Essay 1 Caribbean Lit PDF

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As exploration turned into colonization in the Caribbean, the British brought changes to virtually every facet of the land and its people. From education and culture to economics and politics-- British goods, ideas, and customs shaped the changing region to what it is today. Under Britain authority, Caribbeans were conditioned to believe that they were inferior. According to Dr. E.J.R. David, a leading scholar in psychology, colonial mentality can lead to low self-esteem and lower life satisfaction because colonized people are taught that everything about them are less than. This mentality was imposed by forcing Caribbeans to disconnect from their land, culture, and community through colonial education. “The colonial system produced the kind of education which nurtured subservience, self-hatred, and mutual suspicion… Society was a racial pyramid: the European minority at the top, the Asian in the middle, and Caribbeans forming the base. The education system reflected this inequality.”(Katrak, 63). Merle Hodge emphasizes class divisions, U.S influence and the impact of British on education in her novel Crick Crack

 he novel follows a young girl and her life in Trinidad. The child, Tee, lives in a Monkey. T society where there is powerful oppression between certain social and cultural values and, as storyteller, she relates her personal dilemmas in that context. Tee was initially underprivileged in her society till she was granted the opportunity of getting an education, which only invited a feeling of alienation from her indigenous culture and linguistic frameworks. By telling the story of Tee’s identity crisis and upheaval, Merle Hodge illustrates the danger of the colonial education system and how it denigrates indigenous cultures creating conflict for young students of color.

Caribbean children, like Tee, who have obtained an English education face various difficulties including finding their identity and adjusting to the demands of their native traditions. As Tee’s exposure to colonial education progressed, she ultimately separates herself from her Afro-Caribbean reality and identity. She learns to value the world she finds in her classroom books, an English world very different from her own. When Tee reached Third Standard, she invented an imaginary friend called Helen. Tee imagines Helen as her double; only different in that H  elen spends “her summer holidays at the seaside with her aunt and uncle, who had a delightful orchard with apple trees and pear trees”(Hodge, 67). Helen was proper, fair, wore shoes and socks and did all the things that were considered normal in British standards. Through colonial education, Tee is taught characters such as “Helen” are superior. Consequently, Helen’s fancied orchard filled with apple trees replaces the real breadfruit tree in Tee’s reality. She also tries to wear socks and shoes from the moment she wakes up in the morning. The influence of a colonial education, causes Tee to disconnect from her Caribbean culture, norms, and community. She experiences conflict when her desired reality cannot be achieved in her Afro- Caribbean life. When Tee tries to imitate an English girl, she is mocked by her household. Mikey, another one of Tantie’s wards, mocks her calling her “Ma-Davis”. Tantie argues “Look, Madam, when yhu start to wash yu own clothes then yu could start to play the monkey”(Hodge, 68). Meaning you can only play the role of an English girl if you wash the one pair of socks you own daily--the resources for Tee’s imagined identity aren’t even assebile. In this passage, Merle Hodge illustrates the danger of an English education because it can teach a developing child that their Caribbean reality isn’t good enough. The colonial education system d oesn’t provide an inclusive

and intellectually moving curriculum- resulting in states of exclusion and alienation inside and outside of the learning environment. In the novel Crick Crack Monkey, Tee is taught the same education as the colonizer because it was supposed to “civilize” her. Children receiving a European education are taught European things, and consequently acquire European culture. Tee’s r eading career "began with A for Apple, the exotic fruit that made its brief and stingy appearance at Christmastime," she then learned about strange characters called Jack and Jill and Little Boy Blue, the whole time questioning "what, in all creation, was a 'haystack'?". In addition, she sat wondering why Little Miss Muffet "sat eating her curls away." Through all this confusion, if she lacked understanding, or misbehaved, she was beaten; her schoolmaster would often whip children's hands when they were disobedient. How can children learn efficiently if the curriculum provided is not inclusive to their culture and environment? Caribbean students receiving a colonial education cannot personally connect to the material they study on a daily basis, forcing confusion and alienation. In this novel, Tee illustrates how an English education can create a complex and hostile learning environment for Caribbean students. Colonial documents that justify “negro education” state that the production of “a civilized community will depend entirely on the power of their minds.” Colonizers imposed a colonial education to tape into the minds of the oppressed. In order to shape the Caribbean in the way they desired, they had to control what was presented in the classrooms. This way, with people feeling inferior and excluded, the British can have more control over the population. A colonial education is dangerous because it separates Caribbean students from their own culture. Students like Tee receiving a colonial education are taught

lessons and principles that do not pertain to them, making their learning experience unproductive. During times of oppression for black and brown people, colonial education was “necessary” in order to aid the control over an area and its population. The study of the English language and culture was taught to bring feeling of inferiority and exclusion. Ketu Katrak argues that such alienations are experienced in conditions of mental exile within one's own culture to which, given one’s education, one un-belongs. Like Tee in Crick Crack Monkey, a colonial education can make a Caribbean student disconnect from their culture and community. As Tee gained an education she began to feel excluded and disconnected from her Afro-Caribbean reality-- she began to admire the characters in her books and aspire to be like them. The content of an education system that places England as the center of the universe is dangerous because it degenerates indigenous cultures and creates conflict for developing students.

Works Cited

Katrak , Ketu. “‘This Englishness Will Kill You’: Colonial(Ist) Education and Female Socialization in Merle Hodge's Crick Crack Monkey, and Bessie Head's Maru.” "This Englishness Will Kill You": Colonial(Ist) Education and Female Socialization in Merle Hodge's Crick Crack Monkey, and Bessie Head's Maru , Feb. 1995, pp. 62–77.

Hodge, Merle, and Roy Narinesingh. Crick Crack, Monkey. Waveland Press, 2013....