Education in the Caribbean

676 Words3 Pages
Education has often been viewed as a fundamental tenet of Caribbean civilization. Discuss by making reference to Pedagogy of the Oppressed the role of education in Caribbean civilisation. Paulo Freire’s, “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” asks a very provocative question; how does one teach for the betterment of all classes in a society stained by a history of oppression? It is not a query that has an easy answer but it remains today as applicable to his native Brazil as it is to the Caribbean. Education remains one of the central facets of Caribbean civilisation and the seminal work of Freire helps to highlight its role in the contemporary Caribbean. It is critical to note that, generally, schooling was not originally intended to be a catalyst for social mobility or change in the Caribbean. In fact the system of education in the British West Indies in the nineteenth century saw its origin in the English model famously engineered by Sir Robert Peel. The ethos of that English system was to train the lower classes in the skills demanded by their “station in life,” and to teach them just enough to ensure their acceptance of the status quo in England. Under the auspices of the dominant churches in the region (Catholic and Anglican) a system of schooling emerged that was the opposite of what is suggested by Freire. Instead of something indigenous or Caribbean centred, the schooling provided was basic and based on European models. It concentrated on the Three R’s, namely reading, writing and arithmetic and the teaching of skills suited (unsurprisingly) to one’s so-called station in life. Learning about the region was ignored; instead there was great focus on Europe and its culture as being the human ideal. It was initially gender biased, but later the education of girls was accepted though, they would be largely taught domestic skills. Secondary schooling until the
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