THE CRIMINAL CONVICTION of a Barbadian Rastafarian couple for violating the Education Act by, according to a September 24 SATURDAY SUN report of “not enrolling their nine-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy for full-time education”, has exposed, yet again, the under-developed nature of Caribbean democracy.
While we often boast of being a “model democracy” based on the holding of periodic elections, we just as often ignore the large swathes of undemocratic practices that continue to blot the political landscape. We emphasise notions of majority rule, but vigorously resist notions of minority rights to protect against tyranny, or the idea of a private sphere over which the “individual is sovereign”.
The Rastafarian school-withdrawal case exposes these limits of Caribbean democracy, although the case itself is complex with several competing tensions.
One dimension is the children’s rights to an education. This has been foremost in the minds of the legal authorities, in particular the presiding magistrate who has hinted that since “the children are not given that opportunity”, whether it is “something that the Child Care Board would be interested in”. Indeed, Bob Marley’s dictum that “every man’s got the right to decide his own destiny”, could easily be applied to the children, whose futures have been decided by their parents.
On the other hand, the parents’ concern about the corrupt, immoral and destructive nature of the official education system is perfectly legitimate. Whilst it has been easy to punish the parents, the state has not lifted a finger to respect the parents’ wishes not to have their children exposed to undesirable influences.
This challenge has been met in most modern democracies by the strict separation of church from state, by the provision of a strictly secular education, and by leaving families free to undertake whatever religious teachings at home.
This is a step that Caribbean populations refuse to contemplate. We continue to be shocked by the Americans’ insistence on leaving God out of the classroom, but this is indeed the mature democratic response in a cosmopolitan world peopled by many faiths. Instead, like good students of slavery, we prefer to punish, stigmatise and ostracise.
However, the Rastafari parents have not helped their cause by speaking in outmoded medieval theocratic terms. The father’s insistence on relying on the “constitution of religion as his only witness” has not placed him in the vanguard of democratic struggles.
He should insist on home schooling in fulfilment of the state secular curriculum, but within the framework of his religious beliefs. He should show why he cannot trust his children to the state, and why their home schooling would be superior.
More importantly, the parents should show why the state would not be insisting on prosecuting a Jew, Muslim or generally an international visitor, who decided not to subject their child to a Barbadian state education.
•Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specialising in regional affairs. Email: [email protected]
