Dwyer was a firm believer in education.
Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor
TED DWYER - educator, playwright, cultural icon - is dead. Long live Ted Dwyer.
No less a person than the Most Honourable Prime Minister of Jamaica, P.J. Patterson, said of Mr. Dwyer, "He excelled in many fields and gave selflessly to the development of a strong and wholesome society."
So what would Ted, the Educator, have said, had he opened his eyes on National Heroes Day, Monday October 20, 2003 and seen the front page headline of The Gleaner "Ministry Slashes University Funds?"
He probably would have penned the 2003 Pantomime. Something to do with a whole nation waking up to the nightmare that they had been expelled from this millennium for failure to recognise that without education at the highest level and the best quality, you're good to go nowhere. Just before the mass expulsion there would be a slow motion version of the PM's call made abroad and to people quite foreign to 'wha' a gwaan a yard', for a reduction of the gap between the rich and the poor. Ted Dwyer lived what he believed, that Education was the surest tool in that battle, a ticket to anywhere.
Ted Dwyer, the young man from Mandeville, knew only too well what all poor, black Jamaicans know. The rich have supermarkets and banks and plazas and hotels to inherit. The poor have a chance at an education that sometimes, at best, equips them to beg a job in supermarkets, banks, hotels or plazas in exercise of the hope of bridging that gap. Or they sing and dance and act and conjure up foreign currency pan de island.
If poor people had their way they would allocate more of the 15 per cent of the contribution of the poor to the national budget to education. We would stop fiddling with this end or that end of the system, stop robbing Peter to pay Paul or the IMF or World Bank or politicians' salaries or buy more bullet-proof vests so that the sons and daughters of the poor can endanger their lives to fight crime and violence bred of ignorance, frustration, lack of education and lack of opportunities for bridging the gap between the rich and the poor.
You know something, though? I doubt that Ted would have been surprised by the announcement. I was not. In fact I was not moved to anything. Few official announcements of late move me to anything. I try my best not to hear them and thus protect myself from waxing cynical in my old age. I also remove an unwanted area of stress from my life, the kind that says, "dem change dem mout pan we again."
Dem freezing jobs or dem creating jobs? Dem really had a plan for Port Royal and the Ferry or the plan manufacture since August? Is really a plan?
THE VALUE OF EDUCATION
We miss Ted Dwyer? We value his contribution? Then, more Jamaicans, not fewer need to be facilitated to do likewise. In this millennium, having a first degree is like when my grandmother did get sixth standard education. It is a basic beginning. Everybody supposed to get it. Not just those who can afford to pay for the piece Government reengineer out. Or veer to some other line in the budget.
Notice something. The Jamaicans who have been able to make heroic contributions to national development, to our reputation at home and abroad, are by and large, not people the system has facilitated. They have had to fight the system every inch of the way. Name them Louise Bennett, Ranny Williams, Marcus Garvey, Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, Louise Bennett Fraser, on and on, including some who still alive but do not want anybody to know how much basket dem carry pan dem head, and so deny themselves and others the chance to celebrate just how far we've come baby. Not Ted. And he was proud of how far education had carried him and pursued education to the end of his days.
The national honours should be renamed. There must be one for fighting the odds and winning. Call it the T.D for Ted Dwyer, and people he represents. The people we starve, leave off official programmes, deny opportunities for interacting with the public, just because we have the power to do so or tink is dat we collect tax payers money as salary to do. The people we ask, if dem tink is dem name whoever we think should be the only hero in that category, Louise Bennett or Bob Marley for example. The people we give basket to carry water and who sometimes come back fe haunt we like Prince Buster's, Hard Man Fe Ded.
HE GAVE MUCH BACK
Ted had a dream for the Ward Theatre and confessed his frustration to the end that he was simply not facilitated to make that dream a reality. I was with him when he launched "A Pleasant Sunday Afternoon" there about two years ago.
It thrilled him to see ordinary Jamaican citizens in the audience and on the stage. He let it be known that building Jamaica and maintaining a tradition of excellence was about a deliberate policy to train and expose new talent:
"One person by demself cyaan be a tradition." Anything less than consciously facilitating succession, that is failure to facilitate interaction between the achievers and the wannabes, was viewed by Ted as paving the way for mediocrity, a short-sighted sowing of the wind. Furthermore, traditions need to be maintained and sometimes that means finding money, not slashing budgets.
Ted was also a member of 'Jack Mandora', the Storytelling Association of Jamaica. He was very generous with his living room as a meeting space. Very generous with his critical ear and experienced eye as a guide to the storytellers, even if he felt more comfortable in creating rather than telling the tale.
His life and work and the conditions under which he laboured to achieve so much speak to what is needed for more people in this country to excel in education and in the arts. Stop play football wid dem as if we do not understand that before we can say 15 per cent, their combined returns to present, not to mention future generations, have already multiplied exponentially.
The people want facilities. They want outlets for their skills and talents. They want to be paid for the quality of the work they do and they want to be given opportunities to pass on what they know. They should be rewarded in a way that allows them to live with dignity. Not having to worry about where to live or how to pay JPSCo would be a good beginning. Facilitating greatness is part of what it means to put Jamaica first. It means recognising with my friend, the poet Mbala, that "there are more heroes than Nanny." Other wise, we lose our history and our culture with the passing of the one-one people with the in-your-face-tenacity of Ted Dwyer and Louise Fraser-Bennett. On top of which we never develop the internal resources which Professor Barry Chevannes identified at the JCDC Heroes Week panel discussion as critical to our ability to protect ourselves from globalisation.
Let us love Ted and Louise enough to spare other artists and educators their trials just to make a contribution. And let us acknowledge the role of the artists in Jamaica in bridging the gap between rich and poor, not just locally, but in keeping Jamaica out of the international poor-house.
