Back in my first semester at UWI I was feeling real good bout
my poetry course. Man, I get 38 out of 40 in my coursework.
You hear thing? And I never even used to “get” poetry,
the thing so damn fuzzy.
Next semester I gone big and bold with chocolates and thing
for my pretty lecturer, expecting to hear how I get 90 and
top the class and going to get prize at graduation and thing.
What! Next thing you know she tell me I get a C—43.
Well I nearly pass out.
“You wrote great essays, Denzil, but you misinterpreted
every poem.”
I make sure and leave with my chocolates.
These kind of experiences give many UWI lecturers a bad
rep. Granted, I does pass madam straight when I see she, but
that’s beside the point.
UWI students like to bad talk lecturers. After writing “Think
blank” in November, a column on critical thinking and
the think tank that is (or isn’t but should be) the university,
honours students and those who just passed through deluged
my inbox with all of their bitter experiences and ruthless
opinions.
Some of them disagreed with my sentiments, saying neither
curricula nor lecturer teaches critical thinking skills. They
pointed to a place grossly lacking in both physical and philosophical
infrastructure which, in their words, does not and can not
inculcate the critical thinking skills every university student
should cultivate.
In fact, they made out UWI professors to be more like high
school teachers.
Them lecturers, I was told, don’t like it when you
tell them a answer that is not their own. They don’t
like it when you talk back and tell them thing that they didn’t
even think of. And they does treat you scant scant when you
do.
So, in the end, students sit and bicker and wait for graduation
day when they can get a job that pays better and return to
laugh tee-hee at the little old lecturers with their whiteboard
markers.
Infertile fruit
The new semester begins tomorrow, and I hope we, UWI students,
learn more than simply what is scribbled on whiteboards. I
hope we learn skills—the techniques with which great
scholars make great findings written about in great books.
These are the skills of drawing in knowledge like fishermen
hauling seine in a never-ending harvest of the repository
of the sea. These are the skills of opening and distending
and stretching the mind’s eye till it quivers with the
tautness of truth, throbbing from the terrible apprehension
of light, on the brink on snapping loose.
These are the skills to which every university student must
become acclimatised and, it is hoped, acquire in the pursuit
of truth.
Scholarship must be understood as not being borrowed books
and plagiarised papers. University must never be seen as simply
a stepping stone to a better career.
Rather, they must for all students constitute vehicles of
release from presentiment, prejudice and fallacy on a road
of empiricism, experiment and evaluation towards reason, sense
and truth.
Armed with these, only then can they truly teach, direct
and lead a people to become a progressive, productive, “developed
nation” of thinkers in a quickening 14 years’ time.
This is, indubitably, the ultimate, nationalistic goal. Otherwise,
the hallowed halls behind campus’ pallid walls will continue
to yield infertile fruit.
I say “continue” despite the ostensible irony
and irreverence, considering what many UWI students think
of their university.
I firmly believe environment determines culture. So, if
the UWI culture is somehow lacking, its very environment must
be revolutionised. And the change must come from the students
themselves.
Be the change
In this regard, I can’t help but broaden my view to
the national. If we, as a nation, got together to make a change,
maybe there actually would be change. If we would question
authority and challenge the establishment, maybe things would
actually be better.
Remember when Manning talked about flogging? Whatever became
of that? Remember when Manning talked about hanging? Whatever
became of that? Remember when Manning talked about Mr Big?
Whatever the hell became of that?
While the people suffer through murder after grisly murder,
Manning wistfully creates his whimsical narratives with all
its twists and turns.
We suffer, and then we move on. We march, and then we pack
up and go home. We bicker and gripe, and then we remember
we have other things to do.
One of my life’s mottos is “make it happen.”
Yes, I know it’s taken from a Mariah Carey song. But
if everyone would make things happen for himself, bit by bit
the change would happen.
Writing my thesis was an epiphany for me. More than any
exam or essay, it was perhaps the first time I had to do everything
on my own. I immersed myself into the research culture, challenged
my preconceived beliefs and tested my hypothesis. In the end,
I created something new, whole and unique. I became a productive
part of UWI’s scholarly tradition.
Thus, I realised that all the talk some students talk is
just that—talk. I, on the other hand, did something.
Instead of running out of an office crying and cussing with
chocolates in hand, I felt the change because I was the change.
