Olga Bone, a woman acknowledged as one of the nation’s premier educators, has died. She was eighty-eight.
Bone, after years of failing health, passed away on Monday. Her daughter Bonita Harris said that her mother suffered a stroke on Friday, was hospitalized and succumbed sometime around midday on Monday. Harris said that her mother’s health had not been the best in recent times as a result of strokes that she suffered over the years.
Harris remembered her mother as a woman who was passionate about education and said that her mother began teaching at age fifteen. “She was an educator all her life,” Harris said, “even after she officially retired, she was still involved in the field of education.” Her impact on children was significant Harris noted even as she described her mother as a woman who “bore five children, raised six and educated thousands.”
According to Harris, her mother started her teaching career in Berbice, the county where she was born. During her teaching career, Bone was the head teacher at two city primary schools. She also worked at the Ministry of Education as the District Education Officer for a long time.
According to Harris, her mother studied for her Diploma in Education in England and later did her Masters in the USA in Test Development Studies. Her specialization in Testing and Measurement, Harris explained, was integral in the starting of the primary school assessment for 11-year-olds, which became known as the Common Entrance Exam.
Bone also served as the Assistant Registrar with responsibility for exams at the University of Guyana, her daughter disclosed.
Another significant contribution by Bone was her sustained effort to reduce illiteracy in the country, by spearheading the non-governmental organization Education Renewal. Bone teamed up with other educators such as Agnes Jones, Mavis Pollard and Sr Hazel Campayne as well as volunteers to address the problem by holding free remedial classes in English and Mathematics for students in and around Georgetown. In the early 1990s, Education Renewal was tasked with the responsibility of distributing shipments of books from the Canadian Organisation for Development through Education (CODE). This led to the subsequent forming of the Guyana Book Foundation, which was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit NGO in partnership with CODE. Bone served as the first managing director of this entity.
Meanwhile, Harris also remembered her mother as an advocate for women’s rights and said that Bone was always supportive of the various causes that Red Thread and the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) advocated in this regard. Harris said that while her mother was not an active member of these groups she always showed her “solidarity”. Harris also noted that her mother was very religious and pointed out that she was an active member of the Redeemer Lutheran Church.
Funeral plans for Bone are currently being finalized, Harris said.
