Colonial Education 




Public Education in the English-speaking Caribbean had its genesis in the Negro Education Grant
(1845). The British Government granted a specific sum of money for the education of the ex-slaves
on an annual basis for the next ten years. The money was to be used to help build schools, procure
the necessary equipment and pay the teachers. The Church was selected as the appropriate body to
provide education for the masses. 



The emphasis at that time was on elementary education. The colonial government in particular and
the society in general had a very limited view of the purpose of public education. It was seen as a
path to ‘moral reform’ for the masses, rather than a means of climbing the social ladder. They
believed that it was essentially to make good labourers and respectful citizens of the masses. On the
other hand, secondary education was seen as the ‘privilege’ of the middle and upper classes. 



Colonial society believed in force as a way of controlling the masses. Corporal punishment was
therefore used in schools. Students were beaten with whips, belts and even bamboo sticks.



The main teaching method was repetition or rote learning where students continuously repeated
what the teacher said until the teacher was satisfied that the students had committed information to
memory. There figured many songs and poems about European life or culture, and very little about
the world that lay around these students— the Caribbean. 



The curriculum was of little relevance to the students, and ignored significant aspects of their daily
lives. For example, Students would learn within one environment filled with foreign sensibilities,
and then return to their home environment where everyone spoke creole languages. Textbooks were
imported from England and later from the United States. They contained material, phrases and
images that were foreign to the average Caribbean child, for example, words such as ‘snow’,
‘reindeer’, etc. Education played a major role in shaping cultural values. It created a taste for the
Eurocentric, and later American, lifestyles while at the same time ignoring the creole culture. 



Education also suffered from financial constraints. Colonists did not invest much in education.
Classes were usually short on furniture and equipment. Often times there were not enough buildings
to house the school’s activities. 



Colonial education significantly affected the Caribbean, by not only this lack of resources, but in
the cultural orientation of many Caribbean people toward places outside of their own countries and
region. It also paved the way for a predilection for goods, landscapes and cultures of the metropole,
thereby creating a demand for foreign goods and foreign ways of being, that continues to facilitate a
relationship of dependency that dates back to the European settlement and colonisation of the
Caribbean during the 15th and 16th centuries. This problem persists in slightly different ways, even
today.