By Johnny Coomansingh
There were three inscriptions that I read every day on the walls of the Sangre Grande Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Primary School. If my memory serves me right, these writings were done by Mr. L.B. Horrell (deceased), one of our teachers back then. The statements read:
- Motto: Be Prepared,
- The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy is understanding (Proverbs 9: 10).
- Strive not to banish pain and doubt from pleasures noisy din; the peace thou seekest from without is only found within.
I never sat in any of his classes because I was skipped quite a few times. I somehow escaped his stare. In the British education system, in the infants department, I was moved from stage one to stage three. In the ‘big school’ I did not last long in standard one. I skipped standard two and found myself in standard three. Not spending too much time in standard four, in short order, I was warming the seat in standard five. Standard five was the place where preparation began in earnest for the Common Entrance Examination (CE).
Earlington McClatchie (deceased), my standard five teacher then challenged me. He told me that if I passed the CE he would give me $20. To me, this was business! In turn, I set my shoulders on the wheel to win that $20! I passed the exam. It was a Saturday night when my name was announced on the radio that I passed the exam for Northeastern College, ‘the Mecca of Learning in the East.’ McClatchie resided on Adventist Street, the same street where I lived. He listened to the radio and heard my name. In a jiffy, there was my teacher with the $20 at our door. In those days, $20 was a whole lot of money in Trinidad. This money ‘stretched’ to get me much of my school supplies to start the high school journey.
Preparation for high school was non-existent at my primary school. Indeed, at the primary level, I learnt verbal ability, English comprehension and composition, some reasoning ability, and a little arithmetic for the CE which I passed. The school was very effective in teaching me some tenets of the King James Version of the Holy Bible, singing hymns and religious choruses, art, choral speaking, poetry, etiquette and good manners. With all the ‘spiritual’ training I garnered, passing the CE meant securing a place in a free government secondary school. Qualification for a free place in a government secondary school was every child’s dream.
Almost every day I read Horrell’s writing on the wall ‘Motto: Be Prepared.’ As a ten-year old I could not comprehend its meaning because I read the statement in one straight line. During my stay at the school this ‘motto’ was never really explained to me. It’s quite possible that the teachers were too busy pushing students with other items that the curriculum demanded, religious and otherwise. Somehow I intuitively understood the real meaning of the statement ‘Be Prepared,’ especially in my preparation for the Common Entrance Examinations.
Horrell was not a joker. In those days, corporal punishment was in vogue and teachers had full sway over little children to flog and flagellate them at will. Please note that this school was supposed to be a ‘Christian’ school, but I have the feeling now that they followed more closely, a certain text in the Holy Bible found in the Book of Proverbs chapter 22 verse 15. The full verse reads: ‘Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him;’ Yes, the teachers never used rods or whips, but strong leather belts were always present. It goes without saying that little children were beaten, some worse than others.
Up to this day, I still cannot wrap it around my mind why my 12-year-old brother was flogged in front of me receiving no less than 24 stinging lashes while on his knees from a so-called ‘Christian’ teacher who preached to people in church on Sabbath days. I counted the lashes! My mother came the next day to enquire about the flogging that my brother received. And yes they gave to her some ‘cock and bull story’ about why he was flogged so viciously. I still ask, what could a 12-year-old boy do so bad as to warrant that kind of flogging?
At this school, sometimes I felt as though I was just a character in Great Expectations. Although I was flogged with leather straps for whatever reasons by some other teachers, I feared even standing near Horrell. He had, I think, a one-inch wide, half-inch thick leather belt soaked in linseed oil. The coiled belt was always hidden in his pants pocket, ready to be released like a snake at any moment. As my mother would say, he was “…serious as a judge in a ram goat session.” I really did not know what she meant by that statement but I chuckle to myself when I see people who are deftly serious with not a trace of a smile before and/or after meals.
As most people are aware, the Seventh Day Adventist Primary School in Sangre Grande was famous and prolific for its singing and Choral Speaking. “LB” as we referred to him, taught music. He would on most times pull out a tuning fork, strike it on the table and command us to “…catch that note.” Catching the note was sometimes difficult. Regardless, Horrell did not hesitate to make you feel uncomfortable. His favourite drill with the musical scales was with the little song In the North Sea lives the whale, Oh, Oh, Oh. I cannot ever forget such experiences.
The second statement: ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy is understanding’ found in the Book of Proverbs chapter 9, verse 10 was committed to memory. This text has remained with me up to this day. However, I always questioned what is ‘The fear of the Lord…’ Another scriptural verse found in Proverbs 8:13 answered my question: ‘The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogance, and the evil way, and the forward mouth, do I hate.’ I understood what were the things that God hates: evil, pride, arrogance and the evil way, but the forward mouth needed further clarification.
According to the World Wide Web (WWW), a forward mouth is a mouth that speaks perverse, deceitful, or evil words. The term ‘forward’ is used in the Holy Bible to describe someone who is disobedient, willful, and resistant to correction. A forward mouth is a lying mouth!
Towards a greater understanding of my spiritual life, Elias A. Toussaint, the school’s principal who was like a father to me, counselled me to read and study the Book of Proverbs. I counselled my two sons to do likewise. Later on, many other books came to my attention on this trek of life. Apart from reading several of the classics, some of these books influenced me: Bhavagad Gita (The Song of God), Secrets of the Spirit World by Roy Allen Anderson, The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa, Doctrines of the Great Philosophers by Radoslav Tsanoff, Doctrines of the Great Educators by Robert Rusk, Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Rapture of the Deep by Dolores La Chapelle, Topophilia by YiFu Taun, Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, Towards Understanding Islam, by Sayyid Abul A’la Mawdudi and Sacred Lands of Indian America by Charles E. Little et al. The last book was a gift from one of my professors.
He wrote: “For Johnny, may your intellectual, spiritual and cultural richness blend well with the topic of sacred lands.”
An understanding of the third statement: ‘Strive not to banish pain and doubt from pleasures noisy din; the peace thou seekest from without is only found within’ was easy enough. The SDA primary school was acutely effective in providing a different kind of education and training. The curriculum avoided certain kinds of activities that promoted ‘the pleasures of this world.’ Although David, king of Israel danced, dancing was prohibited. Preparation of students for citizenship in heaven was the primary focus. The school was controlled by the Seventh Day Adventist Church and certain behaviors were not tolerated.
Certain aspects of my indigenous culture was omitted including calypso music, Parang music, the pre-Lenten Trinidad Carnival, Tamboo-Bamboo, Limbo, folksongs, and the steelpan instrument. All of these cultural facets were left out of my early education. Replacing them were, for example, folksongs from an American hootenanny folksong book. Much of the instruction ‘sheltered’ me, it would seem, from the ravages of worldly pleasure. It was clear that everything else was worldly and ‘sinful.’ The whole system was so ridiculous that our aged SDA neighbor who lived over the road from our house would oftentimes shut off his radiogram when a calypso was being aired. As soon as he recognized the ditty, it was so funny to see him literally running up the front stairs to switch it off. Life can be so difficult for some people. Perhaps he got some exercise running up the stairs.
In light of all my incomings and outgoings in the SDA Primary School, I survived. I don’t know if I am any better than not knowing about my true culture back then. Nevertheless, I attended Northeastern College where I came to understand at least the value of the steelpan instrument as our own invention, calypso as the mouthpiece of the masses, the parang music that arrived with the Spanish (Venezuelans), and the singing of our folksongs. I even learnt to play the cuatro, the Venezuelan national instrument. Sometimes it is necessary to re-engineer your mind. Later on in life, my studies in cultural geography pointed me in a direction where I wrote The Trinidad Carnival as an Amalgam of Borrowed Cultural Elements as my master’s thesis. My doctoral dissertation followed on trend: Commodification and Distribution of the Steelpan Instrument a Conflicted Tourism Resource.
What we must understand is that well-roundedness in a student is imperative; the answer to a good and lasting education. Education makes an individual fit to live and fit to live with. We live among our brothers and sisters here in Trinidad and Tobago, a multi-racial, multi-religious and polyrhythmic society. Aloofness is not good for anyone. If we cannot live here with our neighbors how could we live with them in heaven? As Thomas Carlyle said: “Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.”
The post Writing on the walls appeared first on Caribbean News Global.
