The labour history of Trinidad and Tobago is more reflective of its reality than just its laws and regulations although even they reflect it in a way far deeper than ordinances only hint at.
It has not been a happy one. From a tribal beginning with the Taino culture, a tough sustenance existence, surviving through extended dry season droughts when fish could be the main or only source of food. Through hurricanes, earthquakes, raids from other equally hungry tribes, life, as the man said, could be: “nasty, brutish and short.”
Then the people in the big boats came from foreign.
They were greeted with awe and welcome, assumed by the people to be god-like, full of knowledge and wisdom that would bring blessings, benefits in abundance and new knowledge to share.
They are still saying that, aren’t they? And we are still assuming they must mean it, coming from 40 degrees north as they do, don’t we?
They were indeed bringing new things: smallpox, syphilis, medical technologies that could control and cure (which is what they always said) new gods to worship according to the ones in black robes, and knives and guns and more guns by which they could control.
Then began the cycles of coercion, slavery, forced labour of many other different kinds, abduction of children (for their own good, of course) who would be used and abused, especially the well-formed and nubile ones.
Things didn’t change all that much for women. They had always been subordinated to the will and use of men who were larger and stronger and dominated, if I read Kim Johnson’s account of the indigenous people correctly.
It was nature’s way, wasn’t it? That is why they were used for procreation and nurturing so the tribe could increase even when the men went out to fight the other tribes. When the other tribe won, the women were just given, or traded to another tribe, and the race would go on.
Women were good for other stuff too, like nutrition and pottery and designs of beadwork. And they passed on the instinct to love and to nurture.
Over time when there was peace, the creative genes in men, more than warriors, always had time for evolving and expression.
Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at Harvard, in Trini terms wrote about “the smarts” inherent in human brains.
They are: spatial, used for building things; naturalist: agricultural, and horticultural; musical: composition, “choirs of angels;” logical/mathematical what the minister calls “science”; existential: understanding what life is all about; interpersonal: leadership/diplomacy/politics; kinesthetic physical abilities/rhythm/“ball sense;” linguistic: the ability to communicate in different languages; and perhaps the rarest of all: intra personal. As the prophet said: “know thyself.”
The purpose of education is to encourage, develop and expand these. The wise encourage them, not rigidly control or suppress them. People – parents, religious leaders, politicians and our education system often try to, though. They use whatever is at hand.
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