Last week on the kind of rainy night when people generally prefer to stay indoors and under the covers, a group of Anguillians braved the elements and met at the Teachers’ Resource Centre Auditorium to discuss the Draft Education Plan.

Ijahnya Christian

I was not one of them but I was more than pleased to drive by and see the number of cars and confirmed my opening sentence with a call to our Education Planner. What I would like to propose as we review this Draft Plan, the need to include and integrate Anguillian culture into the formal school curriculum.

It was twenty years ago when I lived way out in North Side bush that I turned on my transistor radio and heard my Hollis Liverpool, the Mighty Chalkdust, being interviewed on Radio Anguilla. At that time the radio station was still located at the Agriculture Department and I was in the bush without electricity or telephone (oh how I miss the Ital life), so I dragged on a pair of slippers and rushed out to the radio station to introduce myself to Chalkie and to invite him to address the staff of the Valley Secondary during staff briefing the next morning. As a fellow teacher – he was actually a teacher tutor then - Chalkie was delighted at the invitation and promised to be there. I then called the Principal who gave immediate approval and eagerly looked forward to the next day. Chalkdust did not disappoint and the theme of his brief address to the staff remains with me to this day. What he said was that the transmission of culture was not automatic and that if teachers did not teach culture, bodies of knowledge that helped us to survive and forge an identity would be lost. He emphasized the importance of teachers knowing about the culture of the island so they could teach it in the classroom and make the connective links that could help students to better grasp the concepts of the other subjects by taking examples from the Anguillian cultural context and environment and by using our culture as a reference point when creating teaching-learning opportunities. In one of his books on Culture in the Classroom, he further explores these ideas about the role of the school in the sustainability of carnival and I believe that these are pertinent to our thinking about how we are going engage our populace in processes of formal education over the next five years.
Many initiatives are taking place to impact non-formal and informal cultural education in Anguilla. This week alone, in my capacity as Director of Youth and Culture, I have had discussions with two persons about the development of the film industry in Anguilla and before this summer vacation is over, Anguilla will be having its inaugural film festival. It will be a humble start but the father of this idea is a brilliant and futuristic young Anguillian who is on his way to becoming a filmmaker. The festival therefore has great potential so keep tuned because your participation will be needed to ensure its success.

A photography and videography workshop is also being planned so stay tuned for this also as these are the arts in which we can excel and compete globally if we prioritise them and this is one of the reasons why we must think of an expanded formal curriculum more so than to hope that students will pursue these areas as hobbies in the extra-curricular programme.

Anguilla will not be unique in this regard. Just last weekend I enjoyed watching the reruns of the BVI Culture Week 2004 and compared the offerings there with what we did during the Anguilla Cultural Education Festival that can be revived if there is a budget allocation that permits this. I have been witness to the St. Kitts’s success in recovering the steelband and the ole’ mas at carnival by recognizing their endangerment and turning to the classroom to secure their revival. The pan men and mas players went to the schools and the schools went to the communities in which these art forms had strong roots so that the research process formed part of their theoretical learning, and the practical aspects equipped them with the performance skills required for true and sustainable revival. Nowadays when you look at a masquerade troupe during St. Kitts carnival, it can comprise the older veterans and those who are learning those intricate steps even as they learn to walk. It is a spectacle that turns me into a joyful mess of emotions every time I witness it. That is my carnival and once I get the ole’ mas day, which is Africa, I can always miss the grand parade, which is also Africa but perhaps via Rio and Trinidad.

At the Youth and Culture Division, I recently obtained a schedule from Barbados which outlines weekly dance, drama, theatre, steelband and other performing arts classes in the schools. Both the government and the private sector must be ready to provide the necessary support to enable a similar kind of development in Anguilla but it will be meaningless if that interest is not shown by the education system itself and by that I do not just mean authorities who must take leadership of the process but parents and students themselves, who must take ownership. I have begun discussion with the Antigua Dance Academy and have made enquires for us to become part of the OECS Culture Network so that we can expand our resource base for the development proposed. Development however, always has a cost and so I hope we can prioritise the business of culture in the classroom by providing the necessary resources. I have a special word here for the Christian community and it is that if we find that our religion is divorced from our culture, we are in trouble but that is a gap which can also be addressed by education. In my view our religion and our spirituality are vital aspects of our culture and it is a mistake to demonise cultural expression. I am not sure that this is still done however, because just last week I joked with a St. Maarten taxi driver who is a Christian, that the Christians should really pay the Rastas for that sweet gospel reggae that I enjoyed as I drove with him all the way from Marigot to the airport. I also remember that the carnival troupes I enjoyed most during my childhood days in St. Kitts were the big ones portraying biblical themes such as the Feast of Belshazzar and Exodus where the entire forty-year journey was acted out during the parade. I still want to encourage ANCAA to do the old time wedding in the carnival parade for that may be the only way I get to be in the parade. Whether or not I make it to the streets this August is left to be seen but I need to hear your views on how we get culture into the classroom this September.

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