Ways of Looking & Feeling

Young people across this land tackle their personal development with great faith that they could build a solid future.

We face big challenges that feel impossible to solve, in our efforts to develop the Guyanese civilization.

We imitate the society around us. This social theory, which the French thinker Rene Girard expounds with particular eloquence, explains why we behave the way we do, and why society stumbles into its blind spot of a default future.

Young people, the new generation now coming of adult age, feel they must take responsibility for the state of the society, and launch citizen initiatives to solve crushing problems.

Cultivating the Guyanese society calls for a keen sense of where we’re at, and where we could be as a nation.

Below the surface in our society so much happens. Secrets abound.

Scanning our society for the focal point, the cornerstone of our development potential, the foundation pillar on which we build everything else, the critical key that allows our people to develop into a world class society, we come to one answer: our people.

Without strong reading and writing skills, we cannot develop this nation.

Tales of poor literacy skills in this country fail to move Government with the urgency that this emergency requires.

“There is a literacy problem in Guyana. Indeed it is estimated that there is a 21 percent rate of absolute literacy in Guyana, and an overall functional literacy rate that is just over 50 percent.

Facing our society’s vice-grip of gross illiteracy, with the Education Ministry failing to install a sound literacy strategy, citizens must confront our social decay before the rot becomes unworkable.

Our 47th anniversary of political Independence from Britain, observed last Sunday, saw most Guyanese shrug their shoulders in resigned abandon.

Our nation sits in a slump, a sort of non-progressive stupor, and those who care talk of change.

Raphael Trotman’s call for a Council of Elders to mediate decency and good sense in our nation, as inspiring as the idea is, does not consider the contribution, talent and wisdom of our gifted young.

We must encourage and propel, in every possible way, the critical need for the education system to put literacy first.

In exploring who we are as a nation, where we want to go as a people, and how to get there, we must find a way to delve deep into our creative reservoir, to look inside ourselves.

In awarding its highest national honour, the Oliver Tambo Award, to the late President Forbes Burnham, South Africa recognises a crucial integrity of character in us as a nation.

We see stormy waves kick up every so often as frustrated citizens demand justice, fair play and equal access to the corridors of power.

Clear signs abound that our nation’s development is steaming ahead. But the picture may not be as rosy as it looks.

People  across this land go about their daily life oblivious to the shenanigans of their Members of Parliament, who this week engage each other in an exercise filled with acrimony, strife and distrust.