Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Warn­ing that T&T is stand­ing at a cross­roads, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les em­pha­sised that the foun­da­tion Dr Er­ic Williams laid for an “ed­u­cat­ed democ­ra­cy” re­mains the na­tion’s strongest de­fence.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the re­launch of The Dr Er­ic Williams In­sti­tute of Po­lit­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion–The PNM Par­ty School at the City Au­di­to­ri­um in San Fer­nan­do on Sat­ur­day, Beck­les said that when the PNM was found­ed, it was not just a po­lit­i­cal par­ty but “a rev­o­lu­tion of thought, a cul­tur­al awak­en­ing, a move­ment, an ed­u­ca­tion up­ris­ing” that re­shaped the iden­ti­ty, in­tel­lect, and as­pi­ra­tions of the peo­ple of T&T.

At the cen­tre of that rev­o­lu­tion stood Dr Williams, she said, who un­der­stood that a peo­ple could not tru­ly be free un­til they were ed­u­cat­ed. “He of­ten re­mind­ed us that the fu­ture of our na­tion is in our chil­dren’s school­bags,” she said.

Re­mind­ing sup­port­ers that Dr Williams was a teacher be­fore he be­came the PNM founder, she said, “He did not be­gin with ral­lies; he be­gan with teach­ing. He be­gan with books, with ideas, with po­lit­i­cal lit­er­a­cy, with na­tion­al awak­en­ing. He taught a na­tion how to think be­fore ask­ing us how to vote.” She added that na­tions rise and fall on the qual­i­ty of their ed­u­ca­tion.

Beck­les not­ed that Dr Williams was fo­cused not on­ly on do­mes­tic is­sues but re­gion­al ones as well, fore­see­ing eco­nom­ic chal­lenges for T&T and the Caribbean, in­clud­ing ex­ter­nal pres­sures and the need for a zone of peace and sta­bil­i­ty.

She said, “We note, of course, that some peo­ple to­day do not un­der­stand the val­ue of that. His un­der­stand­ing of geopol­i­tics taught us that ed­u­ca­tion was our pri­ma­ry de­fence and that in­tel­lec­tu­al pre­pared­ness was im­por­tant as mil­i­tary readi­ness, and that lead­er­ship... knowl­edge en­sures na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty and most im­por­tant­ly re­gion­al in­flu­ence.”

For­get­ting Dr Williams, Beck­les cau­tioned, would be like for­get­ting the blue­print for na­tion-build­ing. “A po­lit­i­cal par­ty that stops learn­ing stops lead­ing. A na­tion that stops teach­ing stops pro­gress­ing. We live in an era where mis­in­for­ma­tion spreads faster than truth, where charis­ma is of­ten mis­tak­en for com­pe­tence and where lead­er­ship is sought very of­ten with­out prepa­ra­tion and where his­to­ry is very of­ten for­got­ten. If we aban­don ed­u­ca­tion, we aban­don progress.”

She said peo­ple may speak of Dr Williams as if he were a dis­tant his­tor­i­cal rel­ic, but he was far from that.

“We must teach him in our schools, quote him in our par­lia­ment, study his ori­gins, ide­ol­o­gy, glob­al con­text, schol­ar­ship and po­lit­i­cal tac­tics. His work was not sim­ply part of our na­tion­al sto­ry; it was the foun­da­tion up­on which all sub­se­quent progress was built.”

Beck­les stressed that an ed­u­cat­ed na­tion re­sists cor­rup­tion, de­mands ac­count­abil­i­ty, and re­fus­es to be bought or fooled. Urg­ing ac­tion, she said, “We are at the cross­roads. The choic­es we make to­day will de­fine the des­ti­na­tion of our par­ty and our na­tion for gen­er­a­tions. We must act de­ci­sive­ly, teach re­lent­less­ly and serve tire­less­ly. There is no time to wait. There is no time for hes­i­ta­tion. Every mem­ber, every leader, every young per­son must rise with pur­pose, clar­i­ty and dis­ci­pline.”

She con­clud­ed that fail­ing to teach crit­i­cal think­ing would sur­ren­der democ­ra­cy to ma­nip­u­la­tion and su­per­fi­cial pol­i­tics—a threat the PNM would not al­low.

PNM Ed­u­ca­tion Com­mit­tee chair­man Dr Je­lani Reid said that the in­sti­tute will trans­form how the PNM ed­u­cates its mem­bers and mod­ernise po­lit­i­cal learn­ing through a ded­i­cat­ed PNM ed­u­ca­tion web­site, a dig­i­tal cur­ricu­lum, on­line learn­ing plat­forms, self-paced mod­ules, in­ter­ac­tive quizzes and as­sess­ments, vir­tu­al town hall meet­ings, we­bi­na­rs, and a PNM AI chat­box cov­er­ing the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion, his­to­ry, pol­i­cy de­ci­sions and na­tion­al mat­ters.