President’s College was part of Burnham’s plan to create a school of political indoctrination
June 20, 2014, By KNews, Filed Under Features/Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source
President Forbes Burnham created the President’s College after he returned from an official State visit to the USSR. While there, he became aware of the existence of elite schools which pursued not just standards of excellence, but also instilled a strong dose of political indoctrination aimed at deepening loyalty to the State and its political system.
Guyana had no need for an elite educational school. Burnham himself had been a graduate of the country’s top school, Queen’s College, which had a history of producing top students, many of whom, like Burnham, had assumed the mantle of leadership within the public sphere in Guyana.
What Burnham was concerned about was indoctrination. He wanted to create a stream of students that would have been wholly devoted to him. Burnham understood that to sustain his undemocratic, repressive and ruthless rule, he needed a group that would be trained to become the future leaders of Guyana.
But that task could not be left to the traditional school system because the purpose was to create a crÈme de la crÈme grouping of excellence and not mass excellence. As such, Burnham needed a separate school, one that he could brand a school of excellence to give it legitimacy and attract the best students, but one also wherein which he would be able to undertake his experiment of political indoctrination, moulding the minds of Guyana’s future leaders they way he wanted it to be done.
There is also another view which has been offered as to why have a special school of excellence. It was said that Burnham was rebuffed by the then alumni association of the country’s top school, Queen’s College, and therefore the decision to establish President’s College was an act of political spite on the part of Burnham in order to punish, Queen’s College.
Whatever grain of truth there may be in that perspective, there is no doubt that at the time President’s College was established, Burnham faced serious opposition amongst the intellectual class in the country, and he understood that in order to perpetuate his rule, he needed to have the future brains and leaders of the country devoted to his preservation and the political system that he was seeking to implement.
Thus, President’s College was born. It took away from Queen’s College, students who would have otherwise gone there. But it must also be credited with providing opportunities, small as they were, to brilliant students from rural areas who, without the residential dormitories provided by the school, would never have been afforded the education they received. Many students from the countryside received the best education they could have had locally because of President’s College. Their parents would have been unable to send them to town to attend Queen’s College because they would not have had relatives or friends willing to take care of the boarding and lodging of these children.
President’s College was therefore created as a special school. So special was it that it was created by statute. This was to be no ordinary school. It was situated on a large piece of land and a great deal of resources was pumped into the institution.
So much in terms of resources was pumped into this institution that after the economy went into a tailspin and the government was forced to its knees to go begging to the IMF and World Bank for a bailout, it was discovered that a disproportionate amount of public expenditure on education was going to President’s College.
When the PPP later came in, the World Bank found another troubling development in the education sector. They found problems with progression rates in the interior and they recommended in a report, which is now publicly available, that the country should try to build dormitories that cater for hinterland students.
This is how the PPP came up with the idea of using President’s College to educate hinterland students on a residential basis. This was not an idea of the PPP, as is being so maliciously presented today, to destroy Burnham’s creature. It had nothing to do with the PPP, which, like the PNC, had surrendered policy-making to the IMF and World Bank.
The decision to have President’s College take in hinterland scholarship students was based on recommendations of a study done by the World Bank which looked at the goal of universal secondary education. The study itself did not specifically recommend that President’s College be turned into a residential school for hinterland students. But its overall recommendations did point the government in this direction.
It was a wise decision. The raison d’Être for a President’s College had passed with the death of Burnham. And it certainly did not exist by the time free and fair elections were restored in 1992.