Queen’s College alumni from the Diaspora, the majority of them old boys from the late 1950s and early 1960s, have already started to arrive for next week’s reunion hosted by the Queen’s College Old Students’ Association (QCOSA).
This year is the 165th anniversary of the founding of QC and it will be the first time since the school’s sesquicentennial in 1994 that a considerable number of old students will gather in Guyana. The reunion will include a Grand Assembly in the QC Auditorium, mentoring sessions with current students, and various social and sporting activities.
One of the driving factors for this reunion appears to have been the realization that for the pre-Independence generation of students, all now men over 60 and with the Grim Reaper adding to his harvest every year, this might be the last opportunity for many to get together again to relive the happy – for many, the happiest – days of their youth, to pay homage to their intellectual and spiritual formation at Queen’s, to celebrate their achievements, to remember classmates whom they will meet no more, and to come together as one, in the relatively new but still hallowed auditorium of their cherished alma mater. Clearly, underlying the sense of nostalgia and celebration, there is a certain poignancy to the event.
But there is also the business of fundraising and support to be considered, as representatives of the various chapters of old students to be found in the UK and North America will review their strategies for continuing to give something back to the school that gave them so much.
Those coming back, however, even if they have been regular visitors to their homeland over the years, will find the school and the nation much changed from the halcyon days of their youth. Of course, the fundamental problem of looking back is that, like Orpheus looking back prematurely for Eurydice as he leads her out of the underworld, golden memories can be subverted irrevocably when nostalgia comes face to face with reality. Next week’s reunion will therefore also have its bitter sweet moments as memories kept alive over the years come under threat from the changed reality of contemporary QC and the fragile reality of life in Guyana.
But let us focus on contemporary QC. Those returning old boys, who knew only the joys of a single sex school, will encounter an almost unrecognizable QC. Taught and mentored by the last expatriate masters from the colonial metropolis, nurtured to Independence by a generation of outstanding Guyanese masters and a few doughty female teachers, the majority of the former themselves old boys, the QC boys of the mid-1950s to 1966 found themselves the beneficiaries of an educational legacy harking back to the public schools and grammar schools of England, and were imbued with an ethos derived from colonial – some would say, old fashioned – and mainly masculine notions of honour, discipline, duty, esprit de corps and the urge to perform to the best of their respective abilities in the classroom, in debating, drama, the arts and the sciences, and on the sports field. The bad old days of the anti colonial creed were arguably, in many respects, the good old days for many QC boys of the era.
Indeed, many of these attitudes and values would carry over to the post-Independence period, right up to the education “reforms” of the Burnham administration in the mid-1970s, culminating in the introduction of co-education in 1975.
And it is co-education that is most visibly responsible for the changed QC that the old boys will encounter, at the same time that the less tangible shift in the country’s moral compass and the natural generational shift that one would reasonably expect would account for the very changed nature of the school today.
The old boys will find a school dominated by female teachers and students – a friendlier, more caring, softer environment perhaps – but a school, in which the traditional male virtues of bonding through sport and mischief, and the honour code of not snitching and taking one’s punishment “like a man”, which used to be peculiar to schoolboys across the British Empire, are in serious decline. In addition, from a school of some 800 boys to one of half that number, the talent pool to sustain QC’s rich heritage in sports like cricket, football, athletics, table-tennis and hockey, has been quite literally decimated.
In academics, moreover, girls now tend to dominate, perhaps a reflection of their natural tendency to mature faster than boys. Without descending into sexist and baseless arguments for why girls are doing better than boys nowadays, it is a fact that boys do not have the role models on the teaching staff and perhaps the accompanying combination of firm discipline and understanding of their motives and urges, to channel their energies into more productive modes of behaviour. Whatever the reason, the times have changed forever.
There is no point therefore in seeking to recreate the past, even as it is celebrated and some aspects yearned for. No, the best thing that the returning alumni can do this coming week is to recognize that change happens and resolve to continue to support the efforts of today’s students and staff to maintain the high standards with which QC has always been associated.
Who knows? By their own contributions, by sharing their experiences and lessons from the past, with sensitivity and understanding, they might help to influence the thinking of this and future generations to maintain an ethos of excellence, rooted in the legacy of the past, but not held captive by it, whilst simultaneously looking resolutely ahead to the challenges of the future. And all while having one heck of a reunion!
If all those QC old boys had stayed, would Guyana have been a better place? We will never know the answer to that question.
Nope. Conservative societies have always demonstrated a remarkable knack for narrow-mindedness and eternal stagnation. :(
QC was systematically destroyed as an institution of excellence by turning into a co-educational institution. The question Mr. MXQBH asks is not the correct one. He should ask what would Guyana be today if QC old boys were not forced to seek greener pastures for their human capital? It reminds one of the old QC student with a Doctorate in Astrophysics. When he returned home he was told by the powers that were at the time: “We aint gat wuk fuh duh kinda education. You betta golang back overseas”. QC must be returned to a single sex institution. One does not destroy a winning formula. Look at QC today it is travesty of once exemplar institution. Shame on Guyana.
OK, thanks patriot. What would Guyana be today if QC old boys were not forced to seek greener pastures for their human capital?
Shame on you for such a sexist and racist statement. I much agree that with the presence of girls in the institution, competition has increased markedly as boys and girls try to prove their academic prowess to each other. Four years in a row, QC has come out on top in the region in CSEC with both boys and girls taking a turn at the top of the pile.
Let us not forget those two famous alumni – LFS Burnham and CB Jagan – and their failed and flawed policy choices rooted in wrong perspectives that have helped to reduce Guyana to the current status of a dankey cart economy. Long live QC and may God bless the graduates and students.
Call a couple more alumini names in the corridors today, tkh.
Dr. Sandy Daily,MD and Dr. Priya Singh,MD……well this paper would not have space for me to mention the many in the environmental, mechanical, electrical, and social services area.
Both the PPP and PNC have what is call an ongoing greedy mentality. Their leadership adresses friends and family nothing more, nothing less.
Guyanese have done very well in America. I cannot speak for the other ABC countries but in America you will find Guyanese Managing in every sector of the American Socity, not only from QC but from NATI,and GTI, many doctors, and from other schools that Guyanese saw a low level school. These low levele schools have produce many, many doctors too.
Guyanese would like to come home to help but come home to what…..a chop and cover production.
Nothing is perfect and only God is. We should not look at whose policy was most flawed but whose failed less miserably – in this case, being that of Jagan’s. Yep. Long Live QC and may ALL its graduates achieve their goals and realise their dreams in life. :-)$33D$(-:
Patriot: QC continued to produce and develop some of the greatest minds in country after the co-education move, I think your statement is pretty ridiculous and ingenuous.
Tony can you please name a few of these greatest minds since the co-educational mistake? Thank you. Where are they now? What are they doing? Please try to be objective?
Not only are Patriot’s comments pretty ridiculous and disingenuous at best, they are extremely chauvinistic. In general, Bishop’s, Rose’s, Joseph’s, Saints all became co-ed at the same time 1975-76, and they with the other already co-ed schools like Christ Church, Tutorial, North GTown, continue to demonstrate their capabilities of offering valuable education despite the declining numbers of available educators and other factors.
I agree with Patriot. If one did a careful review of the literature on male achievement it will be quite clear that mixing boys and girls in secondary schools lowers the overall achievement of both sexes, contributes to diverting the attention of the respective sexes away from their studies and most importantly introduces into the learning equation forces that are inimical to excellence. It may sound chauvinistic but it is an empirical reality. The PNC government made a mistake and it has destroyed educational excellence in Guyana. Perhaps the PPP government can reverse this destructive policy and return the high schools to a trajectory of excellence.
I wonder why the person who wrote this editorial believes that we are unaware of the changes that have now been in existence for nearly 30 years! What does he/she believe, that we’ve been sitting in a vacuum, hoping to come back to the institution expecting that “things” will be as they were 40, 50 plus decades ago?
All I am saying is that there should be a separation of the sexes. Bishops, would continue to teach the females and continue its rich traditions of excellence as well. I am not for a minute suggesting depriving either sex of anything. What I am asking for is an understanding of the zero-sum outcome for both males and females from the co-education model.
Saudia ! You are correct. These individuals are bent on their mantra, ‘the way it used to be’. It appears that QC was the start and finish of their education. It was a high school. Get over it and move on.
The fact is that the ‘old boys’ (sic) fleeced the tax payers and did not deliver on the promise. These tax payers are now in retirement waiting for them to deliver good health care and social services. They are waiting for them with tears in their eyes. I tell them that they are not coming back. It was never about you , the tax payers who funded their education even to the tertiary level . It was all about them.
Yes, whenever they return with their kids who look down on the locals, they tell you , at every opportunity, how wonderful it is. Not to mention the kids who talk of how this this food tastes nasty and the local kids run about barefooted. Oh yes! I have observed them . They don’t realize that it is the same Guyanase taxpayers who made it possible for them to flourish in North America or Europe.
The powers that be should begin sharing the tax payers money equally among the other public schools. That will teach them a lesson. High school reunion, Ewwwwww! Leave that to your great grandchildren. Ha!
As a QC old girl I am frustrated at the oft expressed belief that ‘lettin d girls in ruined QC’. Perhaps (as suggested before)these grand old boys had returned to Queen’s College to offer the students both boys and girls then they would have less reason to complain. As it is we are tired of attending functions where the success of QC girls are not displayed with equal pride as the success of these ‘grand old boys’. we have worked and continue to work hard so respect and reward us equally if you don’t see it yet let me point out that we the girls are the ones upholding QC and its grand traditions
Shame on you Patriot and Alumnus for indicating in your own narrow minded-way what you think would or could have been. Are you saying that all the achievements of the young men and women of Q.C today would amount to nothing? Are you saying that they too will not acquire doctorates and Phds and all such. And what’s this of empirical realities and winning formulas. Please send me the chemical equation and mathematical proof of these thoeries that you propose. Here is my hypothesis- The co-education of Queen’s College does not lower the achievement of either. As an old Q.C girl I plan to prove it as well.
I am a current student of QC and i must say that the values and ethos of the “ole days” never fail to fascinate me. I agree with the stance of the editorial. Indeed, the past must hold priceless lessons for us but at that same time we should not be bound to and our thinking limited by them lest we remain stagnant. QC has indeed changed and for the better. The sex-apartheid has ended and everyone – boy, girl or whatever else – can benefit from a top-class education. To say that QC has not maintained its rich sports heritage, is an unfair and prejudiced statement meant to imply that girls’ presence in the institution has lent to this and therefore, do not constitute the “talent pool”. Girls have excelled just as equally as boys in sports and they deserve recognition for such.
Aside from all that, it was a lovely editorial & a good read and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Thank you for affording me the opportunity (forum) to air my views :-)