‘No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, Continual fear and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’

THOMAS HOBBES, the 17th-century English philosopher, could hardly have had Trinidad and Tobago in mind as he wrote those now-famous words.

But, his comments aptly describe us.

Principal of all contributors to our current situation is the Ministry of Daycare. The Ministry of Daycare presided over, as has ever been the case, by a person whose loyalty and interests rest with her political patrons rather than with the children and families of her country must be smug and satisfied as September has returned. The status quo has been maintained. The welcome and unquestioned routine has settled over us again like a surreptitious, finemesh net. The ‘lemming children’ are once again standing by the roadside, hardened travellers that they must be, or, possibly they were packed uncomplainingly into back seats before sunrise for their trek to the institution.

No element of the daycare system has been altered. It is September and another train car-load of victims has arrived at the gates to be placed on the conveyor belt.

Their fate, like that of hundreds of thousands of citizens before them, is immutable.

This 2023 offering to the gods who maintain the system that is beneficial to so few will, like those before them, march purposelessly in place for their six-year sentence.

They will then be solemnly sacrificed during four hours of highly stylised ritual. Then they will go to the YTCs of daycare-formulaically termed secondary schools.

Some years later, most of them hardened into anti-intellectual, non-participating citizens by this time, they will stumble out of the institutional doors unaware of even the concept of love of learning, but instead intent on survival, seeking solace for their lack of mental cultivation in material goods.

We know our rulers are only experiencing a false sense of satisfaction every September.

They are satisfied with a system of daycare that is easily managed.

A genuine system of education is unimaginable to them. Yet, no one benefits from the status quo-even the scholarship winners live in fear or flee.

The families of Trinidad and Tobago should not continue accepting daycare in the place where education should be. Our lives should not be so well-described by Hobbes’ words in the Leviathan.

A Blade Tobago