On Honour

I've got a colleague at COB who gives his students questions like the following at the beginning of every semester and asks the class to discuss the answers together:

1. You find a wallet on the ground. In it are a BEC bill for $80 and four twenty dollar bills. What do you do?
2. You just came home from a long day at work and you are starving. Nothing is open, and you are far too tired to cook. You find that your brother has cooked dinner, and you ask him to give you some. He agrees, but says that he wants you to give him your share of your inheritance in return. What do you do?
3. You are a bright young person from a poor Family Island home. You want to go to university but you can't afford it. One day you meet a man who invites you to make delivery of a consignment of drugs, and promises you enough money to put you through the first two years of college. What do you do?
4. You have been accused of a crime you have not committed, and for which you will be put to death. So far, you have protested your innocence, but no one will believe you. Finally you are told that if you confess your life will be spared, and, even better, if you name your accomplices, you could be set free. You have no accomplices. What do you do?

At first glance, it would seem as though these questions are tests of people's honesty. They are, but they also reveal something even more fundamental: the idea of honour, of what an individual stands for. This is an idea that appears to be hopelessly out of date, but it crops up again and again, especially among people who work with the delinquent, the battered, the troubled, the addicted. These professionals call it self-esteem, and suggest it's as rare a commodity as pink pearls in conch shells.

Let me tell you three stories. I made none of them up. The first is the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob and Esau are twins, though they couldn't be more different. Esau's the eldest, and according to the tradition of the time, he's supposed to inherit his father's land. But he's also greedy, and so when he comes across Jacob cooking a meal, he asks for some of the meal (the Bible calls it pottage, but it could just as well be steam chicken and peas and rice), and Jacob demands his birthright in exchange. Esau, governed by his stomach, sells the birthright for a plate of food — or, in the classical language of the King James' translation, "for a mess of pottage".

The second is the story of Othello, the Moor of Venice. As Shakespeare writes it, Othello's a North African general in the Venetian army. He falls in love with Desdemona, a senator's daughter, and marries her over her father's objections. It's a tale about jealousy and prejudice, but it also deals with reputation, honour and gullibility, as Shakespeare makes clear in two crucial speeches. In one, Othello demotes his lieutenant, Cassio for alleged drunken behaviour. Cassio's response is unusual. He doesn't appear to care about his position or the loss of his job, but rather about the blow to his reputation: "I have lost the immortal part of myself, Iago," he says, "and what remains is bestial." In the other, Iago says "Good name in man and woman is the immediate jewel of their souls. Who steals my purse steals trash, but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed."

The third is Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, written about the Salem witch-hunts in response to the Communist "witch-hunts" in the USA during the 1950s. John Proctor, a farmer, is sentenced to die because he has been accused of consorting with the Devil. This is not unusual; most of the wealthiest and most successful farmers in the village have been similarly accused, and the only thing that can save them from being put to death as witches is to confess their sin and to repent. The thing is, few, if any, of these people are actually guilty; but in order to save their lives several of them have confessed and named other people as having ties to Satan. John Proctor is innocent, but he considers signing his name to a false confession — not because he is afraid to die, but because he doesn't believe he is worthy of martyrdom. But he cannot go through with it, and chooses death instead. Why? "Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!"

We live in an age and in a country where choices like Cassio's and John Proctor's seem ludicrous. We may not be as stupid as Esau, but when we read his story we tend to focus more on the poor exchange he made — surely he could have got so much more for that birthright — than on the fundamental morality that guided his choice. We are, after all, a very practical people, and many of us, I suspect, would go the way of Esau if the price were right.

Let's return to the situations presented at the beginning of this article. In every instance, what we would choose to do is governed by our personal sense of honour — our self-respect, the value we place on our good name. What would each of us would do in situations where no one (but God) can see us, judge us, or put us in jail? Because our God is a forgiving God, many of us tend to choose what is convenient, confident that if we slip, God will catch us and stand us back up. But we neglect to realize that the choice we make tells us, and the world, a good deal about what we think of ourselves, how much we value our names. Are we, like Esau, so careless of our own honour that we would sell it for some short-term, if satisfying goal? Or do we, like Cassio or John Proctor, believe in a part of ourselves that is more important than food, money, or life itself?

I've met a whole lot of Esaus in my life. But I'm also fortunate to have been raised around people for whom personal honour is imperative, for whom the activities of Cassio and John Proctor are inspirations, not puzzles. They're the kind of people whose sense of honour governs them in the small as well as the great; they would as little dream of putting their name to substandard work as sign their names to a lie. I haven't met many people who have been faced with the kind of choice that John Proctor makes, but honour can be won or lost on much more everyday issues; on how one behaves when one is under pressure, on what kinds of little choices one can make in more down-to-earth situations, such as whether to return the wallet or to turn the drug-dealer down. They know what the old people used to know: if you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything.

So it comforts me to know that even here, in the Bahamas, where many decisions are made by looking over a shoulder to see who's watching, and even now, in the twenty-first century, where one's conscience is an unpopular guide (it can get you into trouble with pastors, or voters, or talk-show pundits), people like Cassio still exist. They refuse to be like Esau, looking for the quick reward. They still pray not to be led into temptation rather than to be saved from the time of trial, because simply to remind themselves of temptation places the responsibility for honourable behaviour in their courts. Their reputations matter more to them than their bank accounts; and they aim to be John Proctors, and die with their honour intact.

On Critical Thinking

A man and his son are driving home one day when they get into a terrible accident. The man dies on the way to the hospital, but the son can be saved by emergency surgery. The surgeon on duty takes one look at the boy and walks out of the theatre, saying to the nurses: "I can't operate. That's my son."

This is an old chestnut, but effective. Some of us at COB, when teaching our students about logic, include it as a test of their critical thinking skills. When you know the trick, the answer is obvious, but otherwise it seems to be baffling. Again and again we find that students don’t see through the problem, can’t see what becomes obvious the moment you realize that the point from which you start to reason is fundamental to the solution of the puzzle.

The answer, of course, is that the surgeon’s a woman. I’ve seen the problem posed with a pilot (different scenario; the man and his son are passengers on the plane), but it doesn’t really matter; the trick lies in the assumptions you hold in order to arrive at your conclusion. People who are too blinded by their own assumptions, who have limited their ability to see the world from various angles, are going to be stumped by these and other problems requiring critical thinking.

During the first Gulf War, I had the pleasure of being homeroom teacher to a group of ninth graders, who were enthusiastic, imaginative, and troublesome because they were so bright. One day, during a class discussion about current affairs, one particularly intelligent young woman asked me why the CIA hadn't assassinated Saddam Hussein yet, why they were sending all those soldiers to the Gulf when all they had to do was send one sniper.

"It's not as easy as you think," I replied. “They’d have to get in range of him without being killed first.”

"Oh, no," she told me. "The Americans have this gun that they can use to scope out a person miles and miles away. They could be in Israel and they could still shoot Saddam in Iraq."

After I collected my teeth from the floor, I asked her where she got her information. Her answer: a television show. And not a news programme or anything like that — a popular action programme on the level of McGyver.

"Oh, yes," I told her. "And by the way, tell your parents I know somebody who has a bridge to sell."

They didn't get it, so a couple of days later I told the class a deliberate lie. It was a good lie; it began with a truth, and twisted it and added things so that it sounded believable but was completely false. Being the enthusiastic and imaginative students that they were, they believed me.

A day or so later I told them the truth. There was silence, and then a hand crept up.

"But Miss Bethel," said its owner, "yesterday you said—"

"I know," I said. "I lied."

I know there are those of you out there who are probably aghast at my action. After all, a teacher who lies to her students is betraying a sacred trust. I agree with you. That's why I did it. You see, I believe that the greatest gift I can give any group of young minds is the ability to think critically. And the first step to critical thinking is the refusal to take anything — no matter who tells it to you — at face value.

The most important question, I believe, that a person can ask herself about any "fact" is: how do I know? Sadly, though, it is one of the rarest questions asked. I am continually astounded by the students I meet at the College of The Bahamas whose information-hoard consists of nuggets gleaned from church, American television, close friends, and radio talk shows. Too many of them rely on tabloid newspapers for their "factual" information; too many of them believe that the more emphatically a person makes a statement the more true that statement is; too many of them judge the correctness of an idea on the basis of the position of the person who has the idea. Almost none of them have taken the time to find out for themselves.

I believe that one reason why it is becoming so difficult to find people in the service industry who, when confronted with a problem, can solve it without resorting to their superiors, is that we are not training our children or ourselves to be critical thinkers. It is possible to argue that this passivity has some historical basis — after all, for the slaves from whom many of us are descended it was as much as their lives were worth to ask "Why?" — but I would like to give our ancestors more credit than that. It takes a critical thinker to act spontaneously, to trust his own judgement enough to make a decision, to satisfy a customer without passing the buck. People who have spent their whole lives accepting without question what others have told them, doing as they are told, repeating procedures exactly as they learned them, are unprepared to cope with the unexpected. When faced with something unusual, these people become helpless.

Now I am not advocating anarchy here; far from it. I am advocating understanding the whys of the world. Rather than simply following instructions, it is healthy, it is crucial, to understand why those instructions make sense. Children know this to be true; anyone who has tried to give a two-year-old a direct order will recognize that it is human to ask "Why?" Now I know I am flying in the face of generations of accepted wisdom. I too have read the Royal Reader story about the little girl playing on the train track who, when her mother called her, obeyed at once, thereby missing being killed by a train. But I am not convinced that teaching children to be unquestioningly obedient is a good thing; it creates sheep, not people.

In the classroom, I do my best to show my students the benefits of critical thought. In my classroom, I tell them, I am the ultimate sceptic; my mind is a blank slate, and I believe nothing that they have not demonstrated to be valid. And when I challenge them with what seem to me to be simple questions — how do you know Cable Bahamas owes ZNS money that it hasn't paid? How do you know that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for homosexual activity? How do you know that Iraq is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction? How do you know that the constitution says that the Bahamas is a Christian nation? — and their answers are Because the talk show host/my pastor/CNN/my uncle said so, I know that it's time to start telling them some careful, believable lies.

Because the answers to these questions are actually quite simple. It takes very little to pick up the telephone and check up on a "fact" that a newspaper has reported. All one needs is a Bible and a concordance to find out all that the Holy Book has to say about any topic at all. The Bahamian Constitution can be purchased for a few dollars, or can be found in the Archives or any public library; and the BBC and the CBC will provide very different views of world affairs than American-run news agencies. We are fortunate enough to be living in a wealthy nation in the Information Age; to be ignorant is a matter of choice. So if my students choose to believe the lies I craft for them, and they don't check my facts for themselves, then they deserve to be duped.

Here's another brainteaser.

A prosecutor is questioning two witnesses. The first one tells nothing but lies; the second one tells nothing but the truth. What single question can the prosecutor ask them to find out which is which?

Don't worry if you can't figure it out. The answer's out there, if you know where to look for it.

On Quality

Last Monday the National Art Gallery opened at Villa Doyle. For those of you who don't know, Villa Doyle is the big yellow house at the junction of West Street and West Hill Street, in town, opposite the St Francis' Catholic Cathedral and just up the hill from Educulture.

It is the best thing the Bahamian government has given the Bahamian people in a long, long time.

Now let me be clear. I'm not talking about the fact that we have an art gallery, that the Bahamian government has established a place where Bahamian artists can showcase their art, although that is fundamental and important. I'm not talking about the institution.

I'm talking about its execution.

It is rare, you see, for me to go into something built or run by government funds and feel as though those funds are being spent on creating or maintaining something of quality. Government offices are all too often rabbit warrens, soul-deadening places full of cubicles and partitions and stained ceiling tiles and half-working artificial lights. Government schools start out looking bright and clean and fresh, and in ten years become run-down and dog-eared. Even a place like the General Post Office, which was an impressive building when it was new, a fine example of the architecture of the time and an innovative use of space, is showing its age. It's younger than I am, but the eastern stairway is treacherous already, even deadly to people in fancy shoes.

But the building that houses the Art Gallery is 140 years old and absolutely beautiful.

The minute I placed my foot on the bottom step of the main entrance, I knew something was different. I felt as though I was not standing on something Bahamian, something built with government funding. I felt as though I was in some other country, where institutions routinely spend money making things just right, not because some tourist is going to set foot in it, but because the project and the people to whom the project is directed are worth it. It was a treacherous feeling — I am a firm believer in the talents and the abilities of my fellow Bahamians — but it was real.

Because, you see, it's rare that I've been inside anything that has been built in Nassau in the last decade or so and known that it was well done. Beauty, quality, polish — these do not seem to be ideals that we have subscribed to for a long, long time. We are far more accustomed to functionality and expediency.

Now I know that the general wisdom tends to question the value of beauty and quality. When things need to get done, they need to be done quickly, and got out of the way. They need to be able to serve people when service is needed; beauty and polish are luxuries that can rarely be afforded. Government isn't in the business of being pretty. Government is in the business of providing large numbers of people with services that they can't otherwise get, and it don't have time for the frills.

I will concede that there's something to be said for the urgency that pervades many of the public ventures with which we have learned to live. Many of the things our governments offer us are long overdue, and we're running to catch up. We live in a country that started out behind. In 1964, when we got internal self-government, and in 1968, when we got true majority rule, we were far behind the rest of the Caribbean in terms of basic provisions for the mass of the Bahamian people. Education, health care, public works and utilities, roads — the basic, basic infrastructure of a country — were limited to very specific sectors of the Bahamian archipelago and society, and the first governments had a lot of ground to cover. Cover it they did, and wonderfully, all in the matter of a decade or two, and we are all the better for it.

But there's a downside. It turns out that expediency isn't all that matters; thirty years down the line, we're learning that just getting the job done today doesn't always work for the future. Think of the chunks of ceiling that have fallen down on workers and patrons in the airport, or the killer sidewalk that throws people down by the Straw Market in Cable Beach. For far too long we have inhabited a country that works on the principle that's shared by certain Junkanoo artists when going to Bay: if the front is pretty enough, nobody will look too hard at the back, and nobody will see that what looks like paste is felt, or that it's just cardboard beneath that patch of glitter, or that (heaven forfend) the costume is finished with spraypaint. Nothing matters much as long as we get there. Thirty years down the line, we're realizing that looking good up front may be fine for a single rush, but the flam doesn't hold up in the long run.

We're starting to realize that being interested in nothing more than getting it done actually disrespects as much as it serves.

It disrespects because it works on the assumption that getting the job done is all that matters. How that job is done, how well it's maintained, and how long it lasts, are not important. It disrespects because it assumes that the majority of the Bahamian people don't care about quality, that all that matters is having the service in place. It disrespects because it assumes that the ordinary person doesn't appreciate beauty, that because poor people can't afford quality they don't deserve it, and that all there is to a job is a speedy finish, usually in time to for a general election.

And it disrespects, fundamentally, because it teaches us Bahamians that we are not worth the best the country has to offer. Because we are Bahamian, grass-roots, regular people, poor people, down-home people, perfection is not for us. We all do fine just getting by.

The National Art Gallery changes all that. For the first time in decades, the government has given the Bahamian people an institution that has been restored and polished and finished to perfection. Elementary details have not been overlooked. Light switches are not crooked, doorknobs are free of paint smudges, floor tiles are even, locks and handles have not been installed upside-down. Even special touches can be seen: the mouldings of doors and baseboards are beautifully turned, the wood floors shine. These are not altogether necessary for the functioning of the gallery, but they are beautiful; the whole thing smacks of quality and beauty and perfection. And it's not for the tourists. It's for us.

And why is this important? It's important because we need reminding that we are worth the best that we have to offer — that all Bahamians are precious enough in the sight of our governments to be given institutions that are beautiful, that quality is not just something we reserve for the tourists. It's important, because a people that is respected learns to respect itself. If we are given institutions that strive for perfection, then we will strive for perfection too.

So this is a celebration, and a charge. It's a celebration of the quality of the new National Art Gallery, and a charge that, from here on in, when we create public institutions, we pay attention to their quality as well as their function. It's a post in anticipation of the great national institutions that are yet to come; and it's a call to the people who plan these things to remember that placing quality over expediency, just sometimes, is not the worst thing in the world.

On Education

Contrary to popular wisdom, I think television is a great tool. I watch a lot of it. I am married to a director who is always doing research. Because we don’t have an active theatre scene in the country any more (something which bears discussion, but not now), he keeps his hand in and his mind tuned by watching the best television programmes he can. And I watch them with him.

Recently, one of the programmes we watch reminded me of a quotation that I’ve heard on occasion, but not enough to be always with me. It was this:

Good teachers instruct. Great teachers inspire.

I like that.

Every semester, you see, I walk into classes full of students who are straight out of high school. They sit in the classroom, prepared to be bored, with pens at the ready (if I’m lucky) to catch what wisdom drops from my lips and stash it in their exam-hoard, ready to suck it in and vomit it back up in fourteen weeks’ time. Their purpose: to swallow as much knowledge from me as they can hold and use it to mount the next step in the stairway to Jobs.

It drives me crazy.

I am not, for one thing, the possessor of All Wisdom. I am not God (and if I were, I wouldn’t be handing out knowledge like it were candy anyway. When last did God explain the mysteries of the universe to us in language we could all understand?) I am simply a signpost, a gatekeeper, and I can only open up the road. The students have to walk it for themselves.

But they have been taught to sit, wait, that they are little vessels to be filled with the nectar that is poured from the teacher, the pastor, the politician — the big vessel.

But here’s the thing. Good teachers instruct. Great teachers inspire. The quotation draws a distinction between instruction and inspiration, and so shall I. If we go back to the roots of the words, we’ll see that they really mean two very different things.

(I can hear some of you rustling the paper a little impatiently, thinking to yourselves — I knew it, we’re going to have a lesson. But I promise: I’ll keep it short, and try to make it sweet. Bear with me.)

Both words come from the Latin, as many of our abstract concepts do. Both of them are composed in a particularly Latin way: with a base verb at the core, whose meaning has been changed to some degree by the addition of a prefix. The prefix has its own meaning in Latin, and it’s used to enhance the meaning of the root.

Here’s the Latin basis of instruct. The prefix in, which means into or onto, among other things, is added to the base verb struere, to pile/heap. Let’s do the math: in + struere = to pile stuff into/onto something.

Well, that sounds good enough, doesn’t it? After all, that’s what we want to do with our children, our future generations. We want to heap into them what we already know to prepare them for the future.

Don’t we?

Well I don’t know. Let’s have a look at inspire. It’s got the same prefix as instruct, but its core verb is very different: spirare, to breathe. So the sum can be done thus: in + spirare = to breathe into.

I think that sounds better.

I am not at all sure that what we want for our futures are young people who have had information heaped into them as though they are empty grain-sacks waiting to be filled. I think we want people who have had basic values and visions breathed into them, so that they can use what they know to build a new and better world.

I think we want more inspiration, less instruction.

I think we want education.

You see, instruction is not a synonym for education, though many of us seem to believe it is. Parrots and monkeys and performing elephants can be instructed (my apologies to the animal kingdom, which often possesses far more good basic sense than humankind), but I’m not sure they can be educated. Why not?

To educate is the sum of these parts: the prefix ex, which means (among other things) away from or out of, and the verb root ducare which means, roughly to lead. So if we do this math, we find out that ex + ducare = to lead out of/away from.

I like that better. You see, instruction assumes that the people who come before always know better than the people who are coming up now. Now while that may be true in certain areas, and to some degree, it’s not always true by any means, and it’s especially not true in a world that changes every time I blink my eye. In this world, the people who know better could just as well be those who have grown up in it, not those of us whose knowledge was gained in a different place and time. What we know more about is life itself — what it throws at us, what it doesn’t give us. Instruction is not necessarily our best strategy here. What we want to be doing is educating — giving our children the tools they need to lead themselves away from what doesn’t work and into what does.

I began by telling you about television. I want to end with it too. You see, many people consider it mind-rot, an addiction that is as bad for the mind as sin is for the soul, the channel by which foreign corruption is filtered into our unique society. But it doesn’t need to be. If we’ve spent our time and energy on education, we need have no fear. Because then we’ve given our children the skills they need to navigate through any new confusion, and they, like my husband, can continue to sharpen their minds as they watch.