Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Pro­duc­tive mem­bers of so­ci­ety ver­sus delin­quents. A cru­cial role of fa­ther­hood in all its sens­es is to re­duce the num­ber of young men in­clined to­ward the lat­ter and in­crease those in­clined to­ward the for­mer.

William J Carter II, the fa­ther of four sons, fa­ther to many more as an ed­u­ca­tor for 35 years, and the for­mer prin­ci­pal of the well-loved in­sti­tu­tion of Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, in­sin­u­ates that the role of a ‘sir’ in a young man’s life can make a crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence.

His self-analy­sis sug­gests that al­though he does not fall in­to the con­ven­tion­al sense of a hard­line, tough-love, dom­i­nant dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an, his nur­tur­ing sen­si­bil­i­ties have played an im­por­tant role in guid­ing the paths of not on­ly his bi­o­log­i­cal sons but all the young men who have come un­der his care.

Carter spent al­most all of his child­hood, young adult­hood, and lat­er ca­reer in male-dom­i­nat­ed in­sti­tu­tions, and there­fore has had many years of study­ing the com­ing of age of young men. The son of two ed­u­ca­tors, Carter pur­sued his ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona, gain­ing a de­gree in lan­guages and ma­jor­ing in French. When he re­turned to T&T in 1972 to be an ed­u­ca­tor, armed with “an ed­u­ca­tion that lib­er­at­ed his mind,” along with the back­drop of the re­cent Black Pow­er Move­ment, his path even­tu­al­ly led him to Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege. In Sep­tem­ber 1972, he got a teach­ing po­si­tion at the school, “which amused me be­cause of the tra­di­tion­al ri­val­ry be­tween my al­ma mater, St Mary’s Col­lege, and QRC.”

Thus be­gan his 35-year ca­reer at the col­lege. Dur­ing those years, Carter grew a fam­i­ly of his own af­ter “mar­ry­ing a south girl,” his wife, and a stel­lar ed­u­ca­tor in her own right, Bev­er­ly-Anne Carter. As fate would have it, the cou­ple had two pairs of twin boys in 1984 and 1986, which they con­sid­ered “a di­vine sense of hu­mour,” both be­ing the on­ly chil­dren in their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies.

Carter con­sid­ers “my boys, both my blood sons and all the sons I have adopt­ed, my life’s great­est achieve­ment.” His bi­o­log­i­cal sons are all now adult men with ad­vanced ter­tiary de­grees, flour­ish­ing ca­reers of their own, and are well-re­spect­ed in their pro­fes­sions.

When pon­der­ing the way that his fam­i­ly life and ca­reer in­ter­sect­ed, Carter mus­es that “be­ing a male ed­u­ca­tor was a dif­fer­ent ex­pres­sion of the ex­act same role I had as a fa­ther. To pro­tect, shape, dis­ci­pline, and ed­u­cate my chil­dren.”

He ap­plied the same ethos to his au­thor­i­ty in school as he did at home, con­sid­er­ing chil­dren as their own peo­ple, with their own opin­ions, and his role mere­ly to guide rather than force and con­trol. Based on the close­ness he still shares with many of his for­mer stu­dents, who are now adults with fam­i­lies and ca­reers, his ex­tend­ed fa­ther­hood was sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ful in many of their lives.

In an ar­ti­cle writ­ten by Carter in 2023 for the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Newslet­ter, he de­scribed his pre­oc­cu­pa­tion as of late: Where do young males get their role mod­els from?

This ques­tion, un­der­scored by a grave dis­crep­an­cy be­tween male and fe­male teach­ers in the pub­lic sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem (72 per cent fe­male ed­u­ca­tors, 28 per cent male ed­u­ca­tors), has plagued Carter, and he stressed the im­por­tance of young men hav­ing ac­cess to male teach­ers. “If a young man, with­out a fa­ther present, has on­ly dance­hall artistes like Mova­do and Dex­ta Daps to look up to, what is to come of that young man,” he says. “Al­though I must ad­mit I quite en­joy Shab­ba Mad­da Pot by Dex­ta Daps.”

He be­lieves that par­tic­u­lar­ly be­tween the ages of 13-18 years old, boys are fix­at­ed on the ques­tion of how to be­come a “re­al man.” That idea of re­al man­hood is then shaped by what they see around them. Through­out his ca­reer, Carter has made it his mis­sion to make sure that his pres­ence has filled the gaps left by the ab­sence of strong male role mod­els.

As prin­ci­pal at QRC, he spent co­pi­ous amounts of time not cooped up in an of­fice away from the stu­dents, but roam­ing the cor­ri­dors, pop­ping in­to class­rooms and art and mu­sic rooms, chat­ting with stu­dents, and at­tend­ing every fi­nal game of any sport that QRC boys were in, there­by es­tab­lish­ing a con­stant pres­ence in the lives of these young men.

He al­so ac­counts for the sub­lim­i­nal tran­si­tion of in­flu­ence that hap­pened as a teacher, in­sist­ing that “al­though I might be teach­ing French in a class­room, my val­ue sys­tem comes out, and the im­por­tance of dis­ci­pline, hard work, and hon­esty be­come ap­par­ent just through my class­room teach­ing.”

Still a men­tor in many ways, he says to any young men this might reach, “Lead as pur­pose­ful and thought-dri­ven a life as pos­si­ble, re­al­is­ing that lit­er­al­ly every­thing you do has con­se­quences.”

En­cour­ag­ing young men who are at a cross­roads or at a piv­otal time in their lives to spend time think­ing about what they want their lives to look like, he be­lieves that this thought­ful­ness is a key to grow­ing in­to a “re­al man.” In his many years of men­tor­ship, he has not­ed that the most suc­cess­ful men “don’t just live hap­haz­ard­ly, dri­ven by emo­tion or plain fun. They look around for good mod­els to build sol­id ideas of man­hood, lis­ten­ing to old­er heads who have seen and un­der­stood a great deal.”

Now in his sev­en­ties and ded­i­cat­ed to en­joy­ing his re­tire­ment with the beau­ti­ful back­drop of our sis­ter isle, along with his wife of now 40 years, Carter spends time re­flect­ing.

“When I look back at my ca­reer, I re­alise that my tem­pera­ment is what en­abled me to get through to so many young men. I was prac­ti­cal­ly a sub­sti­tute fa­ther for them, where ei­ther their fa­thers were ab­sent or they were in con­flict. I was there to lis­ten and sup­port.”

These re­flec­tions, along with his wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence, make him an ex­cel­lent source of ad­vice for young fa­thers who are new to this busi­ness of fa­ther­hood.

“Fa­ther­hood is about be­ing as sup­port­ive of the woman as pos­si­ble; make sure you don’t on­ly sup­port the child, but show their moth­ers ap­pre­ci­a­tion and re­spect be­cause what na­ture im­pos­es on them is not easy.” This sup­port is shown by hav­ing an equal part to play in both the fun and mun­dane as­pects of child-rear­ing, en­sur­ing that as a fa­ther, you share the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties at every stage of the child’s life.

William Carter II is re­spon­si­ble for shap­ing the minds and hearts of many men, both young and old, through­out our na­tion. His ded­i­ca­tion to fa­ther­hood has not on­ly been to the great ben­e­fit of the four Carter boys but has al­so im­pact­ed the lives and paths of many more. The line be­tween par­ent­hood and ed­u­ca­tion is very fine, and ed­u­ca­tors and teach­ers both hold pow­er­ful repos­i­to­ries of knowl­edge when it comes to rais­ing chil­dren. Carter has ex­pert­ly trod­den the fine line and re­mains one of the stand­out ed­u­ca­tors of his gen­er­a­tion, and in­deed, a dad to many men across the coun­try.

Quick Q’s with William Carter:

Best parts of be­ing a dad?

• See­ing my chil­dren achieve the things I haven’t been able to achieve.

• Be­ing part of their growth from a ba­by to adult­hood.

• De­light­ing in the dif­fer­ences be­tween my boys.

What’s on your Fa­ther’s Day wish­list?

• No cologne or socks!

• Any sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive achieve­ment that my sons have in their lives.