THE EDITOR, Sir:
I WRITE to congratulate Pauline Bain for her courage in drawing to the attention of the recent Caribbean Teachers Conference in Ocho Rio, the dangers of the Anancy syndrome in our primary education system. This originated, she tells me, from a similar call I made in a speech to Mico teachers at a symposium in October, last year, to mark the 150th anniversary of this venerable institution. This speech was subsequently reprinted in The Gleaner and those who oppose its reasoning should note that the title of my talk was not 'Anancy versus Pinnochio' but 'Anancy and Pinnochio' - a subtle but important difference.
In my address to the teachers I put the issue this way. "Any steps we can take in our educational agenda to stimulate national awareness of ethical values deserve priority. In our primary schools, we need teachers who can stimulate the imaginations of their pupils and who are sensitive enough to explain to the children the difference between Anancy and Pinnochio, and honest enough to explain why Pinnochio, although not Jamaican, is a better role model.
The message of an Anancy story, it seems to me, is that to lie, cheat and trick, will be rewarded in our everyday lives - an attitude reinforced these days by some politicians, private sector spokesmen and labour leaders. The example given by Pauline Bain at the conference, where Anancy tricks his way into a cricket match for free, is a good one. Contrast this with the Pinnochio story which is that you cannot get away with telling a lie, not because of some external force or authority figure, but by one's own self-actuated conscience which will cause your nose to grow and reveal to all your fall from grace.
Anancy is a quintessentially selfish and lazy person, always out for himself rather than the community, and when children, already exposed to a suffocating level of corruption, see his chicanery venerated in school, this hardly helps to promote proper "values and attitudes" in their formative years. Is this the sort of moral confusion we want to perpetuate in our education system?
When I was a small boy at Alpha, the Anancy syndrome was balanced by the values which the good nuns espoused and the general moral tone of the society. In later years, a beneficiary of higher education, I was able to put Anancy into historical context, to deal with him as an historical character, separate and apart from the cynicism and fraud inherent in his philosophy and the tactics he employed or felt forced to employ during slavery.
As far back as 1994, in an essay entitled: "On being perfectly honest" published in Vistas, I pointed out that slavery in Jamaica and elsewhere developed a camouflage of language to save slaves from unjust accusations, to gain some small advantage or simply to mock the slave owners to their faces. This Anancy syndrome, I contended, was in technical terms a lie which served its purpose in a particular time of history, but I suggested that it was foolish to use the same tactics to fool ourselves now that we are free citizens of an independent Jamaica.
Language is the coin of communication between the State and the citizens. When language is debased by Anancy lies and half-truths, when true rhetoric, which is the art of persuasion, deteriorates into propaganda, which is the art of manipulation, language is depreciated and devalued even lower than the national currency. In a small and troubled country like Jamaica, maintaining the exchange rate of truth is more important and a higher priority than defending the exch-ange rate of the dollar or some sentimental attachment to a tradition which has now spent itself.
In the Mico speech, my comments about Anancy were incidental to the larger issue I was dealing with, namely the general decline in education and the general collapse of ethical values in our society. Anancy is not the root or only cause of this collapse but he is a powerful symbol of it and as such should be replaced with new and positive fables. Anancy himself may not be worth all the fuss, but the cumulative method, manner, and honesty with which we debate issues of this kind or the controversial Garvey film, to cite another example, reflect the temperature of our national psyche and produce a record from which future generations will be able to judge our maturity and the appropriateness of the emotional and intellectual energies brought to the discussions.
In an attempt to set an agenda for the Anancy and other similar debates, I set out below certain principles which provide a background for my arguments and which will disclose to supporters and opponents alike where I am "coming from", as the saying goes.
1. I am a white Jamaican who has lived as a minority in a black country for seventy years, happy to entrust to my black brothers responsibility for their destiny, and mine, since Independence.
2. I am not a moral relativist. I believe in a core objective moral order, difficult as it may be in particular circumstances to define it. This objective moral order springs from no particular religion or culture but manifests itself universally in the ethical imperative, "Do unto others as you would have them do to you".
3. I do not believe that two wrongs make a right. Two wrongs only make a worse. Because one culture or nation has committed a moral outrage is no justification for another culture or nation to commit similar debasement. There can be no epiphanies in a retributive theory of history.
4. I do not believe in "Heritage Hubris", which is to say that one can be proud of one's roots without denying that there may be some weeds in the garden. For example, I do not subscribe to female clitoral circumcision despite the cultural mores which may have encouraged it over the years in certain parts of Africa. On the other hand, not everything that comes out of America or Europe is, ipso facto, bad any more than everything that comes out of Africa is ,ipso facto, bad. One can condemn British colonialism without denigrating Shakespeare or the rule of law; one can abhor racism in America without detracting from the idealism of its Constitution. A culture is not a civilisation. No culture can claim to be perfect; all cultures are victims of their own excesses.
The Anancy syndrome is only one of many problems which Jamaica is facing at this time. What was once a means to an end, is no longer appropriate for a black nation facing the new challenges of its destiny. It is time to say good-bye to Anancy in our schools, to be reminded of him only as a quaint curiosity, no longer a suitable role model for our children.
I am, etc.,
DR. RALPH THOMPSON
ralph@cwjamaica.com
