Wes­ley Gib­bings

Some leg­is­la­tors in Suri­name are hop­ing that school hol­i­days at the end of the aca­d­e­m­ic year in the for­mer Dutch colony will soon co­in­cide with the rest of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), to fa­cil­i­tate stu­dent ex­changes and end a long­stand­ing colo­nial anom­aly. While Trinidad and To­ba­go stu­dents are cur­rent­ly in the midst of the long va­ca­tion, their Suri­namese coun­ter­parts will have to wait un­til mid-Au­gust for a break, re­turn­ing to school dur­ing the first week of Oc­to­ber. "Mar­vin", a taxi dri­ver based in the city of Para­mari­bo, be­lieves that if the Dutch-speak­ing re­pub­lic is se­ri­ous about Cari­com, it should har­monise things like school va­ca­tions with the rest of the re­gion. What has be­come an an­nu­al de­bate over when the school year ends hard­ly dom­i­nates pub­lic dis­course, but trav­el in­dus­try play­ers and per­sons in­ter­est­ed in greater co­he­sion with the coun­try's Cari­com neigh­bours and for­mer colonis­er, the Nether­lands, are at­tempt­ing to build a stronger case for change.

Dutch ad­min­is­tra­tors who ini­tial­ly in­tro­duced the mea­sure to co­in­cide with home­land prac­tices at the time and take ad­van­tage of favourable weath­er there, are now long gone and the Nether­lands has since changed its an­nu­al sum­mer va­ca­tion to the more wide­ly-prac­tised mid-Ju­ly to late Au­gust pe­ri­od. Teach­ers' unions have not open­ly dis­missed the sug­ges­tion that change should come but have not been re­port­ed to have pur­sued the mat­ter with any vigour. At­tempts by T&T Guardian to get the views of two lead­ing trade union­ists in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor were un­suc­cess­ful. Peo­ple in the trav­el busi­ness are how­ev­er con­cerned that while flights from the Nether­lands ar­rive full in the Ju­ly-Au­gust pe­ri­od, there isn't a cor­re­spond­ing­ly high lev­el of trav­el in the op­po­site di­rec­tion by Suri­namese hol­i­day-mak­ers who tra­di­tion­al­ly head for Eu­rope. Over­seas-based Suri­namese stu­dents re­turn­ing home for va­ca­tion al­so find their home-based col­leagues still at school and un­able to share time to­geth­er un­til the school bell rings well in­to the Dutch va­ca­tion.

But there are many de­trac­tors and doubt­ing-Thomases on the va­lid­i­ty of the ar­gu­ment for change. The teach­ing com­mu­ni­ty, ac­cord­ing to a poll con­duct­ed by the de Ware Ti­jd news­pa­per, is vir­tu­al­ly split down the mid­dle as, ap­par­ent­ly, is wider pub­lic opin­ion. The pub­li­ca­tion quotes Mar­celli­no Nerkust, who leads the Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers' Or­gan­i­sa­tions (Fols), as say­ing the teach­ing com­mu­ni­ty needs to be con­sult­ed be­fore any change is made. Busi­ness­woman, Aman­da Palis, is among the sup­port­ers of change. She told T&T Guardian the an­nu­al school va­ca­tion was meant to oc­cur dur­ing the hottest month of the year, but this was no longer the case. She, to­geth­er with oth­ers polled, said the weath­er had changed, and there­fore weak­ened the ar­gu­ment for main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo. Many Suri­namese would tell you that weath­er pat­terns have, in­deed, shift­ed, though Sep­tem­ber re­mains, on av­er­age, the hottest month of the year.

Jour­nal­ism stu­dent, Mi­nan­ga Herts­berg, how­ev­er said if the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od were to be changed, "you would have to change all the oth­er va­ca­tions in-be­tween." She said this would lead to many dis­rup­tions in the school sys­tem. Gretl Wol­fram, an­oth­er jour­nal­ism stu­dent, agrees. "This will change the rhythm of the school sys­tem," she told T&T Guardian. Deep con­nec­tions with the Nether­lands are how­ev­er like­ly to pre­vail in the end. "The on­ly rea­son to change will be that we will then be in time with Hol­land," Julio Irokro­mo, a pub­lic ser­vant said. There is no cur­rent de­bate over school hours though, as pri­ma­ry school stu­dents go to school for 8.00 am and are fin­ished for the day at 1.00 pm. Sec­ondary school stu­dents get to class for 7.30 am and wrap-up at 12.30 pm.