Early Developments In Barbadian Education

Abstract

There are approximately 250,000 inhabitants today on the 166 square miles of the semi-tropical sugar-producing island of Barbados, the most easterly of the Caribbean islands. Ninety-five per cent of the population trace their descent from African slaves brought to the island during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and yet, in the words of Otis Starkley, whole cultural pattern is essentially English and the outward material evidences to the contrary are largely a veneer overlaying the cultural core ... every Barbadian: white, black, or colored, thinks of himself as a member of an Anglo-Saxon society. popular nickname for the island, Little England is, from this angle, quite justified.' While Starkley, writing in 1939, may have overstated the case at that time, and increased political consciousness coupled with independence for the island in 1966 have added additional dimensions to the Barbadian identity, Starkley's point is well made. Social scientists studying the island generally concur that the inhabitants maintain basically an English identity. For example, in 1972, the historian Ronald Tree noted, The culture of Barbados, unlike most of the Eastern Caribbean, derives entirely from its British connection; its laws are based on English laws; and cricket is a way of life rather than a pastime.2 roots of these phenomena lie in Barbados's status for three hundred and fifty years as a British colony with exceptionally close connections to the mother country. British administrators and white British residents of the island oversaw the gradual process by which African slaves and their progeny were transformed into black Englishmen. This paper will examine one aspect of that process, the part played by the system of education that de-