FREE TERTIARY EDUCATION has met rough waters – but that don’ mean it is a case of any port for a storm!
In this issue of Government requiring Barbadian students at the University of the West Indies (UWI) to pay tuition fees from September, 2014, the truth is somewhere between this:
Government has slaughtered a sacred cow, spit on the Right Excellent Errol Walton Barrow’s grave, attacked poor people and compromised that which is the greatest avenue to the country’s progress.
And this: The various freenesses – in education, in health care, in public transport, in summer camps, in school meals, and so on – are unsustainable, and particularly so in this turbulent economic weather.
Somewhere in the mix is this too: “The social underpinnings and the political ramifications of any attempt to roll back our gains, no matter how we may rationalize and justify it, are so far-reaching as to constitute a breach, or even a betrayal, of social justice as we have come to understand it within the context of our human resource development.” (columnist Matthew Farley in the August 18 SUNDAY SUN)
And certainly this: having gambled ’round – what with stymying economic activity by almost fatally overtaxing people, procrastinating as it pursued a blinkered hope tied only to improvement in the international situation, opting against an earlier prudent gradualism, embarking on arguably unnecessary and self-serving other freenesses, and cozying up to manifest wastefulness of many sorts – Government has ravaged goodwill and will find few friends for its panicky lowering of the boom.
While the fight rages (and it should rage), I want to deal with another tragedy concerning our 800-pound gorilla.
Whether tertiary education turns out to be 80 per cent free or 100 per cent free to Barbadians, we have to fix a short-changing mindset.
Yuh remember that in Talk, More Talk – And Obeah on September 20, 2011, I put the view that Barbadians seem to think that talk magically (obeahically) creates desired outcomes? Well, we have an obeah view of ffree tertiary education too.
We seem to think that free tertiary education will accomplish great things – just so!
Also – and this is particularly ironic because this is a tremendously expensive freeness – we have approached it by talking mostly about its link with personal prospects (“social mobility” is the expression often used – same thing).
Foregrounding the personal prospects aspect of free tertiary education – a virtual given, anyway – while being vague about the expected “repayment” to society, has nurtured an individual focus on status, on prestige, on personal stake rather than on out-of-the-ordinary productivity, creativity, problem-solving, resourcefulness, community-mindedness and charity.
Remarkably, we have not trained our graduates of the free into the idea of transcendent payback. And the spiel of “personal prospects” has reaped what it sowed.
For all the freeness, are Barbadians noticeably more charitable than others not blessed with such “donations”?
Unfortunately, the mark of a Barbadian UWI graduate near you is not unmistakably greater concern for fellow countrymen, or the passionate practice of lifelong learning, or continued improvement in whatever they are involved in, or greater humility, or greater willingness to go extra miles or donate their money or be more deeply engaged in volunteerism.
The avenue of free tertiary education in Barbados has not been the pathway to spectacular commitment to the society, to the national cause. Following the script (“free education is the road to improved personal prospects”), the graduate now seeks more for himself/herself: give me more respect (“after all, I got a degree”); give me a job; give me (Mr/Ms Square Peg) a round hole; give me more money; give me promotion; give me pride of place; give me . . . .
The nation has benefited somewhat, no doubt, but in many cases it has been an incidental beneficiary, although it was not an incidental benefactor.
The bumper sticker saying “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go” has always spoken deeply to me – not for the reason you might think, but because of this: I am a graduate of the University of the West Indies – twice – by the lavish grace of the taxpayers of Barbados.
That sense of owing has been the engine of a conscious, if imperfect, commitment to my country.
The imperfections in my giving back are the result of my having to school myself in it – the aforementioned poor socialization is a culprit, even though I am not blameless.
Our socialization model is no different from that of countries whose students (their parents, really) have to pay through their noses for their university education. Shame on us.
Without a socialized underpinning of exceptional giving back, free tertiary education in the hands (heads!) of many a Barbadian has made him/her a loose cannon – powered by ego and obeah.
(I know you wanted me to just lambaste the Government. Couldn’t only do that. This freeness that you and I want to get back got another side to it – a perilously neglected side.)
• Sherwyn Walters is a writer who became a teacher, a song analyst, a broadcaster and an editor. Email offwally@gmail.com.
