The Caribbean After Grenada: Revolution, Conflict, and Democracy Book

"Perhaps the worst crime that colonialism left our country, has indeed left all former colonies, is the education system. This was so because the way in which that system developed, the way in which that system was used, was to teach our people an attitude of self-hate, to get us to abandon our history, our culture, our values. To get us to accept the principles of white superiority, to destroy our confidence, to stifle our creativity, to perpetuate in our society class privilege and class difference.

The colonial masters recognized very early on that if you get a subject people to think like they do, to forget their own history and their own culture, to develop a system of education that is going to have relevance to our outward needs and be almost entirely irrelevant to our internal needs, then they have already won the job of keeping us in perpetual domination and exploitation. Our education process, therefore, was used mainly as a tool of the ruling elite." Maurice Bishop

Maurice Bishop was a visionary who, unfortunately, did not get the chance he needed to transform his society for the better and this book an invaluable aid to understanding the man and what he saw as his mission. Now, as the Caribbean is challenged by rising crime, environmental degradation, rising levels of chronic non-communicable diseases, we have great need of radical thinkers, unafraid to take the bold actions needed. In their absence, we should at least read this book and see what lessons we can learn.