Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor
READING MAKETH a man. Ever noticed how that phrase says nothing about what maketh woman? Maybe because she is made of other things. Already completely made.
Okay, okay maybe to reflect a time gone by when she was not expected to read. Or maybe, because she was not interested in reading what was made available. I mean who really sits down and reads The World Book Encyclopaedia Volume 11, J-K, copyright 1974?
Not me. But someone thought I should.
There's this wonderful man from St. Thomas who sells peanuts in Kingston. Whenever our paths cross, and that sometimes is once per week, we have these deep discussions solving every problem in the world. I assure you that during these sessions I have to be on my 'Ps' and 'Qs' because my friend is quite convinced of the deficiencies of my mis-education.
He's not alone you know. There are many Jamaicans who, thankful that they were not entrapped in the little world prescribed and circumscribed by white chalk on blackbored, (I also mean blackboard), know beyond a shadow of doubt that classroom education, read education as prescribed by the Ministry of Education and handed up from basic school to university, don't serve black people in this country no useful purpose.
And they ask you questions like "how come with all the big school graduates we economy in such a state?" Or, how the roads so bad or we cyaan find jobs for de graduates? Or, some such trick question that's bound to leave you and your big school one-size-fits-all education, with yu jaw drop "jus like when jackass start yawn" and bring the conversation to a halt.
PROMISED BOOK
Well one of our conversations stopped brap like that recently over one such question. My friend offered to remedy my deficiency with a promise to bring me a book in which he had found the answers to many a difficult question.
The next time we met, he presented me with a nice brown paper parcel and extracted a commitment out of me that I would study the book "because it not so easy to get".
Furthermore I was to take very good care of it because he had "helped plenty people wid it" including some big name radio talk-show hosts that he had heard struggling to find the answer to one particular question of the kind previously quoted. I opened the bag to find Mister J-K Encyclopaedia.
He had obviously taken great care of and great pride in this book for however long he had possessed it and was equally proud of his search for knowledge and truth.
LITERACY
The episode reminded me of a story told by a regional executive at a meeting of the Caribbean Council on Adult Education (CARCAE) some years ago. Some people from up north were conducting a literacy survey in Trinidad. One very important question had to do with the choice of reading materials.
The question went something like this: Which of the following magazines do you read? And the choice of magazines included Vogue, Cosmopolitan and the like. Not of which got a tick from the majority of the respondents. The conclusion of the eminent surveyors? That the Trinidadian public was not a reading public.
We say the same thing and worse about the literacy and literary inclinations of the Jamaican public. Glibly repeat some racism about anything you want to hide from a black man just put it into a book. Seldom do we pass any similar disparaging remarks about the quality and content of what is offered for them to read. And even less do we make any real efforts to provide them with material which is culturally and spiritually relevant and which offers the kind of information which is appropriate to their needs for social and economic advancement.
When they respond with the contempt which the offerings deserve we label them as dunces, people who do not value books. When they seek out books which they believe have been "hidden" from them we find cause to be amused. Something about the continuing wranglings over tax on textbooks meck it look like somebody somewhere enjoys having these extremes around.
They allow us to ignore the truth which is simply, that more Jamaicans, more Caribbean people, would read more if they saw more of themselves, more of their issues in books, magazines and newspapers. Plus it also allows us to avoid addressing the issue of what does reading maketh the man into? Poor copies of him whose magazines and books he readeth? Maybe is a good thing that the little adage says nothing about "woman" for somebody somewhere has to refuse to have their consciousness shaped by those who would write their history, their sociology and their genealogy on notions far removed from their realities.
ACCESSIBLE MATERIAL
And somebody has to take responsibility for ensuring that reading material about who we are, such as exists, should be made available to our people from basic schools up to university level. It should be available also to the peanut vendors, the newspaper vendors and all those we think do not have an interest in, or a capacity for learning. Many of these individuals are convinced that there is a deliberate policy to keep useful knowledge hidden from them.
We could begin by ensuring affordable access to said information. For reading must maketh all of us full of the many and varied ways that we can contribute to our collective cultural enrichment.
And by the way, when are the Louise Bennett books to which the Ministry of Education has acquired the rights going to take up their rightful place on the shelves of every single school library across the length and breadth of Jamaica?
And is it just barely possible that some entity somewhere would make a tax deductible donation of collection of top brass Jamaican authors like Easton Lee, Olive Senior, Lorna Goodison, Mervyn Morris and the like to our secondary schools so that we can get more than the blank stares we now receive when some of these names are mentioned? After that we would be well entitled to chastise them for not understanding or appreciating "the rich tapestry of our cultural diversity" or whatever other foreign phrases we now use to mean dat de pikney dem jus won't read nutten sensible.
