On the Big Issues last Sunday, we examined the value of the current Caribbean education system. As we move forward it can be useful to look back to see where we are coming from.
The following is taken from pages 155 & 156 of “A History of Antigua” by Brian Dyde and used with permission from Barbara Arrindell who holds the copyright.
Now that slavery had ended the sick, the unfit and the aged were abandoned to find their own salvation with whatever help they could obtain from their relatives, or from the Daily Meal Society, a charity which received no official support until 1855.
Education would have been treated in the same way, had schools of a sort not already been opened by the missionaries, and if the British Government had not specified otherwise. A sum of £30 000 a year for five years, followed by decreasing annual amounts thereafter until 1845, known as the Negro Education Grant, had been included in the British Emancipation Act.
From the grant each colony was to be allocated in the first year an amount in proportion to the number of ex-slaves for whom compensation had been paid, with administration of the money ‘secured through the agency of the different religious bodies already engaged in promoting Education.’ In December 1835, under the first allocation, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel received £1000 for use in Antigua, and the island’s Legislature was called upon to introduce an act to enforce compulsory education.
An informed, literate black population was the last thing the plantocracy wanted to see and, with responsibility for education among the ex-slaves safely removed from any charge on the Treasury, another twenty-two years were to go by before any such act was introduced. Within two years of emancipation nearly 5200 children were receiving some sort of education.
The Anglicans, Methodists and Moravians all had day, evening and Sunday schools, with the majority of the day schools teaching their pupils very little other than reading and writing. Arithmetic was taught only in the few ‘National’ schools, while Bible studies of course dominated those open on Sunday. All the schools were in the main staffed by women, coloured and black, of whom many were considered by one observer to be ‘by no means equal to the task.’
There were extremely few trained teachers, and even the opening of the non-denominational Mico Charity Normal School in St John’s in 1838 did little to improve matters. This institution, which remained in existence until 1899, produced excellent male teachers, but at a rate of only ten to fifteen a year. As many of the trainees came from other colonies as far away as British Guiana the overall benefit to Antiguan education was very limited. In spite of these shortcomings the number of children attending school increased steadily until around 1847, by which time nearly 6500 were receiving some sort of education. After this the numbers fell dramatically as economic conditions forced children back into becoming wage-earners or made it impossible for their parents to clothe them decently. Those that were forced to abandon schooling at this time did so just as the Moravians opened their own establishment, intended ‘to raise up well-qualified native Teachers and Assistants for Missionary Labour’, at Cedar Hall a few miles south of St John’s.
Some years later, after moving to the city, this became the highly respected Spring Gardens Female Teachers’ Training College, an institution which continued to produce teachers for all the Leeward Islands until its closure in 1958. A hundred years or so earlier, at about the same time as the first graduates were leaving the Cedar Hall establishment, there were less than 3000 children still attending school; most of them receiving an education judged to be no more than ‘elementary and very meagre’.
The Big Issues can be heard every Sunday from 1 pm – 3 pm on Observer Radio 91.1FM and is now sponsored by the Ryan Group of companies. Barbara Arrindell is the host and producer of the programme.
