Editorial – September 18, 2015
During this week it suddenly hit – there was a small commentary sent in by one of our past Ministers of Education who continues to articulate on Montserrat. He may have come a long way but he certainly did not consider himself an academic, but a politician. In fact he has been quietly hailed ‘today’ as one of the best Ministers of Government, by some of very top officials who worked with him.
The article was posted in our commentary section captioned; ‘A country without a newspaper is both blind and dumb.’ He was concerned enough to enquire of the status of the newspaper and he made some observations. We were obliged to explain that it was purely a matter of the lack of resources and business from our Government; and he heard some reasons why that may have been so.
The article surfaced and brought to mind, since there was so little of newspaper, not that there is any shortage of some information being made available. The only problem with that, social media, in which we participate and host, do not reach all who deserve to be reached and the content is only interesting to some, if not just one section of people. We will explain that another time.
But most importantly, when one considers the state of affairs today we would well want to consider how we lack integrity. So there is poor governance and a lack basic understanding of what is at hand, a lack of understanding by the people, not through their fault, the state this country has come to…, total misunderstanding of the usefulness, importance and relevance of information and good communication.
Then a government that talked about transparency but up to now does not see that it is there duty to report the state of the country as they found it; that perhaps it is because ‘a country without a newspaper is blind and dumb’ has deep meaning. It is symptomatic of how the people have been conditioned. Truly, there has been for the last several years wicked moves make The Montserrat Reporter irrelevant. Sadly it was that partial successful attempt, and the absence of anything creditably worthwhile about them, ignored or promoted, that helped to cause their failure to convince the people that they blundered and needed time to recover. That the dream could become real.
The same way however, it is the time that this Government now needs to recover. The partnership is already there. Yes, now, overnight it seems they are catching on to that. So cut the rhetoric that has been suggested here and elsewhere. Our action Governor may help see to that. Give us a chance to ignore the ‘ignorance’ which we will continue to condemn. Why did we latch on to the bad in politics, when the opportunity is so vast to be different? And we say we know the scripture! What does it say about bad and good?
One minister complained about study offers being completely neglected. Did anyone enquire how this was promoted, advertised? How many out of one hundred did that information reach? Yes we have become blind and dumb. And we have learnt how to become more selfish – worldlier in our stupidity and still more selfishness. We latch on to economic phrases without knowing their meaning! We study to be ‘something’ or even ‘somebody’, but forget education on the way, failing to understand that education is continuous equipping us for life, leadership citizenship and for eternity!
Who reduced the education budget, and when? The three top guns discussed the education problems on radio. While noting that Montserrat is more than a third below the average budget in the region, not once did they let on that fixing that would begin to solve some of the problems if not all. Of course, you cannot get the best teachers and materials, books etc., if you cannot pay for them. If teachers and students are not comfortable, what will happen to teaching and learning? Explaining the problem and the needs as heard currently without understanding the methods and means to fix them is making the situation all round direr.
