical genius has inspired, challenged and strengthened all of us who have heard or performed his work, known now as the director of the National Youth Choir of The Bahamas, but perhaps most famous for being the composer of the first classical grand opera in the English-Speaking Caribbean;
• E. Clement Bethel, pianist, composer, teacher, Director of Cultural Affairs, and my father, who gave up fame and fortune as a internationally-acclaimed concert pianist to return to the Bahamas to make his own contribution to the recognition and development of Bahamian music and arts, and who taught thousands of young Bahamians about themselves and their culture as a result.

Sidney Poitier was not one of those individuals. Nor did he, like his fellow Bahamians in Hollywood, Calvin Lockhart and Cedric Scott, come home and give of his talent, expertise and skill to help develop those of us who were working in theatre in The Bahamas. There were times when we felt that he did not respect our continuing struggles, that he had shaken the Bahamian dust off his feet, and had turned his back on us altogether. The reason I understand the betrayal being expressed by many who are now working in the performing arts at the decision to establish something in his honour is that I too felt betrayed by him.And yet I support the idea that The Bahamas should honour him in some tangible, long-lasting fashion.I've thought about this long and hard, and have argued about it long and hard, long before this most recent controversy about Sidney Poitier's worthiness to be honoured. There was a time when I was like those people who opposed the awarding of honours to Sidney Poitier; what did he do for us? I wondered. What did he give to us? In meetings of the National Cultural Development Commission, when that body existed between 2002 and 2007, the same discussions that are being had in public in social media were held as we hammered out the National Heroes and Honours Bills; these questions were raised and discussed, with some of the members of that body, Bahamian icons in their own right, coming down on one side of the issue, some coming down on the other. (Both of those Bills were, to the best of my knowledge, presented in the House of Assembly in 2007 but which, for reasons presumably connected to the change of government in May of that year, are not functionally laws today. Perhaps they were not passed. Perhaps they were not ratified. No one seems to know.)I don't remember when or how my mind was changed; I don't think that it happened all at once. I do remember a moment, though, when, sitting in one of the symposia that accompanied the first Sidney Poitier Film Festival at the College of The Bahamas, I listened to an American academic who made a set of simple and clear points that I had never thought of before. Sidney Poitier changed the world for Black people in the 1950s. And he did it because he was from Cat Island. He did it because he was Bahamian.I don't feel the need to go through all the details that were given in that presentation. I'll just say it very simply. Until Poitier appeared on screen, the image of the black man that was circumnavigating the world was that of a shuffling, forelock-touching, yes-massa, servile sort of person, or else it was that of the cannibalistic savage dancing in a grass skirt around a fire, shaking a rattle and salivating at the thought of cooking up some prime white meat. There were some exceptions, like Paul Robeson in the 1936 film of Show Boat, but they were circumscribed by things that made them safe; Robeson's character Joe was, for all his strength and gravity, softened by the fact that he burst into song. Sidney Poitier didn't sing. He didn't take roles that made him out to be anything less than a man who deserved—and demanded—respect. Few black men, if any, spoke in Standard English on the silver screen. Poitier spoke English better than most Americans did. He looked into the camera, and dared you to call him "nigger" or "boy", and did it by using the dignity Cat Island instilled in him and not by inspiring fear.If that were all that Sidney Poitier did, I'd say that it would be appropriate for the land that raised him (and the land that he would also have been born in, if he hadn't arrived prematurely on that Miami trip) to honour him in some tangible and meaningful way. But I've learned that it wasn't all that he did. We tend to judge people's contributions to the nation by their notoriety, by their fame, and those people who simply do what they know to be right without looking for recognition seem to disappear into oblivion, while people who make a big fuss about their actions are placed on pedestals. Suffice to say that I'm convinced that Poitier has contributed, generously, to our nation through his support, financial and otherwise, of individual Bahamians.That said, I want to return to where I began—with reference to those people who mentored me in the performing arts. In all the discussion about why Poitier should or shouldn't be honoured and who should be honoured instead, I have not heard much mention of any of them. I wonder why. Like Poitier, they have all dedicated themselves to their craft, and have worked to make sure that whatever they produced was the best that they could possibly deliver. They didn't limit themselves by what they thought the Bahamian public would like or understand; instead, they pushed the envelope, tried different things, and inspired Bahamians to think differently about themselves, to dream better, to go further, to be better. They inspired me to do that. They taught the people they worked with to do it. They never thought that being Bahamian meant being second-rate at anything; the standard they upheld was universal and excellent. And yet their names are not called. Neither are the names of many others who worked, and work, according to the same criteria. I wonder why.So I am left, in all our discussion of respect for Bahamian artists, with the question of what it is we are respecting, and why. Is excellence one of our criteria? Is popularity? Is our discussion informed by a real appreciation for the work of all Bahamian artists, or only of those we know, recognize and support? Are we reasoning our way to our list of proposed honourees, or are we acting out of emotion? Are we seeking to rectify omissions of the past, or paving a pathway to the future?I don't know the answer to these questions. But I do know that now we have begun the discussion with Sidney Poitier we need to hold the discussion in earnest. And we have to hold it in the way I ask my students to write their papers—by establishing criteria and goals, by doing the research, by presenting the evidence, and by making our cases. And we have to do it as a nation, collectively, as a citizenry who know and articulate who and what it is we would like to be. By now it should be clear that we cannot leave it to others; we need to do it ourselves.

6 Ways To Raise A Rebel Or Future Woman Leader - Forbes

Lisa-Marie is a friend, a former expat in the Bahamas, who was one of our most dedicated volunteers at Shakespeare in Paradise, the woman who got our Facebook page to log more than 1000 likes, an entrepreneur and a woman with boundless energy to give. She's been published on Forbes.com. Not too shabby. And the article is worth reading, so go read it.

Once upon a time you went to school, did exactly what your teachers told you, memorized a lot of information, learned how to equate algebraically (which you never did again). You conformed. You dressed like everyone else, got good grades, studied for your SAT so that you could get a good score, so that you could get in to a good University, so that you could get a good job, so that you could dress like everyone else, so that you could conform, so that you could end up being exactly who were told you were supposed to be. So that you could work for someone else who won’t give a damn about you, so you could do exactly as you were told, so you could earn good money… so you could get laid off. So you could rail against authority, question the status quo, reject conformity and search for your own unique identity.

6 Ways To Raise A Rebel Or Future Woman Leader -Lisa-Marie Cabrelli @ Forbes.