National unity must start in the home

Dear Editor,

On September 11, 2014 President’s College marked its 29th anniversary.

In September 1985 a few weeks after the death of Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham, the man whose idea it was to have such a school, President’s College opened its doors to students of all races who were in the top two per cent at the Secondary Schools Entrance Examination. Those students were there to be moulded into all-rounded students and be prepared to be the leaders of a future Guyana.

The early students of PC did not go home every day or every weekend, not even every month; they went home at midterm and at the end of the term. They had the best of teachers, teachers who were specially selected to be trained to work with students in a residential school The students studied day and night and lived together in dormitories. Children of all races slept together, showered together, ate together, played together and studied together. I was very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to work at President’s College and to serve the students. I had the opportunity to see students drinking from the same straw, eating from the same spoon, sharing each other’s combs and holding each other’s hands as they walked along the campus. I’m talking about children of all races. National unity was indeed in the making. But then the time came for the students to leave PC after completing their formal secondary education and so they returned to their homes and their communities and reality began to step in. They began a process of re-integration into their family life and they began to listen to their parents and their siblings; the history of this nation was repeated to them each day, and those parents who were old enough would tell them of the past and the policies of Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham. They would be told to love their own and of the long traditional support for the PNC and the PPP. Then they got a sense of belonging to the groups among whom they resided, and loyalty crept in and all the love they had for each other while at President’s College went through the door.

Editor if you put all the ex-students of PC from the first batch and the second batch in one room and asked them about political allegiance you would not be surprised.

If Guyana is to achieve national unity it must start in the home; we need to be taught to love each other and to support policies that are best for Guyana and not policies that would satisfy our selfish gain.

Despite all its academic achievements PC failed in its effort to produce citizens that could forge national unity.

Yours faithfully,

Clive Fredericks