The Theme of Education in Caribbean Fiction 2006

MASARYK UNIVERSITY Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

Hana Lyčková

The Theme of Education in Caribbean Fiction

B.A. Major Thesis

Supervisor: PhDr. Věra Pálenská, CSc.

2006

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

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Acknowledgement

I would like to thank PhDr. Věra Pálenská, CSc. for creating a very interesting and inspiring seminar, from which originates the topic of my B.A. major thesis, and also for her help and assistance in preparing it.

Table of Contents

Preface ...... 5 Introduction ...... 6 1 1 Earl Lovelace’s The Schoolmaster ...... 8 1.1 Opposing Views Concerning the School ...... 8 1.2 The Character of the Schoolmaster...... 10 1.2.1 The Schoolmaster and Christiana ...... 12 1.2.2 The Villagers’ Views of the Schoolmaster ...... 13 1.2.3 The Characterization of the Schoolmaster ...... 14 2 2 V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas ...... 16 2.1 Childhood in a Poor Village...... 16 2.2 The School at Pagotes...... 17 2.2.1 Lal the Teacher ...... 17 2.2.2 The Curriculum...... 18 2.3 Learning of Hinduism ...... 19 2.4 The Influence of School on Mr Biswas’s Life ...... 20 2.5 Mr Biswas’s Children at School...... 21 2.5.1 Anand in the Exhibition Class...... 23 3 3 Austin C. Clarke’s Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack ...... 26 3.1 A View on Education...... 26 3.2 St. Matthias Boys’ School vs. Combermere School...... 27 3.3 The Curriculum ...... 29 3.3.1 Teaching “Patriotism”...... 30 3.4 New Headmaster and War ...... 31 3.5 Examinations ...... 32 Conclusion ...... 35 Resumé ...... 38 Notes ...... 39 Bibliography ...... 41

Preface

This bachelor thesis deals with the theme of education as it is presented in three

Caribbean novels written by three different authors and first published between 1961 and 1980. The works are based on the real life experiences either from Trinidad or

Barbados, where the writers were brought up and educated in the 1930s and 1940s.

In the introduction I try to put the explored novels into a brief social and historical context, which should help the reader to discover the link between Caribbean historical reality and fiction. The main part of the thesis is divided into three chapters, each of them dealing with one of the three novels. The first chapter is devoted to

The Schoolmaster , the work written by a Trinidadian novelist Earl Lovelace. Here I examine how the establishment of school in an isolated village and the arrival of a teacher may disrupt the pastoral life of its inhabitants. In the second chapter I explore how education interferes in the life of Mr Biswas and his children in the semi-autobiographical novel A House for Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul. The last chapter is focused on a memoir by Austin C. Clarke Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack , in which the author recalls and compares his school years at rural elementary and urban secondary school in Barbados.

The conclusion, in which I point out the striking similarities that somehow connect all three novels and their authors, is followed by a Czech resume. The thesis is closed by notes to the biographies of the writers and the list of works cited.

Introduction

The topic of my bachelor thesis originates from the seminar on Anglophone

Caribbean Literature. In order to understand the message of the Caribbean novels properly, the reader should know at least the basic historical context of the West Indies that significantly influenced the writers. In my thesis I mention two Caribbean islands:

Trinidad and Barbados, because they form the settings of the novels that I explore and at the same time inspired the authors, for they are their native countries. Both islands were British colonies; Trinidad, a former Spanish territory, was seized by the British in

1797 and became a free state in 1962, while Barbados was taken by Britain as early as

1627 and it remained a British colony until independence in 1966 (James 33, 65, 217).

It is quite obvious that such a long colonial rule excited opposition to the West Indian colonial establishment; nevertheless literature cannot react on contemporary events but with a certain delay. This is confirmed by Lovelace’s The Schoolmaster as well as by

Clarke’s Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack which, on the one hand criticise

th colonialism of the first half of the 20 century, but on the other hand were published in the late 1960s and 1970s.

The topic of education is an integral part of the novels of childhood which are quite common in Anglophone Caribbean fiction; among others Christopher by

Geoffrey Drayton, In the Castle of my Skin by George Lamming or The Year in San

Fernando by Michael Anthony. The prevalence of such novels can be easily explained by the social background in the West Indies in the 1930s and 1940s, a period of numerous strikes, riots and social disturbances followed by the Second World War.

Most of the novelists, including Earl Lovelace, V.S. Naipaul and Austin C. Clarke, were growing up in this period of considerable social changes, which made them

interested in a close examination of that society and the consequences of colonial rule

(Ramchand 193).

th The system of education in the Caribbean in the first half of the 20 century presented one of the domains which were entirely controlled by the British Empire.

Besides the imposition of an alien language (English), the colonial regime enforced the English curriculum at Caribbean schools. Teaching English history or geography was preferred to teaching subjects about particular Caribbean islands and thus West

Indians educated under colonialism were alienated from their home in the Caribbean and taught loyalty to the British Crown. Moreover, those who wanted to continue in their studies had to go abroad to study at English, American or Canadian universities, for there were no such educational institutions in the Anglophone Caribbean until 1949 when a University College of the West Indies was founded in Jamaica (James 106).

1 1 Earl Lovelace’s The Schoolmaster

Earl Lovelace’s novel The Schoolmaster is set in Kumaca, an insular Trinidadian village without any public building except for a small church. The inhabitants of

Kumaca lead their traditional pastoral life full of innocence and happiness thanks to its considerable distance and relatively inconvenient journey from the nearest village of

Valencia or the town of Zanilla. But all this is to be changed soon. The people cannot stop the advance of urbanization and the progress of the surrounding society. Rumours of a road from Valencia to be built reach Kumaca. The villagers whose majority is illiterate do not want to be backward and argue about building a school for their children. But they do not have the slightest idea how the final approval of the institution and the arrival of the schoolmaster will change their idyllic lives.

1.1 Opposing Views Concerning the School

The issue of school is first mentioned in a dialogue between two brothers Robert and Pedro. Their conversation reveals the first problem arising from the foundation of a school. Robert is thirteen and he looks forward to attend school and wishes his brother and father could also learn to read and write. But Pedro warns Robert not to talk about going to school to their father and explains, “He will not go. It is his pride. He is not a child” (Lovelace 10). There appears a problem of the generation gap. On the one hand parents want their children to go to school because in education they see a source of success and wealth, but on the other hand they themselves do not want to attend school, because they would feel ashamed and humiliated. Moreover, Pedro argues:

I know to hunt in the forest of Kumaca, and I know by the scratch on

the ground, if it is a lappe or ’gouti. I know when the cocoa is to pick, and

when it is to prune, and how long it must remain in the fermentary, and

how long to dry in the sun, and I can count the money that Dardain gives

for the crop. (Lovelace 10, 11)

School is not important for him, because he manages to earn his living without the skills in reading and writing. Their discussion has quite a romantic end, because

Pedro finally admits, “I will like to know to read and to write. So then I can write a letter to Christiana” (Lovelace 11), to the girl he is in love with. It follows from the dialogue that Christiana is his only motivation for learning and the only reason for which he sacrifices his pride.

In order to discuss the building of a school in Kumaca, the villagers decide to arrange a gathering. Three most important men and, at the same time, the only people in Kumaca who can read and write, give speeches. Paulaine Dandrade starts and argues for the opening of a school in Kumaca. He views Kumaca as the most backward village in the region and ascribes its backwardness to illiteracy and the lack of education. He sees in the school a sort of salvation and thinks of it as a necessary step towards success in the outside world. Kumaca is still where it was hundreds years ago and Paulaine is persuaded that the school will push it forward. Then the meeting is addressed by

Dardain, the shopkeeper, but he is not such a respected man as Paulaine. Yet, he is also for the building of a school but only because he and his shop will make a profit on it.

The third speaker, Consantine Patron, opposes their opinions. He seems to be more realistic. He raises objections to social and economic changes that will result from the opening of a school: “When everybody goes to school, who will pick the cocoa?

Who will go for the wood to make the fire to cook the food that we must eat?”

(Lovelace 16). And he also poses questions about the school itself. He points out that

Kumaca is a very poor place and that they cannot provide enough money to pay

the building and the teacher. Finally he admits reading and writing are great skills, but he warns that progress should move little by little and that the villagers should not expect miracles from day to day.

In the end it is agreed that Paulaine Dandrade will go to Zanilla to consult Father

Vincent, the priest. The Church represented by the priest is considered an advisory board whose help is awaited. The villagers are Catholics and they would like to build a Catholic school, but they do not have sufficient experience to build and administer it on their own and decide to ask the priest for help and advice.

Quite surprisingly the priest disapproves of building a school in Kumaca. While the villagers see in Zanilla a good example of a flourishing town thanks to its newly built school, Father Vincent warns them against this decision because even though the people in Zanilla are literate, they are demoralized. In contrast, he sees in Kumaca a kind of Eden, an isolated and beautiful village full of simple, honest and hard-working people who live in a traditional way and believes that such a vulnerable place should be protected from sinful progress. But maybe Father Vincent is a bit hypocritical, just sees the interests of the Church and is afraid of losing his “sheep” with the coming literacy ( Sincronía ). Paulaine Dandrade does not resign, manages to persuade the priest that they cannot stop the progress and that the road from Valencia will be built soon with or without the school in Kumaca. Finally the priest, still in doubts, agrees and promises help of the Church in building a school and finding a suitable teacher.

1.2 The Character of the Schoolmaster

The villagers want to please the new teacher and prepare a feast to celebrate his arrival, but Winston Warrick arrives later than he was expected because of a heavy rain.

The rain destroys the feast and some villagers see in the rain a bad sign and forebode a misfortune.

When Humphy, a little son of Paulaine Dandrade, sees the schoolmaster for the first time, he thinks he is a governor, because “[h]e wore a suit with a striped tie, and a grey felt hat [...] The men in Kumaca never, never dressed so well” (Lovelace

48). It looks like the teacher wants to differentiate from the poor and unsophisticated villagers and does not intend to assimilate. Moreover by his appearance and behaviour he wants to show everyone that he is a man who deserves honour and respect.

All villagers, except for Consantine Patron, are enchanted by the schoolmaster.

They are bound to him for a lot of deeds he achieved for Kumaca, but they are so fond of him that they cannot see that he takes advantage of his position and inconspicuously imposes his authority on them. He wants them to be dependent on him and probably the little Humphy’s view of the schoolmaster as a governor was not so far from the truth. Later on, when he buys a white horse, an expensive animal that most of the villagers cannot afford and that is associated with imperial power, and rides it through the village, he is even closer to that comparison. The reader can contrast this quite limited and subjective opinion from the inside of Kumaca to Benn’s attitude.

Benn lives in Valencia and provides transport on donkeys between Valencia and

Kumaca. During one of these journeys he talks to Father Vincent, a white Irishman, about the schoolmaster. Benn is not so enthusiastic about him as the villagers and the priest cannot understand why, arguing that Benn should feel a sort of affinity to the teacher, because they are both black Trinidadians. Benn responds:

He is black, yes. But not my own people. Priest, he is closer to your

people. I think he is your people. He learned in your schools, and he wears

the clothes the way you wear them, and he talks the way you talk, and his

thinking is that of your people. He is yours, priest. He is not mine.

(Lovelace 66)

Here Benn points out quite an interesting fact. He agrees with the priest that the schoolmaster probably did not have another choice than to be educated in a white school, but the problem is his absolute assimilation into white culture. It seems he adapted its values and attitudes without any critical thinking, he accepted them as invincible truth. It is obvious that he aims to educate the children in Kumaca in this manner. But probably this is not the correct way, because all nations, including those under the colonial rule, should keep their own customs alive and preserve their values.

A man can be literate and at the same time remain faithful to his traditional beliefs, but the schoolmaster did not succeed in achieving this. He regards himself as white and rejects his own ethnicity, speaking about the villagers as “flatfaced” (Lovelace 120).

All the worse he follows “a neo-colonial model of Owner and Slave” ( Sincronía ). He tries to gain control of the Kumacans not only by means of school, but also by means of the council which he founded and over which he presides. As another proof of his

Owner-Slave tendencies we may consider the rape of Christiana, because in the slave societies it was a common practice of the masters to rape their slave girls.

1.2.1 The Schoolmaster and Christiana

Christiana, the only daughter of Paulaine Dandrade, is sixteen years old. Since her mother’s death she looks after her father and five brothers and keeps house. Despite her busy life of a housewife she can read and write. She learnt it from her father.

Christiana caught the schoolmaster’s eye since their first meeting, but she did not feel at ease in his presence and under his scrutinizing regard. Even his voice, “low and frighteningly personal, as if he were alone with her” (Lovelace 48), embarrassed her.

But now that the school is opened, the schoolmaster needs an assistant and Christiana can serve him well with her knowledge. She teaches at school and takes private lessons from the schoolmaster so that she could take an examination in Zanilla.

One evening, when she comes to the schoolmaster’s house, he rapes her. She does not understand what he is doing; she is helpless and too astounded to defend herself.

This violent act appears to be the first indication of demoralization which starts to penetrate into the ‘Eden’ in Kumaca from the outside world. The priest’s doubts prove to be just.

1.2.2 The Villagers’ Views of the Schoolmaster

In contrast to the three reputable men of Kumaca, who gained respect through personal actions and hard work during the years, the schoolmaster acquires people’s confidence and honour just because of his smart clothes and his respected role. In fact, he is the only teacher they have ever met and they regard him almost as a god. They consider him to be a man of intelligence and absolute knowledge. Their boundless admiration for him is evident from the dialogue between Paulaine Dandrade, one of his greatest fans, and sceptical Consantine Patron:

‘The schoolmaster tells that in some countries they can tell when rain is

going to fall, and can even control the fall of the rain.’ [...] ‘He says too

that in a few years the price of cocoa will drop because there are many

countries now producing cocoa. In Africa and other parts.’ ‘That is what

he says,’ Consantine Patron said. ‘Your schoolmaster seems to know

about everything.’ ‘True, Consantine. He has been to places. He even

been to Panama,’ Paulaine said. (Lovelace 92, 93)

Paulaine’s extreme confidence in the schoolmaster culminates when he is not able to admit that the teacher raped his daughter even after his confession. But as Paulaine is aware of the traditional law according to which his duty is to shoot the rapist, he suffers from an interior struggle. He loves Kumaca, longed for its progress and fought for the school so devoutly that he cannot shoot the villain.

1.2.3 The Characterization of the Schoolmaster

The schoolmaster is quite a complicated figure. He represents a dangerous combination of different features; he is calculating and he manages to manipulate people. Moreover, the Kumacans lay their hopes of better future on him. On the one hand, he seems to be beneficial for Kumaca; he teaches the children to read and write, organizes the village council and the singing choir and intercedes with the government for building a well for the Kumacans and a road from Valencia. But on the other hand he just wants to make a profit out of these activities and control the villagers. He is as dishonest as the shopkeeper Dardain and soon a suspicious friendship develops between these two men. They have the naive villagers in their hands.

The schoolmaster is confident and he is sure of his unassailable position. But his status is in danger when the priest announces him that he knows about the rape and that

Christiana is pregnant. The schoolmaster does not let the priest unsettle him and shows a complete self-control and coldness. He is too clever to let Christiana’s pregnancy destroy his promising career in Kumaca. To conceal his misdeed he wants to marry her, but she is already promised to Pedro. By cancellation of the planned marriage the teacher would violate one of the indigenous laws of the village and thus disrupt its traditional system, but for him it hardly matters. He is determined to overcome any obstacles at all costs, so that he can stay in Kumaca and continue his mission there. He

feels responsibility for Kumaca and thinks of himself as its owner and even ruler. He is persuaded that the villagers cannot do without him.

In order that the schoolmaster can stay in Kumaca, he promises the priest to right his wrongs and thus purge the integrity of the Church. He bothers about his uncertain future. He tries to escape the unfavourable situation by flogging the children at school and drinking too much, but it does not help. The schoolmaster hates the villagers; he sees in them the source of his misfortune and speaks of them as hypocrites and ungrateful persons:

Hypocrites. All they wanted was to take from you, not give. He had given

much, perhaps too much. And what had he had in return? Didn’t he

deserve anything? Dardain was right. He was a bloody scoundrel too, but

he was right. A man has a right to himself to take what he wants. Take

what you want and to hell with everything else. To hell with the people.

To hell with their problems. To hell with their feelings. (Lovelace 120)

It seems he reveals his true personality in his thoughts. Not the villagers but he himself should be called a hypocrite. He does not mind the Kumacans’ welfare, but he awaits reward. It is obvious that he did not try hard for nothing. Probably he takes

Christiana for a small portion of the expected recompense.

After Christiana’s suicide the truth is revealed and the schoolmaster tries to flee cowardly. While Paulaine Dandrade is aghast and incompetent to act, Consantine

Patron stops the schoolmaster by shooting at his white horse, the symbol of his predominance. The schoolmaster falls down and breaks his neck. He wanted Kumaca to be his possession, but the tide turns and he himself becomes the village’s property by being buried in its ground.

2 2 V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas

th This semi-autobiographical novel, set in Trinidad in the first half of the 20 century, tells a story of Mohun Biswas inspired by the life of Seepersad Naipaul, the writer’s father. Mr Biswas, as the protagonist is called throughout the work, is brought up in a Hindu family whose ancestors came from India as indentured labourers. Mr Biswas marries Shama from the Tulsi family at an early age and they have four children; three girls and one boy named Anand, representing the author himself. Mr Biswas moves with his family several times in quest of identity, freedom and an ‘anchor’ in a form of a house of his own. Because Naipaul’s novel is quite voluminous, I will omit the irrelevant parts and concentrate just on the passages that concern my topic.

2.1 Childhood in a Poor Village

Mr Biswas was born in a poor village in South Trinidad. When he reaches school age, he is not sent to school, because there is no such institution for education of children in the village. Instead he plays with his sister Dehuti. Their elder brothers

Prasad and Pratap, who are nine and eleven years old, take no part in this playing because they are already old enough to begin to work. Thus their parents are forced to break the law about the employment of children. As the boys receive a pay, they feel like big men and try to imitate the behaviour of adults. Their job is to look after the buffaloes that draw the carts loaded with cane. Besides the “buffalo boys” children can also join “grass-gang” (Naipaul 23), i.e. cut grass with a sickle along the road and carry heavy bundles of grass on their heads.

When Mr Biswas’s father drowns accidentally in a pond, his mother moves with him to Pagotes where the boy starts attending school.

2.2 The School at Pagotes

Before Mr Biswas can be enrolled in the Canadian Mission school, he needs a birth certificate. Of course he does not have any, because he was born in a hut of mud and grass in a poor village, where there was no school, hospital or even registry office.

But there is no other way to avoid the rigid red tape, than to get the birth certificate from a solicitor. At this point V.S. Naipaul illustrates the operation of bureaucracy in Trinidad. When Mr Biswas is given his birth certificate, a mere sheet of paper of no value for the poor Trinidadians, the author describes it ironically as a turning point in his protagonist’s life or even his rebirth: “In this way official notice was taken of Mr

Biswas’s existence, and he entered the new world” (Naipaul 44). With the birth certificate the child is allowed to be enrolled in school which he attends for nearly six years.

2.2.1 Lal the Teacher

Lal teaches at Pagotes. “[He] had been converted to Presbyterianism from a low

Hindu caste and he held all unconverted Hindus in contempt. As part of this contempt he spoke to them in broken English” (Naipaul 42). By speaking in this way he mocks the unconverted Hindus. He wants to show them their ridiculousness and their inability to be educated in their language. Instead of speaking correctly and thus helping the children to get rid of their shortcomings, he makes the situation even worse by humiliating them. We can easily imagine how difficult it was for Mr Biswas as a Hindu boy to get on well with the teacher.

Lal is a typical example of a teacher of that time. He is prejudiced against some children because of their religion or just because of the clothes they are wearing, whereas he himself wears the same dirty and sweaty jacket throughout the school year.

The people in Pagotes are very poor and they cannot afford to buy new clothes for all of their children and that is why the boys sometimes wear girls’ clothes after their older female relatives when there is no other choice. Lal comes from Trinidad and he knows local conditions, but instead of helping the children to cope with the poverty, he taunts them. His own situation is not far better, but in this way he probably tries to get rid of his inferiority complex from which he suffers since his childhood. As a boy he might also be mocked by his teacher and this is his way of revenge, but such a situation reveals the vicious circle of a teacher-pupil relationship which is foredoomed to failure, because Lal brings up prospective teachers who may also wreak on other children.

Lal’s teaching methods are based on mechanical drills, abasement of the pupils in front of the class and corporal punishments, mainly flogging with his tamarind rod. He insists on thoroughness and discipline in the class at all costs. He does not belong to favourite teachers at school and the pupils do not revere him as a teacher, because he shows them only his strictness and sternness. His rage often blinds his common sense and sometimes the pupils manage to outwit him and thus undermine his weak authority even more.

2.2.2 The Curriculum

The children were taught and forced to read about many things in the world they could never experience and that is why they did not understand them. Thus literature lost meaning for them, they regarded all texts as a mere fantasy and alien mythology.

[Mr Biswas] learned many English poems by heart from the Royal

Reader . At Lal’s dictation he made copious notes, which he never

seriously believed, about geysers, rift valleys, watersheds, currents,

the Gulf Stream, and a number of deserts [...] He learned about igloos. In

arithmetics he got as far as simple interest and learned to turn dollars and

cents into pounds, shilling and pence. The history Lal taught he regarded

as simply a school subject, a discipline, as unreal as the geography.

(Naipaul 46)

The school system was quite peculiar. The teachers used the worst possible teaching methods and they gave their pupils useless knowledge, the knowledge they would never apply to their lives.

2.3 Learning of Hinduism

Mr Biswas’s aunt Tara did not approve of school education. When the boy began to learn stocks, shares and transactions, she was fed up with his impractical and useless lessons and took him out of school. According to the Indian tradition he was sent to

Pundit Jairam to be taught Hindi and to be made a pundit.

Pundit Jairam introduced him to important scriptures and instructed him in various ceremonies. Mr Biswas did the puja, a common Hindu ritual performed at home, for the pundit’s household. Jairam never flogged him. As a punishment for Mr

Biswas’s improper conduct he seldom boxed his ears, he usually confined him to the house until he learnt a dozen couplets from the Ramayana by heart, but such a sort of castigation might arouse in Mr Biswas a dislike for learning and even for Hinduism.

Jairam used to receive gifts from people and once one of these gifts was a bunch of bananas. As bananas were ripe, Mr Biswas could not resist the temptation and ate

two of them. This time he was punished in a different way than before. First, while they were eating, Jairam pushed his own plate towards Mr Biswas and asked him to finish eating his meal. Mr Biswas did not move. In this way Jairam wanted to illustrate that a man should not eat what another man has already started. After this sort of moral, the real punishment followed; Mr Biswas was asked to eat up the whole bunch of bananas he had already started. After seven bananas Mr Biswas was sick. Jairam’s method was efficient, but it is not clear whether it was better or worse than flogging or humiliation at school.

After eight months spent at Pundit Jairam’s Mr Biswas was chucked out because of another transgression.

2.4 The Influence of School on Mr Biswas’s Life

One of the first protagonist’s jobs was sign painting. He would not be able to perform this work without the skill in writing he was taught at school. Ironically this gift was probably discovered by Lal, when he ordered the boy to write I AM AN ASS on the blackboard as punishment. Thanks to his ability to write he also got married, because a love letter written to his future wife Shama played an important role in the arrangement of their marriage. The sign painting led him to reading. First he just scanned foreign magazines for new designs of letters, but then he began to read stories, novels and elementary manuals of science. Through novels by Samuel Smiles he entered a completely different world, he dreamt of a world full of romance where he played the role of a hero. Then he discovered Charles Dickens. It was quite interesting how he read the books by English authors. He could not imagine the alien characters and settings that were presented in the books, so he transferred them to people and places he knew in Trinidad. Later on he left romantic novels and turned to religious

readings about Hinduism and Christianity and philosophical books by Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus. Besides these books the school’s copy of the Standard Elocutionist , which he forgot to return when he left school so quickly, accompanied him throughout his life.

Mr Biswas even tried to write, but the beginnings were really hard and it always ended in failure with distorted and scurrilous descriptions of the members of the Tulsi house. But he did not give up his dream of becoming a writer and finally he was employed by the Sentinel , a Trinidadian newspaper, as a reporter. He started as a layman as he lacked any education in journalism, but his will was strong enough to help him to become one of the best Sentinel ’s reporters. He learned shorthand, read books on journalism and took part in a correspondence course of journalism. Supported by this course he sent some articles to several periodicals but without success. At that time he began to write his ‘Escape’ stories. In them he expressed his urgent feelings to leave Shama and his children he regarded as a burden. He wrote innumerable beginnings, but he never managed to complete these stories. This was the end of his career as a short story writer and novelist. Since then he has laid all his hopes on his children and especially on his son Anand.

2.5 Mr Biswas’s Children at School

Mr Biswas sends his eldest daughter Savi and his only son Anand to mission school. Anand hates it and tries hard not to go there, but he is always flogged. Once, after coming home Mr Biswas finds little Anand kneeling for punishment because he messed up himself at school. And the reason? Anand was frightened to ask the teacher permission to leave the room and then he was afraid of using the school toilet, because it was a nasty and stinking place.

Teachers were highly respected persons and parents often sent them small gifts to gain their favour, as Shama once sent an orange by Savi. Moreover, the naughty children were flogged not only at school, but also at home where they scarcely found sympathy. Parents started to be aware of the importance of education for the future of their children. “[E]veryone had to fight for himself in a new world [...] where education was the only protection” (Naipaul 436). There were more schools in the cities, often attended even by children from the country. The change is also quite obvious in Mr

Biswas’s life. While he, as a little boy, was the only literate person in his family, his sister’s son and all the children in the Tulsi family go to school.

Most families were poor and they hardly made both ends meet, so they had nothing to leave their children except for good education and a sound training. When children wanted to get further education, they had to go abroad. The illiterate parents having enough money were sending their children to America, Canada or England to get a profession.

It looks like the approach of teachers towards pupils changed slightly too. At least some teachers started to appreciate pupils’ independent work. This is nicely illustrated on Anand’s teacher who gives the boy twelve marks out of ten for his composition, even though Anand did not use any of the phrases proposed by the teacher. It might be his aim to teach the pupils to write independently and his phrases were just clues intended to help them to develop their own thoughts and phrases. Only Anand succeeded in the task and he was adequately evaluated for good work.

When the Tulsi family together with Mr Biswas’s family moved to the Shorthills, another problem appeared. Trinidad, as well as other Caribbean colonies, was a poor developing country. Thus when there was a school in a town, there was not adequate public transport to take pupils to school from outlying villages. The children from

Shorthills were going to schools in Port of Spain and had to commute by bus, but the seven o’clock bus was usually full of villagers who went to Port of Spain as well.

So most of the Tulsi children could not go to school, until one of the brothers-in-law took them on his lorry, but as he had to be at work at six, the children had to get up at four and were landed in front of the closed school gate at half past five. Such early rising was strenuous and made the children sleepy, and then they could not concentrate on lessons sufficiently. A similar problem was with their return journey. The uncle worked until six and could not bring the children home before eight. Thus the children walked nearly three miles to get the bus at the terminus. Nevertheless, not all the children managed to get on the bus before it was crowded and then they had to walk home until they could be taken on by a less full bus, or by the uncle’s lorry returning from work. Again the children were tired by the long walk and the late arrival at home and in the evening they did not have enough energy to do their homework for next day.

2.5.1 Anand in the Exhibition Class

Anand’s genius was soon discovered and he was put into the star section of the exhibition class at elementary school. Pupils in this class were hard workers, they almost did not have any free time and lost their innocent childhood, a period of gaiety and irresponsibility, before they could fully enjoy it. They were supposed to behave reasonably and to obey teachers in all respects.

Anand wrote down and learned by heart copious notes on geography

and English. Text books were discarded; only the notes of the teacher

mattered; any deviation was instantly and severely punished; and there

was not a day when some boy was not flogged and put to stand behind

the blackboard. For this was the exhibition class, where no learning

mattered except that which led to good examination results. (Naipaul

382)

The pupils were systematically prepared for the final examination throughout the school year, because only the best pupils could get the scholarship for studies abroad. But the teaching methods were far from being great. The teachers promoted their authority and knowledge as superior. They exacted absolute accuracy from pupils and thus they forced them into cramming and mechanical learning. The pupils were often discouraged from independent thinking and the usage of their common sense and this had a considerable impact on application of their school knowledge in real life.

There is no wonder that the teachers’ demands and practices inseminated a dislike for school in the pupils and that they tried to avoid the school by all possible means.

Vidiadhar, Anand’s cousin, went also in the exhibition class and there arose a sort of competition between the two families. Anand attended a lot of private lessons both before and after school in order to succeed in the final exams. He was deprived of any leisure time or hobbies. He did not go to the cinema, football matches or horse races as other boys, not only because he had to study hard, but also because his parents did not have much money. The day before the exam both the schoolboys underwent special rituals intended to bring them good luck. They were supported by their families and dressed in their best clothes they went to school accompanied by their fathers.

Regardless of the results Anand’s parents decided that he would go to college, even though they would have to face financial shortcoming, but he was worth of a high school education. Finally Anand passed the exam; he had the third best results in

Trinidad and got one of the twelve exhibitions. Mr Biswas was the most enthusiastic parent of the college and his visions of the future became only visions of Anand’s future. He hoped his son would fulfil his abandoned dreams of becoming a successful

writer. After the studies at college Anand got a scholarship and went to England to continue his studies, because there were no universities in Trinidad.

3 3 Austin C. Clarke’s Growing Up Stupid Under the Union

Jack

This autobiographical novel with the subtitle a memoir by Austin Clarke tells a story of a little black boy Tom Clarke grown up in a poor village of St. Matthias in

Barbados during the Second World War. The reader encounters fatherless Tom just when he starts a secondary school, but at the same time he recalls his previous years at elementary school. The author concentrates on the considerable influence of the British

Empire on education in Barbados, one of its then colonies. It is quite clear even from the novel’s title that Clarke is critical of the British school system imposed on the Barbadians. He wants to show the absurdity of the system. He reveals how he was brought up and educated under the strict conduct of the British Empire eventually to become more an Englishman than a Barbadian.

Clarke said in one interview in 1991, while speaking about one of his characters:

“[His] education at the college was at best a superficial indoctrination of ways which taught him how to behave. It did not prepare him for life in his country, nor did it prepare him for life outside his country” ( Frontiers 97).

3.1 A View on Education

When Tom was admitted to Combermere School, a secondary school in a neighbouring town, all villagers in St. Matthias rejoiced at his success. His mother was proud of him and dreamt of his better future because higher education was a key to a better position in society, to a well-paid job and an escape from poverty. Learning was regarded as a sort of maturation, a conversion of a boy into a man. Tom perceived the dividing gap between the poor uneducated village and the rich literate town

represented by school and now it was his turn to bridge this gap and enter a new promising world.

Pupils’ school results influenced their future occupations. Those who were illiterate worked in the fields. The other occupations ranged from a bookkeeper for those who did worse at school, through a sanitary inspector to a civil servant or an elementary school teacher for those who did well. When Tom enters Combermere

School in September for the first time, he stands at the beginning of having a choice in life. He would like to be a sanitary inspector and he dreams of a civil servant, but his mother wants him to become a doctor, because doctors have higher salaries and a higher social prestige.

3.2 St. Matthias Boys’ School vs. Combermere School

Tom compares the secondary school which he attends at present to his memories of his elementary school. The first remarkable difference is in their locations.

Combermere School has a seat in a new, relatively well-equipped building in town and its pupils wear neat uniforms and have shaven heads. Not all children interested in going to Combermere are, however, admitted. We can even say that it is the social class that mainly matters, because school is attended only by middle- and lower middle-class boys. In addition, only a few parents could afford to send their children to Combermere without the support of a scholarship or government bursaries.

The difference is not only in the internal organisation of school, but also in the approach of the teachers towards their pupils and vice versa. Tom describes his contempt of the St. Matthias teachers who in their discoloured and sweaty shirts did not have any authority and did nothing to win pupils’ respect. On the contrary at

Combermere the masters (they are never called “teachers”) are neatly dressed and the pupils hold them in high esteem for their achievements.

[They] were brave, honest men who studied hard at night and put

themselves on a higher plane of learning, and acquired, after many

years, external degrees from the University of London. They were

beautiful black men. (Clarke 18)

At Combermere Tom is astounded by his headmaster, the Reverend A. E.

Armstrong, who is the opposite of his former headmaster at St. Matthias. He is an old man whose flogging does not hurt at all. He is going to retire soon and perhaps that is why, despite his authoritarian voice and reserved behaviour, Tom regards him more as a grandfather than a strict representative of school. Mr Armstrong is a sort of an angel in comparison to the diabolic headmaster at St. Matthias who flogged the children with the belt from a sewing machine. When he inspected the cleanliness of their nails and ears, he treated the boys like things. He took no pity on anybody and accepted no excuses. Even the other teachers at school feared him. He was like a tall black king who ruled over his empire, the school. He wanted to differ from the others as much as possible. Probably he wanted to show he is better than anyone else and nobody can compare to him. He always wore white, while it was more natural for the Barbadians to wear colourful clothes. Moreover, white was considered the colour of the colonial dominion. Around the knot of the tie he wore a gold ring to show off his wealth.

Clarke sees in some teachers the incarnated British rule. Some of them are completely uninterested in their students and teaching is for them a dull routine job.

They are closed in their domain so that sometimes they “[do] not know what life [is] like for [the] boys beyond the iron gate of Combermere” (Clarke 173). But they have a considerable, though sometimes unintentional, influence on the boys and school often

determines pupils’ future professions. It was the same with the British Empire which lay many miles by sea from Barbados and knew little about life on that distant West

Indian island. Yet, vital issues concerning the Caribbean were posed, discussed and decided on British Isles without the awareness, interference or approval of the inhabitants involved.

3.3 The Curriculum

Children were taught mathematics, Christianity, Latin and French. In addition to these subjects that we can call neutral they had to know the history, literature and geography of England, the country they knew only from books and photographs. They learned by heart things which made no immediate sense for them and which they could never see or experience. The pupils had to learn facts that could not always be understood, but they had to believe in them, because the English book and the teacher said it was so. “For believing was a part of [their] education” (Clarke 167). Tom regrets,

I knew all about the Kings; the Tudors, Stuarts and Plantagenets; and

the Wars of the Roses; but nothing was taught about Barbados. We lived

in Barbados, but we studied English society and manners. (Clarke 72)

Quite an interesting consequence of such a curriculum is the way that the Barbadian children viewed and accepted these foreign facts. The easiest and most logical way for them was to adapt the heroes of the English history to the people they knew personally and the English setting to the environment of Barbados. Suddenly the local churches resembled the English castles, boys imagined girls wearing huge crinolines like the English queens, Guy Fawks could have been a Barbadian, and

Robinson Crusoe might be shipwrecked in the Caribbean Sea and land in Barbados.

Moreover, the fact that in Barbados lived a girl named Elizabeth Tudor and a boy

Milton or that there were the Hastings Rocks helped the children to transform anything that was English into Barbadian more easily in their imagination. But sometimes the fantasy was not sufficient and the boys were eager to leave their native country to see what they had learned at school with their own eyes.

The curriculum was focused on British society and most likely it was aimed at children in England. But the English Department of Education in London probably wanted to take advantage of its colonies all over the world to bring up the little English patriots there and thus consolidate its power. In fact they used an easy device to accomplish their plan. The first teachers came from England or they were Barbadians educated in England where they accepted English culture and its values as their own.

Then they only spread their newly acquired knowledge all over the island. They taught the little Barbadians in the same way as they were taught themselves in England regardless of their own nation, mentality and customs. Such a curriculum had a great impact on Barbadian children. They almost lost the contact with their own culture and ancestors and the connection to their own history.

3.3.1 Teaching “Patriotism”

The teachers led the pupils to patriotism and loyalty to the British Crown in their lessons. The children were taught all the subjects including the “English” ones in classrooms with the Union Jack pinned against the wall. They were guided to be grateful to England for clothes, books, medicines and all other products that were

English made and significantly improved their living standard.

When the Second World War broke out, the sentiment of allegiance and patriotism became even stronger and more visible. The children were told that

the Barbadians went to war to die for the Empire, but in fact they were poor and unemployed and they left to make a living. When the Germans sank an English ship, the pupils prayed at school.

We prayed for the King and the Royal Family, and the Prime Minister

of England, and for all our Allies; with closed eyes and lowered heads,

we asked God to give our English leaders good counsel, wisdom and

strength to kill more Germans [...]

The headmaster brought the sad proceeding to a close by leading us into

the singing of Rule Britannia, Britannia Rule the Waves . And in all

the singing, nobody remembered to pray for the families of

the Barbadian seamen lost or dead at sea. (Clarke 15, 16)

The children identified themselves with the Britons, they spoke of themselves as the “little black Englishmen”, considered England as their “Mother Country” and called

Barbados “Little England” (Clarke 52). They tried to imitate anything that was English: speech, manners or customs. Sometimes they could even exchange their native speech for English working-class patois by imitating one of their teachers, who was a true

Englishman, but did not speak correct English. They started drinking tea, because the Englishmen did so. They played cricket, because it was a gentleman’s game.

The Cadets took the English as their models for military discipline. They were blind to

English imperfection and failures, because they did not know any. They were taught only its brilliance and they adored England as their supreme deity.

3.4 New Headmaster and War

When the war began, old Reverend Armstrong retired and was succeeded by a new headmaster who was recently demobilized from the British Army. He was

a stranger there, but he did not want to ingratiate himself. The pupils called him Major, because he could not conceal his previous military education. He always wore the suit of British officers and to Combermere he introduced military discipline and public floggings that might resemble the punishments of disorderly soldiers at a muster.

School became a regiment under his strict and cruel lead. There is no wonder that the pupils likened him to Himmler, Goebbels and Gestapo. Suddenly they appeared in the middle of their own battlefield, it seemed the war transferred to Combermere and they had to face its inhumanities. It is at this particular moment that Tom began to meditate on the freedom of Barbados.

With the progress of the war everything got even scarcer. The poor Barbadians suffered from water and food shortage and the students did not get their new school books, because the ships which imported them were sunk by the Germans. They did not have any other possibility than to copy all the necessary books in longhand in order to be able to continue in their studies. But there remains a question whether the situation would be different, if there was no war, because for their inherent poverty the Barbadians could hardly afford to buy new books even during peace.

3.5 Examinations

Tom sat for his first exams at the end of his elementary education. He learned hard and attended private lessons, but only the results mattered and decided whether he would get a free education at Combermere or had to work as a waiter or gardener for the white men. The examination consisted of English history and arithmetic and Tom was twenty-eighth out of two hundred boys in Barbados. So he was destined for the Combermere School and his mother’s status in the village rose.

After five years at Combermere the pupils were supposed to sit for the final examinations. The Major began calling them men instead of boys. The importance of this event was recognized even by Tom’s mother who never ceased to regard him as her little son and did not accept any change in his status with the advance in education.

Nevertheless, before the exams she deprived him of some of his chores and gave him more free time for self-studying at the British Council or in the public library after school. Moreover “[t]he fifth formers could take time off from the regular schedule of classes to prepare for the examination. The Cambridge University Senior Cambridge

Examination (Overseas)” (Clarke 180). The Barbadians were known as overseas people and Barbados was an overseas country. The Barbadian pupils sat for the exams that were prepared and corrected by English professors in England. Here we can realize the absurdity of the whole educational system, the discrepancy between the school and the real life, between Barbados and England.

We would write these Cambridge examinations; and our answers would

be sent back up to England, to those same learned professors, who must

have marvelled at the answers we gave them to these overseas

questions, questions which had nothing to do with the way we lived,

with the way we understood ourselves, with the way we saw ourselves.

But they were “educated” questions, and we were educated

Combermere boys. (Clarke 181)

The future life of the Barbadian boys depended on the results of these overseas examinations. Several learned professors in England decided which of them would become sanitary inspectors or badly paid elementary school teachers and which of them would succeed and go abroad to continue in their studies there.

On the one hand it was a question of success or failure, but on the other hand it was a question of the responsibility towards one’s parents. The Barbadians lived in poverty and only few of them could let their children go to school, because going to school meant not only fees and expenses for books but also a loss of a prospective wage-earner. Then the family had to limit itself in all respects. The parents relied on their offspring and his/her achievements at school and hoped for an improvement of their living conditions thanks to their offspring’s success at the exams. So the pupils felt gratitude towards their providers and, at the same time, the responsibility that lay on their shoulders; they did not want to hear somebody saying that they wasted their parents’ money.

When the D-day came, all the pupils dressed in their best clothes and assembled in the hall. They had to sit in the alphabetical order. When the examination papers had been taken out of the unsealed envelopes from England and distributed, every pupil then answered the overseas questions for himself, because cheating was severely punished and nobody was daring enough to risk to be failed for cribbing. At this critical moment of their lives the pupils found themselves abandoned, there was nobody to give them help or advice, they could rely only on themselves. Subsequently the pupils and their families had to wait for the results until September.

Finally, Tom passed the Senior Cambridge Overseas Examination and so he was admitted at Harrison College, one of the most prestigious private schools in Barbados for white boys where only a few very rich and very bright chosen black boys could go.

Conclusion

While exploring the theme of education in three Caribbean novels, I discovered a lot of similarities in the authors’ perception of school, teachers and curriculum. Of course, there are slight differences in dependence on varied settings and backgrounds of the plots. The story of Earl Lovelace’s The Schoolmaster does not cross the boundaries of the poor Trinidadian village Kumaca and lasts no more than a few years, whereas

V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas covers the lifespan of the protagonist, that is 46 years. He was born in a poor village, and then moved to a town where he went to school, later lived with his wife and children in countryside and finally spent the rest of his life in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad. Thanks to his perpetual moving the reader is introduced to different schools and teachers. Moreover, owing to the relatively long period encompassed in the novel we can observe a changing approach to education in a developing society during almost half a century. In contrast to The Schoolmaster and A House for Mr Biswas Austin C. Clarke’s Growing Up

Stupid Under the Union Jack is set in another Caribbean island, Barbados. Similarly to the character of Mr Biswas Clarke’s protagonist attends two different schools, one in a village, the other in a town, which enables the reader to better understand the educational system in Barbados and compare urban and rural schools.

All three novels were published within twenty years and recount life stories of

th poor inhabitants of the Caribbean Region in the first half of the 20 century. While in

The Schoolmaster there is not the slightest allusion to the Second World War, which is probably the result of the isolation of Kumaca, and in Mr Biswas we are aware of the war, though it does not have any impact on the novel’s action, in Growing Up the war directly affects the characters and the life at school.

In contrast to the limited and irrelevant differences, the similarities are much more striking. All three works abound in unfavourable descriptions of the characters of teachers or headmasters. They are portrayed as merciless men who impose their authority and discipline in class by force. These teachers were educated in England and absorbed white European culture, its values, identified themselves with English social hierarchy and tried to introduce the same system into the Caribbean Region. This is quite evident from the efforts of schoolmasters to exercise control over anybody and, at best, over the whole school or even village, showing their superiority and contempt.

They try to be different in their behaviour and appearance, whether riding a horse or wearing expensive clothes or a military uniform. Moreover, their position is facilitated either by the devoted villagers or by the pupils’ parents who boundlessly admire them just for their profession of a teacher. The people cannot see their imperfections, they believe the pedagogues do their best and the parents do not allow themselves to think that there might be anything wrong in the teachers’ approach to their children.

Whereas in The Schoolmaster we stand at the beginning of the establishment of a school and witness the development of educational system in Kumaca and thus we cannot know anything about school curriculum, in Growing Up and Mr Biswas the authors devote a considerable part of their novels to school curriculums imposed by the imperial power. They are both critical of such a system in which the distant British

Empire, ignorant of the conditions in the Caribbean and its traditional ways of life, decides about the local educational system and thus about the future of the children.

They both attack the tremendous amount of lessons that deal with England without introducing their pupils into the things related to Barbados or Trinidad. Quite interesting is the agreement between V.S. Naipaul and Clarke in the way that their protagonists apply often incomprehensible facts from English texts to Caribbean

reality. Both Mr Biswas and little Tom read the books as if they were set in their native country and their friends appear in the roles of the main characters.

All three authors concur in their novels on the important role that education plays in the lives of Caribbean people. This is demonstrated in the final decision of the Kumacans to build a school, in the rising literacy rate in Trinidad and in a better social position of Tom’s mother after her son’s acceptance to Combermere school.

Resumé

Ve své bakalářské práci se zabývám tématem vzdělávání a školským systémem, jak o něm píší tři karibští autoři ve svých románech, jež byly publikovány v rozmezí pouhých dvaceti let. Předmětem první kapitoly je román Earla Lovelace Učitel

(The Schoolmaster , 1968), ve kterém autor líčí, jak založení školy v trinidadské vesničce tragicky změní idylický život tamějších obyvatel. Zde se zabývám především postavou učitele, který má hlavní podíl na těchto změnách. Ve druhé kapitole zkoumám, jak školství zasahuje do života pana Biswase v románu V.S. Naipaula Dům pro pana Biswase ( A House for Mr Biswas , 1961). Jelikož je v knize popsáno

šestačtyřicet let života hlavního hrdiny, můžeme zde pozorovat, jak škola ovlivnila nejen jeho život, ale i životy jeho dětí. Poslední kapitola je věnována pamětem Austina

C. Clarka Jak jsem vyrůstal v hlupáka pod britskou vlajkou ( Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack , 1980), kde hlavní představitel Tom Clarke vypovídá o svém životě na základní a střední škole, jejichž osnovy se zcela podřizují rozhodnutím Britského impéria. Autor se nezdráhá ostře kritizovat absurditu školského systému, ve kterém koloniální velmoc značně ovlivňuje budoucnost žáků v na míle vzdáleném Barbadosu.

Ve shrnutí své práce srovnávám všechny tři romány z hlediska vzdělávání v Karibiku. Fakt, že autoři se na ostrovech narodili a prožili tam školní léta, jen dodává na autentičnosti jejich děl protkaných četnými autobiografickými prvky. Je velmi zajímavé pozorovat paralely ve všech třech dílech, které v mém závěrečném srovnání dominují.

Notes

1 Earl Lovelace was born in Toco, Trinidad in 1935. He was brought up by his maternal grandparents on the island of Tobago where he attended elementary school.

Then he went to private high school in Port of Spain in Trinidad. After short studies in the United States at Howard University, Washington (1966-7), he returned back to

Trinidad and worked as journalist, novelist, playwright and short-story writer. He also taught English at the University of the West Indies at Saint Augustine and was a writer in residence at several universities in the United States, including Johns Hopkins

University, where he obtained an M.A. degree in 1974 ( Encyclop edia of Post-Colonial

Literatures ). He received many prizes and awards, among others the Independence

Literary Award (in 1965 for While Gods Are Falling ) or the Commonwealth Writer’s

Prize (in 1997 for Salt ). Among his major novels except those already mentioned are

The Dragon Can’t Dance , The Wine of Astonishment or a collection of short stories

A Brief Conversion and Other Stories ( Contemporary Writers ).

2 Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born to a Hindu family in Trinidad in

1932. He was educated at Queen’s Royal College in Trinidad . After winning a government scholarship, at the age of 18 he left his native country for England and studied at University College, Oxford ( Contemporary Writers ). After completing his studies at Oxford V.S. Naipaul settled in England and began his career as a writer.

The author of numerous novels (e.g. The Mystic Masseur , The Suffrage of Elvira ,

The Mimic Men ), short stories (e.g. A Flag on the Island , In a Free State ) and works of non-fiction inspired by his travels in Africa ( A Bend in the River ), Asia ( An Area of

Darkness ) and America ( A Turn in the South ) has been awarded a number of literary

prizes. In 1990 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and in 2001 V.S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature ( Nobelprize.org ).

3 Austin Chesterfield Clarke was born in Barbados in 1934. After completing his primary education at St. Matthias Boys School he proceeded to the secondary school at Combermere and then finished his studies at Harrison College, Barbados where he received his Cambridge and Oxford higher-school certificates. In 1955 he emigrated to Canada. Since then he has worked as a journalist, critic, freelance broadcaster for the CBS, lecturer and diplomat as well as a novelist and short-story writer ( Canadian Literature Online ). Among his best known works are Survivors of the Crossing , Amongst Thistles and Thorns , When He Was Free and Young and He

Used to Wear Silks or The Meeting Point . Austin Clarke is the recipient of many awards including the W.O. Mitchell Prize, the Toronto Arts Award for Lifetime

Achievement in Literature or the Order of Canada ( Ryerson University ).

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