Bahama Pundit

On Art and Truth

by Nicolette Bethel

Ours is a society of liars.

Now before you throw down the paper in disgust and pick up the phone to call your local hit man for me, stop a minute. I'm not talking about the everyday kind of lie, the "my-dog-ate-my-homework" or "no-you-gave-me-a-twenty-not-a-fifty" kind of lie. I'm talking about something far more fundamental than that, something that perhaps we don't think or talk about because we have never been taught to.

I'm talking about the fact that ours is a society that places very little real emphasis on the arts.

The Problems of Bahamian Education

by Larry Smith

"Well into the 20th century...Bahamian education was both backward and socially skewed. Many black Bahamians remained illiterate and only an exceptional few, whose parents could spare them and afford the fees, aspired to any form of secondary education.” -- Michael Craton and Gail Saunders, Islanders in the Stream.

Although church-based schools have been around since the 1700s, it was the need to educate large numbers of emancipated slaves that led to the first "Board of Public Instruction" in 1836.

By the beginning of the 20th century there were half a dozen public schools on New Providence and 38 in the out islands (as well as a few private schools) teaching about 8,000 pupils in all. But over the past century, our education bureaucracy has exploded.

This year alone the government will spend $265 million on scores of public schools (and the College of the Bahamas) to educate more than 50,000 students. Yet experts say this massive investment is producing a growing underclass of functional illiterates who are virtually unemployable.

That's the startling verdict that is consistent with the research commissioned by a respected private sector group called the Coalition for Education Reform. This alliance of key labour and business leaders has been calling for dramatic education reforms over the past three years, but public officials don't seem to be listening.

Here's to the Bootleggers of the Bahamas!

by Larry Smith

Here's to the bootleggers of the Bahamas,
Who sit on rye kegs, resting feet on beer kegs,
Singing 'yes, we want no bananas'.
--bootlegger's toast

Ever heard of the Bahama Queen?

Not a mailboat, but a flesh and blood woman who, for a few years during the "Roaring Twenties", became an international celebrity as a bootlegger in Nassau.

Gertrude Lythgoe was the only woman to hold a wholesale liquor license here - at a time when women were to be seen and not heard. Her autobiography has just been republished - along with the memoirs of several other rum-runners - by Flat Hammock Press, which says its mission is to is "to salvage many of the maritime classics of the past and introduce them and the authors to today’s readers."

Most of these accounts have long been out of print. But now they have been updated for modern readers with added insight, information and photographs. For example, Lythgoe's brief memoir (available in local bookstores or from Media Enterprises)includes the full series of newspaper articles that made her famous.

In those days, the Bahamas was considered a "land of rascals, rogues and peddlers" (no comments from the peanut gallery please). And according to the London Daily News, Bay Street was little more than a row of "crazy old liquor stores, unpainted and dilapidated, (that) have given it the nickname of booze avenue."

School Policing and the Extradition of 90 Knowles

by Craig Butler

Anyone with a conscience must be dismayed at the current state of affairs with the children of our nation. No one would be stupid enough to think that there isn’t a problem with the educational system, so this begs the question of why as parents we refuse to accept that there are behavioural problems with our children.

No-one wants to admit that their child is a nuisance or malfeasant, but they sometimes are. I have seen on many occasions parents come before the courts and speak of their good children, and how the charges against them can’t be correct because their good children wouldn’t do such a thing.

There is nothing wrong in having full faith and confidence in your children, in fact that is a good thing. But when that faith and confidence is based solely on the fact that this is your child and you, the parent, refuse to see what is patently obvious to everyone else, that is where the problems start. You, as the parent, are endorsing the actions of the child.

The Bahamas and the Political Economy of Climate Change

by Larry Smith

(Sustainable development) meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.' -- Brundtland Report, ‘Our Common Future’, UN World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987

With the Bahamas Electricity Corporation about to fork out over $80 million for a new oil-burning power plant on New Providence, it's worth taking a look at the unfolding political economy of climate change to check out our options.

Big conferences on this issue have been held all over the place recently, with more to come. Even George Bush has got into the act - in Australia last week he urged Pacific countries to band together to tackle global warming. And he has invited the world's major polluters to an unprecedented climate change meeting in Washington later this month.

Closer to home, the Caribbean Tourism Organisation will explore the implications of climate change for the region's number one industry at its annual conference in Puerto Rico next month. Featured speakers include a top Canadian contributor to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

And UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will convene an informal high-level event in New York next week to help lay the foundation for a new global consensus on climate change to be constructed at a major conference set for Indonesia in December.

It's all part of a building momentum toward striking a new international deal in an area where "complex science and entrenched ideologies test the limit of our abilities to deal with a great threat," as Australian climatologist Tim Flannery put it.

Is the Bahamas the Best Little Country?

by Craig Butler

Politicians have this idea that we are the best little country in the world. Clearly both sides think this way and I don’t have a problem with that. In fact I would like to think the same way, but then the reality sets in and I have to check myself.

Unfortunately I feel as though we are going nowhere fast. Crime is out of control everyone agrees that is the case. Do you realize that we have had more murders in the Bahamas than has been recorded in all of Ontario Canada so far this year? To top it off, crimes by police officers or those imbued with the public trust seem to be on the rise.

Our education system is in a shambles. Ever since social promotion was adopted sometime in the 1970s we have been fighting a losing battle here. With a national average of D and, according to the experts, no real chance of improving it, we are running full steam ahead towards disaster. I could go on about all that is bad, but I wanted to highlight something that is good.

Freeport Fight Fails Country

by Larry Smith

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
-- Sir Walter Scott

A previous article on the struggle for control of the Grand Bahama Port Authority generated some interesting comments:

"Fred Smith's suit asking the GBPA to hire a town manager and town planners is creative, but misses the larger point - where would they find a competent town manager willing to work in company town, not a real town?

"Why a modern corporation would want to own and operate a company town is beyond my comprehension. Governing a town is a thankless task, and can never turn a profit. That's why (in the US) it's almost always done by an elected local government.

"The notion that the Bahamas is not ready for elected local governments with their own tax and budget authority is also beyond my comprehension. I've worked with plenty of local governments in the US as a consultant. I think their elected officials and staff are, on average, no better and no worse that what you'd get from Bahamian local government.

"Seems to me the new FNM government and the GBPA would both have a strong incentive to make Freeport a showcase for an independent, locally elected and financed municipal government." -- Bob Knaus

*****

Gambier Homecoming Festival Address

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Thank you for inviting me to this opening ceremony of the Annual Homecoming Festival on Gambier Day (August 3) and for the opportunity to share some thoughts with you.

I have lived many places in the Bahamas -- from Inagua to Andros, from Chippingham to Hawkins Hill, and places in between -- but for most of my life my family and I have been living right here in the Gambier neighbourhood.

I cannot lay claim to a connection with the founding fathers of this Village. The boat that brought my African ancestors landed somewhere else. But I can claim to be a resident and a neighbour for nearly 40 years. We are one.

And so I am proud to see the flowering of awareness and the determined efforts to take hold of, to conserve, and to celebrate our cultural and historical heritage here in Gambier.