Education For Development Or Underdevelopment Guyana S Educational System And Its Implications For The Third World

How critical is education in the development struggle of a third world country? Responding to popular demands for more accessible education, the Guyanese government instituted numerous educational reforms, hoping to promote economic growth in both the modern and the traditional sectors of the economy. Many in the traditional sector, however, saw education as a means of economic advancement, and sought increasingly to move into higher social strata through employment in the modern sector. Consequently, the civil service and private firms gained an oversupply of personnel, while agriculture and small business suffered, and unemployment increased. The author examines Guyana’s educational system from historical, political, social, and economic perspectives, and draws implications for other developing countries.

How critical is education in the development struggle of a third world country? Responding to popular demands for more accessible education, the Guyanese government instituted numerous educational reforms, hoping to promote economic growth in both the modern and the traditional sectors of the economy. Many in the traditional sector, however, saw education as a means of economic advancement, and sought increasingly to move into higher social strata through employment in the modern sector. Consequently, the civil service and private firms gained an oversupply of personnel, while agriculture and small business suffered, and unemployment increased. The author examines Guyana’s educational system from historical, political, social, and economic perspectives, and draws implications for other developing countries.

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This book offers an international perspective of philosophical, conceptual and praxis-oriented issues that impinge on achieving education for all students. It sheds light on the historical, systemic, structural, organizational, and attitudinal barriers that continue to be antithetical to the philosophy and practice of inclusive education within the Caribbean. The first section of the book examines how globalized views of inclusion informed by philosophical ideas from the North have influenced and continue to influence the equity in education agenda in the region. The second section considers how exclusion and marginalization still occur across selected Caribbean islands. It provides both quantitative and qualitative data about the nature and experience of exclusion in selected Caribbean islands, the UK and USA. The third section tackles the practical realities of transforming education systems in the Caribbean for inclusion. In particular, it identifies teacher practices as the main site of interrogation that needs to be tackled if inclusion is to be successful. The fourth and final section examines the contribution of principals and exemplars to the development and advocacy for inclusive education. It discusses how educational leadership is understood, as well as the role of school principals in making inclusion a reality in schools, the challenges experienced and the qualities of education leaders.

Christian Missionaries worked hard to convert immigrants. Their first order of business was to denigrate Hinduism, designate Hindus as heathen, and disparage their culture, food and even attire. Immigrants stubbornly resisted, led by the tiny educated elite, including Brhmaas whom we call Brahmins. Conversion was a failure at least up to the end of the 19th century but picked up a self-generating momentum thereafter. The result is that the share of Hindus in Guyana’s Indian population declined from 83.5 percent in 1880 to 62.8 percent in 2012. The largest portion of the contraction was lost to Christianity. The loss notwithstanding, even a casual observer would conclude that Guyanese Hindus, at home and in the Diaspora, are a very religious people. Many of us do a jhandi or havan once annually; others do the more elaborate and costlier yajña, where everyone is welcome, once or twice in their lifetime. Most of us do a short daily puja – prayers, offerings, reading the stras and listening to bhajan – in our homes. An important, but perhaps unintended, way immigrants countered conversion to Christianity was an unplanned movement towards a “synthesis” that brought Hindus, regardless of caste or sect, under a “unitary form of Hinduism.” The “synthesis” began around the 1870s and was completed by the 1930s to the 1950s. Guyanese Hindus call the unified corpus of religious beliefs and practices that emerged from the “synthesis” Sanatana Dharma. Ramesh Gampat labels it Plantation Hinduism in this path-breaking book. The book argues that the brand of Hinduism practiced is inconsistent with Sanatana Dharma, called Vednta by the more philosophically inclined. Plantation Hinduism features an extraordinary dependence upon purohits (pandits), which has anaesthetized the Hindu mind and render him unable to think, question and inquire when it comes to Dharma. Rituals and bhakti have been degraded and turned into desire-motivated worship; devats have been misconstrued as Brahman rather than as limited manifestation of the one non-dual pure Consciousness; belief in the multiplicity of gods encourages image worship; and superstitions anchor Guyanese Hindus to tradition and mere belief. Plantation Hinduism is little more than desire-motivated actions, dogmas and superstitions. Absent is the idea that Sanatana Dharma is a spiritual science no less scientific than hard sciences, such as physics and astronomy. The central message of Vednta is the innate divinity of every person and the freedom to realize that divinity through anubhava, direct personal experience of Supreme Reality.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A deeply engaging history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the world—from the highly acclaimed author of 1491. • "Fascinating...Lively...A convincing explanation of why our world is the way it is." —The New York Times Book Review Presenting the latest research by biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In this history, Mann uncovers the germ of today's fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars. In 1493, Mann has again given readers an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.

Originally published in 1984, this is a documented account of the political history of the former British colony of Guyana. Providing a reflection of the increasing involvement of the United States in the Caribbean and Central America on the long-term political, social and economic effect that intervention can have on the small states of less developed countries during the period of 1945 to 1983. The text includes a detailed historical account of post-World War II politics and moves onto the emergence of the nationalist movement in Guyana in the late 1940s and the cold war period of the 1950s; concluding with the consequences both politically and economically in the 1980s.