Island Wings by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443431231
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2013-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

8

New Roads and Politics

Final minutes of the periods with Glenroy Straughn were always the most interesting. This was when he broke off his regular teaching and lapsed into discussing events of the day. We eagerly looked forward to the next tangent where he would take us. The one thing we knew for sure was that the digression was going to be exhilarating and educational, even if the theme of the discussion was unpredictable. Usually, it was some item in the daily newspapers, maybe some juicy rumour that had set tongues wagging. For this reason, he encouraged us to read the newspapers. Or it might be an international event, heard during the local shortwave rebroadcast of the news from the BBC in England or the CBC in Canada.

These sessions were important for other reasons. Mr. Straughn became the stand-in and illuminator of all we were grappling with intellectually. Through him the world came into our classroom. Not only did he make us feel that we mattered on this stage, but he got us to believe that we were main actors in training.

“But Straughnie, you really did think that you would have won that by-election?” Maybe it was Maurice Quintyn asking, or it could have been Anthony Alleyne or Winston Thomas, Karl Holder, Lloyd Blades, Wayne Barrow or any of us in the group that formed the nucleus of my five years at Christ Church High School. “For even your family didn’t vote for you, man. You have to have more than eight people in your family, and you only got eight votes. Man, you even lost your deposit.”

The form laughed and Glenroy Straughn smiled, too. And yes, he said, he really expected to win the by-election in the city. In any case, in the bigger picture, it didn’t really matter whether he won or lost. Someone should always be challenging the system as a guard against complacency. (Here he told us of countries, specifically in the Eastern Bloc at that time, where citizens were penalized for not voting. Not a bad idea, he offered.) Someone should hold the system and the politicians of the day accountable to ensure they remained humble and in tune with the wishes of the people. All of which meant, he suggested, that that someone might have to be a sacrificial lamb, although he didn’t use this term. What he said was that anyone with political vision must recognize the risk of being ahead of his or her time. Maybe, one day, the people would catch up, but there was no guarantee. More than that, the excuse of I-didn’t-know could not apply if, later on down the road, people woke up and found themselves living under strange conditions.

Officially, Mr. Straughn taught us English literature and English language, but he really exposed us to life beyond our form room and textbooks. During these sessions, Mr. Straughn veered far and wide, seemingly jumping in an erratic fashion from issue to issue, example to example, like a tour guide entertaining and informing us on a long ride.

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