ABSTRACT 
 
 
Title of Disertation:     AD/MINISTERING EDUCATION: GENDER, 
                     COLONIALISM, AND CHRISTIANITY IN BELIZE AND 
                     THE ANGLOPHONE CARIBEAN 
 
Heather Emily Relihan, Doctor of Philosophy, 2008 
 
Disertation directed by:  Profesor A. Lynn Bolles 
                     Department of Women?s Studies 
 
 
This disertation looks at the relationship betwen educational achievement and 
power in the Anglophone Caribbean, with particular emphasis on Belize. Girls are 
outperforming boys at every level of education, but women stil have higher 
unemployment rates and hold the lowest paying jobs, while men are in more decision-
making positions in every sector of the economy. This project considers one major 
question: Why do women remain in les powerful positions even when they are beter 
 
educated? To explore this question I look at the role that misionary groups played in 
administering education under British colonialism. I focus on Belize where religious 
groups maintain a high level of control over education in the postcolonial era. I use 
twentieth-century Caribbean literature to suggest the efects of Christian ideology on the 
hidden curriculum and on women?s social, economic, and political power. The literature 
I discuss includes George Laming?s In the Castle of my Skin (Barbados), Austin 
Clarke?s Growing Up Stupid under the Union Jack (Barbados), Merle Hodge?s Crick 
Crack, Monkey (Trinidad), Merle Collins?s Angel (Grenada), Jamaica Kincaid?s Annie 
John and Lucy (Antigua), and Ze Edgel?s Beka Lamb (Belize). 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
AD/MINISTERING EDUCATION: GENDER, COLONIALISM, AND 
CHRISTIANITY IN BELIZE AND THE ANGLOPHONE CARIBEAN 
 
 
by 
 
Heather Emily Relihan 
 
 
 
 
Disertation submited to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the 
University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfilment 
of the requirements for the degre of 
Doctor of Philosophy 
2008 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Advisory Commite: 
Profesor A. Lynn Bolles, Chair 
Profesor Claire Moses 
Profesor Deborah Rosenfelt 
Profesor Merle Collins 
Profesor Dorith Grant-Wisdom 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
? Copyright by 
 
Heather Emily Relihan 
 
2008
 i 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
 
There are many people who have been invaluable to me throughout the proces of 
researching and writing this disertation. First and foremost, I would like to thank my 
disertation director, Lynn Bolles. Her continued enthusiasm for the project was 
inspiring and her insightful questions and comments helped me develop and refine my 
writing. I am extremely grateful to Lynn for her unwavering support. I would also like 
to thank my commite whose advice has helped me think in new directions and pull 
together the multiple disciplinary approaches I use in this project.  
I consider myself very fortunate to have met and worked with many graduate 
students whose pasion for learning and political commitment to change is impresive. 
The thre people who have most nurtured my intelectual development are Ayu 
Saraswati, Gwyn Weathers, and Na Young Le. Ayu has been the best friend and next-
door neighbor I could ask for. She is generous and kind and always knows what to say to 
encourage me or make me fel beter.  
Lastly, I want to thank my family and friends. It is impossible to describe how 
important my parents? support has been to me. They instiled in me the value of 
education and did anything in their power to give me every opportunity they could. I 
look up to both of them imensely. My siblings have also provided me constant 
encouragement. My brother, who was working on his disertation at the same as I was, 
inspired just enough sibling rivalry to motivate me to finish. His inteligence continues to 
impres me and I hope that I can become the type of scholar he has already shown 
himself to be. My sister brings out my creative side. Her writing is beautiful and wity. 
 ii 
She reminds me how much beter writing can be when you remember to have fun with it. 
My friends Kristen Tuttle, Keley Squazo, and Chris Goodwin have been incredibly 
patient and supportive. They have listened to me talk about this project for years and 
their generosity has meant a lot to me. Finaly, I would like to thank Michael Coffey. He 
has been a sounding board for many of the ideas in this disertation, as wel as my editor 
and proofreader. His help in the final months, weks, and hours was so valuable to me 
that I can truly say I would not have been able to finish this project without him. 
 iv 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 
 
Chapter 1: Introduction?????????????????????????.1 
 
 
Chapter 2: ?Bought by a New Master?: A History of Misionary Work and Education in 
    the West Indies??????????????????????...47 
 
 
Chapter 3: ?Learning is Next to Godlines?: Literature as Counter-Discourse ??.?78 
 
 
Chapter 4: A Political History of Belize??????????????????103 
 
 
Chapter 5: A History of Misionary Work and Education in Belize?????.??129 
 
 
Chapter 6: Beka Lamb: A Fictional ?Memory? of Gender, Colonialism, and Education in  
   Belize?????????????????????????..?.168 
 
 
Chapter 7: Church v. State???????????????????????.190 
 
 
Chapter 8: Conclusion????????????????????????..206 
 
 
Works Cited?????????????????????????????216
 1 
Chapter 1: Introduction 
 
 This disertation looks at the relationship betwen educational achievement and 
power in the Anglophone Caribbean, especialy Belize. Although for the past twenty to 
thirty years, region-wide, girls are outperforming boys at every level of education, 
women stil have higher unemployment rates and hold the lowest paying jobs, while men 
are in more decision-making positions in every sector of the economy. This project 
considers one major question: Why do women remain in les powerful positions even 
when they are beter educated? Further, in societies in need of human resources, why are 
women underutilized? Why is their economic worth not valued? 
 In order to answer these questions, we need to look at the culture of the society 
and the culture of the schools. I argue that the ?hidden curriculum? embedded in 
education reinforces traditional gender roles, simultaneously devaluing ?feminine? work 
and keeping women in ?feminine? jobs. Furthermore, the hidden curriculum in the 
Anglophone Caribbean is a product of outside forces: Christian misionaries and British 
colonialism. Misionaries have been involved in administering education since the 
abolition of slavery in 1838. In fact, the colonization of the ?new orld,? was 
inextricably linked to the Christianizing of the ?new orld? and Christian morals were 
used to justify British/white rule while simultaneously presenting the indigenous peoples 
and African slaves as incapable of ruling themselves. In the postcolonial era, Christian 
schools retain a lot of power throughout the Caribbean and therefore, if we are to 
understand the disconnect betwen girls? achievements in school and women?s power in 
 2 
society, we must ask whether the hidden curriculum of these schools inculcates 
traditional gender roles. During the colonial era, propernes and respectability were 
defined by adherence to Victorian gender roles and control of women?s sexuality, and 
these constructions were legitimated and naturalized through the hidden curiculum of 
denominational schools. In this disertation I expose and emphasize the role the hidden 
curriculum played in maintaining colonial hierarchies of race, clas, gender and nation 
and I ask questions about the contents of the hidden curriculum in the postcolonial era.  
 In order to balance breadth and depth, I discuss the Anglophone Caribbean as a 
region in the first part of the disertation and in the second part I focus on one country, 
Belize,
1
 one of the most diverse countries in the region. Belize is a heterogeneous 
country in many ways, divided by race, ethnicity and language. Looking at race and 
ethnicity, Belizeans are segregated into what Nigel Bolland cals ?the Creole and Mestizo 
complexes? (Belize 47). These categories are further sub-divided; the Creole community 
includes whites, Creoles,
2
 and Garifuna,
3
 while the Mestizos comprise Spanish, Mestizo,
4
 
                                                
1
 Belize has had several names during its history from Mayan land, to Spanish colony, to British setlement, 
and finaly to independent country. Anderson says, ?At first it was caled the ?English Setlement? at the 
mouth of the River Walix (variously spelt Waliz, Walis, BAliz, Balix, Belese and Belese; the speling 
Belize apears in a map of 1826). Later it was also caled the ?Setlement of English Woodcuters in the 
Bay of Honduras?; this was abreviated to the ?English Setlement of Honduras? and finaly, when it was 
designated a Colony in 1862, to British Honduras? (34). In 1973, the name was changed to Belize. In the 
interest of clarity, I have chosen to use the curent name, Belize, throughout. 
2
 Creole can mean diferent things acros the region. In Belize Creole refers to an ethnic group, the 
descendents of African slaves and European slave owners, but it can also refer to the non-Mestizo 
population which includes whites, ethnic Creoles, and Garinagus (the plural of Garifuna).  
3
 The Garifuna are descendants of escaped African slaves and Carib Indians and are sometimes refered to 
as Black Caribs. Around 1635 two ships transporting slaves to the West Indies shipwrecked near St. 
Vincent. The slaves who survived the shipwreck swam ashore. They began new lives in St. Vincent, 
primarily setling and living amongst with the Carib Indians. For the next 150 years the two populations 
mixed. The Garifuna comunities were destroyed when the British finaly conquered them in 1795 after 
years of fighting (National Garifuna Council). The British kiled hundreds of Garinagus and exiled the rest 
(National Garifuna Council). One of the places that the exiled Garinagu setled was Belize. 
4
 Mestizos are descendants of the Spanish and Yucatan Maya Indians, but can also refer to Spanish 
speakers in general.  
 3 
and Maya
5
 (Bolland, Belize, 47). Religion cuts acros these diverse groups. 
Approximately 60 percent of Belizeans are Roman Catholic.   
 Through an interdisciplinary lens I combine the fields of history, anthropology, 
sociology, anthropology, education and literature in order to provide a fuller 
understanding of the education systems both in the region generaly, and in Belize 
specificaly. In addition to misionary histories, colonial reports, and post-independence 
government reports, I incorporate Anglophone Caribbean literature into my analysis. I 
argue that fiction can reveal what the histories and reports cannot ? the hidden 
curriculum. Education reforms in the last fifty years have made significant changes in 
curriculum and pedagogy, but have done litle to addres the hidden curriculum. By 
understanding the ways in which denominational schools used Victorian gender norms 
and constructions of women?s sexuality in the past, we can beter understand the present. 
Recognizing the relationship betwen Christianity, patriarchy, and colonialism provides a 
foundation for an analysis of the contemporary school systems. If religion worked as a 
tool of colonialism, I think it is fair to ask if it can also work as a tool of neocolonialism. 
 
Gender, Sexuality and Social Control 
 
Annie John is a coming-of-age story set in British colonial Antigua in the 1950s, 
writen by Antiguan-born author Jamaica Kincaid. The novel traces Annie?s developing 
identity and her gradual and painful independence from her mother, but it also 
consciously connects gender, conquest and Christianity. Because my disertation brings 
together discourses on gender, colonialism, and religion, I think the following excerpt 
from Annie John provides a fiting introduction to my argument.   
                                                
5
 The Maya in Belize are mostly Kekchi and Mopan.  
 4 
Walking down the stret, Annie is approached by four boys ?pretending to be 
grownup gentlemen living in Victorian times? (95). They gret her with the following 
phrases: ??Halo, Madame. How are you this afternoon?? and ?What a pleasant thing, our 
running into each other like this,? and ?We met again after al this time,? and ?Ah, the 
sun, it shines and shines only on you.?? However, unlike the Victorian ladies for whom 
these lines were originaly intended, these words are meant to humiliate Annie: ?The 
words were no sooner out of their mouths than they would bend over laughing. Even 
though nothing like this had ever happened to [her] before, [Annie] knew instantly that it 
was malicious and that [she] had done nothing to deserve it? (95).  One of the four boys, 
a boy named Mineu, was a childhood playmate of Annie?s. Seing him, she is reminded 
of the times they played together as children. In reteling this story, Annie not only 
contextualizes her encounter with the four boys, but she dramatizes the intersection 
betwen patriarchy, imperialism and Christianity. 
Annie?s mother and Mineu?s mother were friends, and Annie says that she ?felt 
pleased that he, a boy older than [her] by thre years, would play with [her]? (94). Here, 
Annie streses not only the dynamics of age and gender, but also, her complicity in them 
? she "felt pleased" that he would play with her. Annie continues: 
Of course, in al the games we played I was given the leser part. If we played 
knight and dragon, I was the dragon; if we played discovering Africa, he 
discovered Africa; he was also the leader of the savage tribes that tried to get in 
the way of the discovery, and I played his servant, and a not very bright servant at 
that; if we played prodigal son, he was the prodigal son and the prodigal son?s 
father and the jealous brother, while I played a person who fetched things. (96)  
 5 
The details of her games with Mineu make clear the role of Annie's identity as other: as a 
servant pased ? quite literaly in these games ? from Africa to the father's house. But 
they also link militarism, colonialism and patriarchal Christianity. The myths of 
greatnes, the ?discovery? of Africa, and the parables of the Bible are stories about men. 
Women have no autonomous identity, but function, through their othernes, to mark men 
as wariors, masters, and patriarchs. 
Women can also serve to mark other women as Mineu and his friends show in 
their treatment of Annie. The construction of Victorian femininity as chaste, modest, 
clean, and pious marked colonized women as sexualy wanton, dirty, and heretical. 
These constructions of gender and sexuality were not limited to Antigua; they were 
ubiquitous throughout the British Empire. In her examination of colonial propaganda, 
Cyntia Enloe points to repetitive images of ?the colonized woman? that appeared in 
British colonial postcards. She says, tongue in cheek, ?Colonialism was good for the 
postcard busines? (42). One such postcard, titled ?The Beauty of the Kral, Zululand,? 
exhibits a Zulu woman posed seductively on her side, her ankles placed together one on 
top of the other, an anklet on each leg, such that she appears bound. The layering of 
meanings sems clear: her sexuality is being controlled, and she is being controlled 
because of her sexuality. Specific constructions of femininity, here figured as the 
(?wanton?) sexuality of local women, were manipulated to legitimize colonization. The 
?natural? diferences betwen Victorian ladies and colonized women were meant to 
predate and justify colonialism, but far from innate, these constructions required 
continual social policing.   
 6 
A quote from James Mil, author of History of India, characterizes this ideology: 
?Among rude people the women are generaly degraded, among civilized people they are 
exalted.? Therefore, the charge was, as Enloe argues, ?If men?s sense of manlines was 
such that it didn?t include reverence toward women, then they couldn?t expect to be 
alowed to govern their own society.? The irony is apparent: if men couldn?t ?exalt? their 
women (as defined of course by European treatment of women, which was itself 
problematic), then these men would have to relinquish the control of their women so that 
the colonizer could degrade them. The status of local women signaled to local men their 
own disempowerment. As Enloe notes, ?For a man, to be conquered is to have his 
women turned into fodder for imperialist postcards? (44).  
In this proces of demeaning local women, local men were also feminized. If part 
of the construction of masculinity entails protecting your women, then the dominating of 
local women provided a double marker, disempowering both local men and women. 
Once local men lost the power to protect their women, the esence of their ?natural? 
power as men was necesarily questioned. This proces of emasculation helped prevent 
local men, who were perhaps the biggest threat to the colonizer?s power, from 
succesfully revolting. The questioning of their power as men simultaneously questioned 
the power of their people. As men are perceived as the powerful markers of a society, 
emasculated men delimit their nation, their community and their race as inferior. And 
thus, by feminizing colonized men, the imperial ideology designated colonized men as 
mere boys in ned of strong colonial fathers to bring them into adulthood by the 
standards of European mores. 
 7 
The fact that European women can also be understood as colonized, highlights 
both the interelatednes of variables of diference, but also the importance of context. In 
relation to local women, European women marked civility and beauty, but in relation to 
European men, European women were stil the second sex. Similarly, gendered 
dynamics created difering experiences of colonization for local men and women. 
Although colonized women and men both fared badly under colonization, women were 
doubly ousted from the political sphere, first as colonial subjects and second as women. 
Hence, even when nations achieved independence, local men were sen as the ?natural? 
candidates for the political sphere. Even when racial hierarchies were questioned as part 
of the route to independence, gender hierarchies could and did remain in place leaving 
men superior to women. Therefore, problematicaly, nationalist movements often began 
the proces of nation-building by replacing the ?bad? father of the imperial metropolis 
with a ?good? father of the local community. Enloe notes that, ?nationalism typicaly has 
sprung from masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation and masculinized hope. 
Anger at being ?emasculated? ? or turned into a nation of busboys ? has been presumed to 
be the natural fuel for igniting a nationalist movement? (44). To emerge into 
independence, colonized masculinity must lick its wounds and in many cases this took 
the form of traditional performances of masculinity. In Imperial Leather: Race, Gender 
and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, Anne McClintock argues: 
The global militarization of masculinity and the feminization of poverty have 
ensued that women and men do not live postcoloniality in the same way?. The 
continuing weight of male economic self-interest and the varied undertows of 
patriarchal Christianity, Confucianism and Islamic fundamentalism continue to 
 8 
legitimize women?s bared aces to the corridors of political and economic 
power, their persistent educational disadvantage, the domestic double workday, 
unequal childcare, gendered malnutrition, sexual violence, genital mutilation and 
domestic batery. The histories of these male policies, while deeply implicated in 
colonialism, are not reducible to colonialism and cannot be understood without 
distinct theories of gender power. (14)   
Furthermore, for a burgeoning nation to enter into international politics and receive 
international recognition (and often debt relief and/or other aid), they must play by the 
rules as set by the U.S. and Europe. Colonized men are fighting to redeem themselves in 
the eyes of their nation and the world, and this need for redemption necesitates a deeply 
enmeshed male bravado.   
In the last two decades a number of scholars have interogated the relationships 
betwen gender, race, clas, and empire. Texts like Mindie Lazarus-Black?s Legitimate 
Acts and Ilegal Encounters: Law and Society in Antigua and Barbuda, Eilen Suarez 
Findlay?s Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, George 
Mosse?s Nationalism and Sexuality, Nira Yuval-Davis? Gender and Nation, Antoinete 
Burton?s Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 
1865-1915 and Ann Stoler?s Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the 
Intimate in Colonial Rule have made clear that recognizing the ways that gender is raced 
and the ways that race is gendered in esential for understanding colonialism and 
nationalism.  
Patriarchal ideology has consistently worked to control women in both the 
colonial and postcolonial eras, but this does not destroy the agency of postcolonial 
 9 
women. We can se this resistance in the finale of Kincaid?s tale of Annie and Mineu. 
Annie describes the last game she played with Mineu: 
A man had recently kiled his girlfriend and a man who was his best friend when 
he found them drinking together in a bar ? Mineu and I had overheard our 
parents talk so much about this event that it wasn't long before he made up a game 
about it. As usual, Mineu played al the big parts. He played the murdered man 
and the murderer, going back and forth; the girlfriend we left silent. When the 
case got to court, Mineu played judge, jury, prosecutor, and condemned man ? 
Al of our playing together came to an end when something bad almost happened 
? when we came to the part of the noose around the neck .. he lifted himself of 
the ground [and] the noose tightened. (98) 
In this mock murder trial, Mineu plays al of the roles and the result is that he ? 
quite literaly, almost ? hangs himself. Kincaid's mesage here is clear: the kind of 
oppresion which these games act out ? colonial tyranny and patriarchal oppresion ? 
threaten themselves. Mineu is powerful and functions to clearly subordinate Annie, but 
he also creates the space necesary to hang himself by his own proverbial rope.  
Ideologies of colonialism and patriarchy define and delimit Annie and Mineu?s 
play. These ideologies, which stratified the society in which Annie and Mineu lived, 
were made to appear natural and unquestioned. In the Anglophone Caribbean, one type 
of ideology that was, and continues to be influential in stratifying the society, is 
Christianity. Christian dogma naturalized both colonial and patriarchal hierarchies, and 
through Christianity?s close connection to the schools, hierarchies of race, clas, gender, 
and nation became part of the socialization of children in the British colonies.  
 10 
 
Education and Colonialism 
 
In his book, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire?s End, John 
Wilinsky emphasizes the relationship betwen knowledge and imperialism. Building on 
theorist Michel Foucault?s The Order of Things, Wilinsky suggests that a shift in thought 
that occurred at the end of the sixtenth century had a symbiotic relationship to the 
emerging era of imperialism. Foucault suggests that during this time knowledge began to 
be constructed around the diferences betwen things (as subjects), rather than their 
similarities. Wilinsky argues that within imperial discourse this focus on diference 
emphasized primitive vs. civilized, and East vs. West. Therefore, the way of thinking 
changed to acommodate imperialism. Indeed, much of the research done during the 
imperial era focus on establishing diferences betwen Europe and the ?other.? The 
production of this knowledge served a political and economic function. Furthermore, 
acording to Wilinsky, the focus on science and order helped rebuild the instability that 
resulted from Columbus?s ?discoveries.? The results of Columbus?s exploration 
overturned much of what had previously been ?known? about the world. The measuring 
and marking of imperial discourse helped reinvest Europe with confidence in their own 
power to know.  
It is important to keep this relationship betwen epistemology and power in mind 
in any analysis of education because schools have been used to legitimize certain types of 
knowledge as real and true, making invisible the ways in which knowledge is constructed 
and contested. National education systems, as methods of state socialization, have 
always contained the potential for political manipulation. Education systems, in as much 
 11 
as they are centralized by the state and its apparatuses have, therefore, always played a 
central role in creating and maintaining the various ideologies of the state. Because the 
school environment has the capacity to systematicaly instruct and condition the children 
of the nation, the power to administer education is the power to craft the consciousnes of 
the mases. 
The education system, as it has been defined since the beginning of the twentieth 
century ? as an organized, and somewhat centralized system that teaches the various 
skils that are valuable to its community ? is inextricably tied to the historical 
development of the nation state. In his text Education, Globalization and the Nation 
State, Andy Gren argues, ?The national education system as a universal and public 
institution first emerged in post-revolutionary Europe as an instrument of state 
formation? (1). He further posits that this formalization of education was esential to the 
construction and integration of the developing nation state, and, that education became 
one of the most important support structures for the emerging nation. Since this time, the 
development of national identity, national cohesion and intra-state economics have 
always relied on education to promote and perpetuate specific ideologies. Further, 
international relations ? particularly international relationships of domination ? also 
depended for their succes on the careful manipulation of the education system. 
Neo/post/colonizing countries maximize their positioning, while minimizing resistance, 
through controlled and controling aces to information. There are clear and certain 
connections, then, betwen the development of national education systems and imperial 
nation-building in various locations including Europe, Japan and North American from 
the ninetenth century to the present (Gren 29). Prior to nationalized education systems, 
 12 
ninetenth-century Europe, for example, was characterized more by fragmentation than 
national cohesion. Gren notes, ?When La Chalotais first advocated national education 
in France the country was stil a disaggregated collection of communities speaking 
countles diferent languages? (27). Gren therefore concludes that ?the main reason for 
creating national education systems, as Durkheim later noted, was to foster social 
solidarity and national cohesion ? or, to put it in a more Gramscian way, to promote a 
?national popular? cultural hegemony defined predominantly by the dominant clases? 
(27). 
During the post-WI period, a period marked by the independence of many 
former colonies, education was defined as a universal human right. In Article 26 of the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights the United Nations declared that every individual 
had the right to fre and compulsory education, at least at the elementary stage. As 
numerous countries throughout the world came to independence, universal education was 
sen as a necesary condition for creating and sustaining new democratic governments. 
Education was sen as an esential building block in the spread of democracy and there 
has been a great belief in its ability to bring power to individuals, and by extension, their 
countries. However, for women in former colonies education has not always brought 
them the promised rewards. As I discuss below, girls are outachieving boys in terms of 
education throughout the Anglophone Caribbean, but these succeses have not always 
translated into greater power in the society. In order to understand this disconnect we 
must examine the role of culture in establishing and maintaining gender roles. Can 
patriarchy trump education? That is to say, in patriarchal societies does the de facto 
secondary status of women stymie the increased power that is supposed to come from 
 13 
education? Answering this question requires a close examination of al interests that 
influence the culture of a society and the culture of the clasroom.  
Misionary groups have had incredible influence throughout the schools in the 
Anglophone Caribbean. They were often the first groups to take an interest in the 
education of slaves and this interest continued in the post-emancipation era in the 
establishment of schools.  In his article, ?British Imperial Policy and the Mision 
Schools,? Brian Holmes provides some statistics on the overwhelming influence of 
misionary schools under British colonialism:  
In the Bahamas nearly 25 per cent of the primary schools in 1951 were 
denominational and were atended by over 20 per cent of the pupils. There was 
one Government high school enrolling litle more than 12 per cent of the pupils. 
In 1949-50 of the 279,309 educational institutions in India over 100,000 were 
managed by private bodies. A fifth of the schools in Kerala were managed by 
Christian organizations. In Ceylon the privileged position of the mision schools 
had been questioned for a long time but as late as 1958, under a dual system of 
control, roughly 53 per cent of the 7,674 schools were owned by the Government 
and 47 per cent by the private bodies. The Dike Report on the educational system 
of Eastern Nigeria pointed out that in 1962 the voluntary agencies owned more 
than 80 per cent of the schools in the Region. Indeed nearly 50 per cent of al 
schools were owned and controlled by the Roman Catholics? (9).  
While misionary schools were welcomed by many as a chance to provide the children of 
the colony with greater power in society, and later to create a local elite to run the country 
in the post-independence era, these benefits came with a price. Holmes suggests these 
 14 
schools provided ?a dual threat? in that the schools became an agency of religious 
conversion that seduced many children and their parents to convert to Christianity, but 
also in that they legitimized and naturalized colonial culture. Holmes says that ?elements 
of British or English secular education including political ideals were inevitably taught, if 
incidentaly (9). Schools also became important in the furtherance of Victorian gender 
ideology ? particularly in the emphasis on the chastity of girls. Schools became 
important conduits of the cult of domesticity and the asimilation of girls into these roles 
became connected to the status of the family. Respectable families had chaste girls. The 
influence of misionaries on current gender ideology must be examined in this context. 
If education is clearly an instrument for the construction and maintenance of the 
national citizen, the national character, the dominant clas, and religious beliefs then the 
education system certainly contains the potential for oppresion as I have noted above. 
However, and somewhat paradoxicaly, it is this same capacity to mobilize and unite that 
also creates the potential for empowerment through national independence movements. 
This sems particularly true in cases of postcolonial nations in that their national identity 
has been formed through both of these proceses. Therefore, in the case of postcolonial 
nations especialy, the education system ust not only work as a channel for change, but 
it must also convince the mases that education ? a tool that has been long asociated 
with imperialism, clasism, sexism and racism ? can actualy help them achieve 
independence and equality. How can the same clasroom that conditioned its students to 
view Europe as the center of their world now give them the tools for liberation? Or, more 
to the point, can the master?s tools realy dismantle the master?s house?  
 
 15 
The Debates on Gender and Education in the Anglophone Caribean 
 
In the second half of the twentieth century curriculum reforms were ubiquitous in 
the education systems of the Anglophone Caribbean. Syllabi and textbooks were 
changed to reflect the identity of the local country as opposed to that of the colonizer. 
Another major change was the replacement of the Cambridge exams (writen and graded 
in the UK) with the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) exams (writen and graded in 
the region). The CXC, established in 1972 to provide exams at the completion of 
secondary and post-secondary education, has alowed the education system of the 
Anglophone Caribbean to focus on and reward knowledge of local histories, literatures 
and culture. This reform emerged in conjunction with independence and nationalist 
movements that emphasized the need for a West Indian consciousnes.  
Most countries in the Anglophone Caribbean achieved independence during the 
second half of the twentieth century, and education reform became an important focus for 
many nationalist movements in the region. During debates over education reform the 
connection betwen race, clas, and nation was generaly acepted. However, the role of 
gender in stratification and, moreover, its relationship to race, clas and nation was les 
visible. But, beginning slowly in the 1970s and gaining some institutional support by the 
1990s, some Caribbean nations did institute curriculum reform projects emphasizing the 
role of sexism in the schools in producing gender-based inequalities. By 2000, the Centre 
for Gender and Development Studies published Gender Isues in Caribbean Education: 
A Module for Teacher Education for the CARICOM Secretariat.  
However, beginning in the mid-1980s, and building up support in the last ten 
years, some researchers have argued that feminist eforts to reform the curiculum have 
 16 
given girls an unfair advantage in the school system. They argue that acording to most 
markers of educational succes, female students throughout the Caribbean region have 
been outperforming their male counterparts. Acording to Aces Quality and Eficiency 
in Caribbean Education: A Regional Study, ?Across the Caribbean, girls achieve beter 
educational results than boys particularly in the secondary schools. On CXC exams 
throughout the region, girls take more of the tests than do boys and they have a higher 
pas rate in most subjects. Similarly, women are outperforming men at the tertiary level. 
Enrollment at the University of the West Indies in 1994/5 was 61.3 percent female, 38.7 
percent male. In that same year, 57 percent of undergraduate degres from the University 
of the West Indies were awarded to females.  
The concern over the underperformance of boys has led to an outbreak of research 
focused on the plight of males in the Caribbean, and in some countries, even reverse 
afirmative action policies which reserve certain spaces in secondary school for males. In 
some ways, the situation of the Anglophone Caribbean is not unique. In the U.S., for 
example, a number of scholars have looked at the underperformance of boys in school 
and reasoned that feminist reforms intended to help girls have in efect hurt boys.
6
 
However, the debate in the Anglophone Caribbean is diferent inasmuch as it is 
connected to a larger discussion of aberant masculinity. In her article, ?Caribbean 
Masculinity and Family: Revisiting ?Marginality? and ?Reputation,?? Christine Barow 
discusses the body of anthropological work on Caribbean family types. Looking at the 
second half of the twentieth century, Barow contends that anthropologists used structural 
functionalist models of family to create the image of the absent male. Only nuclear 
families living in one patriarchal household were aceptable; other family types were 
                                                
6
 Se David Sadker?s ?An Educator?s Primer on the Gender War.? 
 17 
aberant. Barow says, ?In their anxiety to disasociate themselves from the theme of 
matrilineal African origin, functionalists searched for men as fathers and husbands and 
ignored their insertion into the kinship system as brothers and uncles? (341). Rather than 
interpret the families in the Caribbean as a diferent family type, the functionalists looked 
for reasons why the man was not fulfiling his role as patriarch. They reasoned that 
?within the conditions of job insecurity, high unemployment and migration along with 
low social and racial status, he could not fulfil this obligation? and he was consequently 
labeled ?marginal? (342).  
In the context of this larger debate around masculinity, the debate over boys? 
underperformance in school in the Anglophone Caribbean has taken on greater meaning 
than the debates around gender and education in other countries like the U.S.  One of the 
most influential discussions of male underperformance is Erol Miler?s 1986 book, 
Marginalization of the Black Male: Insights from the Development of the Teaching 
Profesion, which makes clear connections betwen boys? school performance and larger 
debate around the role of men in Caribbean society. In this analysis Miler articulates his 
?marginalization thesis?: ?the interacting socializing influences of school, home and 
church reinforce each other and are increasingly socializing black boys to acept 
marginality as a way of life? (5). Miler begins with the premise that in the colonial 
period the ruling white male minority feared the power of black male rebelion ? that it 
?could overthrow the power structure? (5-6). He says that to mitigate this threat, only a 
smal group of black men were alowed to adopt positions of power in the society. This, 
Miler suggests, ?benefits the black woman,? who wil fil the remaining positions (6). 
Miler argues that 
 18 
her greater mobility is a means by which the ruling minority can defend 
themselves of the charge of racism. It is also a useful means of neutralizing 
potential rebelion on the part of the black man. It suggests that the black man?s 
failure to rise socioeconomicaly is his own fault. More importantly it also 
establishes an aliance betwen the black woman and the ruling minority. This is 
also true of the few black men who are coopted. This aliance creates division in 
the ranks of blacks and frustrates unity and mobilization to resist and oppose 
exploitation. (6) 
Miler concludes that this proces has given ?the impresion of liberating women but at 
the same time consigns them to the les privileged and powerful positions. While 
alowed greater aces to upward mobility, women are often frustrated by not being 
rewarded with top positions commensurate with their ability and experience? (73). The 
result, acording to Miler, is that power is maintained by the ruling minority elite.  
While Miler says that black men are also marginalized in the home and at church, 
he focuses his argument on the school system looking primarily at the history of teacher 
education and how recruitment for teaching jobs has been used strategicaly to 
marginalize black men. He argues: 
Primary school teaching and teacher education shifted from being male dominated 
to being female dominated as a result of the intention of the ruling clas to release 
black men from service type occupations to make them available for agricultural 
and industrial labor, and to stifle the possible emergence of militant black 
educated men who could possibly overthrow the power structure. (73) 
 19 
Looking at Jamaica, he notes that by the beginning of the twentieth century female 
students began to be recruited in higher numbers for spots in teacher?s colleges. By 1985 
females made up 82.3 percent of the students enrolled in teacher?s colleges in Jamaica. 
He uses these figures as wel as secondary and tertiary level education statistics to give 
quantitative evidence of his marginalization thesis and he maintains that the absence of 
male teachers is ?an important consideration for the socialization of both boys and girls in 
a society in which efective male influence is often absent from the home? (74). To 
addres the disparity betwen male and female achievement in education, and to work 
against the problematic socialization of a primarily female teaching force, Miler suggests 
a kind of reverse afirmative-action policy: ?a restructuring of the institutional 
arangements so as to ensure equity of aces and fairnes in promotion betwen men and 
women, of al ethnic groups, al social segments and geographic areas? (77).  
Furthering Miler?s concern about the underperformance of boys, an Eastern 
Caribbean Education Reform Project: Student Atitude Survey, administered in 1999, 
concluded that ?the results confirm unequivocaly that boys are disadvantaged in terms of 
their educational experiences in secondary school ? boys like school les, have lower 
self?estem, perceived competence, and sense of purpose in atending school, exert les 
efort in school, and have more frequent behavior problems and poorer academic 
performance.? Further, the results stated: 
It was clear to al that specific eforts must be made to target boys and improve 
their psychological and behavioral outcomes.? [I]t was recommended that 
special enrichment programs for boys emphasize the importance of academic 
achievement, and that this be reinforced by employers. It was also recommended 
 20 
that teaching methods be modified to provide more ?hands on? experience to cater 
to boys? need for activity oriented learning. (Eastern Caribbean Education Reform 
Project: Student Atitude Survey, 1999) 
Feminist researchers, troubled by the asumptions and ramifications of these 
arguments, have pointed to the disonance betwen girls? achievement in school and their 
carer opportunities. They maintain that females in the Anglophone Caribbean require 
more education to aces the same jobs as males, and that even though women are often 
beter educated they are stil relegated to the lowest paying jobs in the society. The ?male 
marginalization thesis? sems to discount these facts. Further, while Miler does look at 
gender in connection with colonialism, his argument sems to rest on patriarchal 
asumptions about the role men should play in society. Barbara Bailey, a researcher on 
gender and education, argues: 
In spite of their overall higher levels of educational participation and atainment, 
Caribbean women, as a group, continue to be predominately clustered in the lower 
paying sectors of the labour market; experience higher levels of unemployment; 
have les aces to productive resources; are under-represented in al areas of 
governance including representational politics and decision-making positions and 
proceses; and, experience high levels of gender-based violence and therefore 
lack full control over their sexual and reproductive rights. (?Search for Gender 
Equity? 110) 
Across the region, unemployment has been a significant problem, but looking at 
Grenada as an example, unemployment rates are especialy high for women. A recently 
completed Poverty Asesment Survey found that women, female-headed households and 
 21 
children were most seriously afected by poverty. Acording to statistics from ?Health 
Systems and Service Profile Grenada, Cariacou & Martinique,?
7
 Grenada?s 
unemployment rate has been declining in recent years from highs of 25 percent in the 
early 1990s, but women are stil disproportionately represented: in both 1998 and 1999 
women?s level of unemployment was nearly twice that of men?s. Further, the types of 
jobs that men and women have difer. In 1999, only 3.4 percent of employed women 
were in profesional or technical posts and 1.3 percent at administrative and management 
levels. A study in 1992 by the Grenadian Ministry of Education found that females 
tended to be interested in being trained for ofice work, secretarial work, teaching, or 
hospitality work, while males favored training in plumbing, electrical work, mechanics 
and technology. This shows that gendered stereotypes about appropriate male and female 
behavior are powerful, and most importantly, that they have economic efects. In 
atempting to refute the male marginalization thesis, feminist scholars in the Caribbean 
have pointed to these economic indicators.  
Chalenging the male marginalization thesis, Bailey says that the ?feminization of 
secondary and tertiary education has been taken as a indication that men are the 
disadvantaged group in this respect, and that equality of educational opportunity for 
women is not an isue in Jamaica? (Isues of Gender, 15). She argues, however, that ?the 
gender gap in favor of females at the higher levels of the education system ? merely 
points to the fact that, generaly, males are able to enter the labour market with fewer 
years of schooling than are required by women? (Isues of Gender, 15). Noting research 
by the Economic Commision for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the 
United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in 1995, Bailey concludes that 
                                                
7
 Published in October 201. 
 22 
women in the Caribbean and Latin America ?need to have four more years of schooling 
in order to compete for jobs and salaries similar to those of men (Isues of Gender, 15). 
Asking similar questions about the male marginalization thesis, Odete Pary 
reminds us in her book, Male Underachievement in High School Education, that while 
?examination results indicate that females are now performing overal at a higher level 
than previously, the statistics need to be treated with caution for a number of reasons? 
(7). She says that even though females are definitely making improvements, they are stil 
focused in traditionaly female subjects. Further, ?although females sem to utilize 
education as an agent of social mobility more succesfully than males, there remain 
glaring inequalities in the occupational structure once they leave school? (7). Bailey 
atributes this in part to the sexist paterns of formal and non-formal education paterns 
arguing that ?aces to education is only half the picture. Diferentiated life chances for 
boys and girls are further determined by the curriculum options available to both sexes at 
the secondary level. Strong gender divisions are evident, which are encouraged and 
reinforced through both explicit and implicit practices in schools? (?Sexist Paterns,? 
147). She maintains that ?these factors ensure diferential aces to various subject areas 
based on gender stereotyping and biases that afect both sexes? (?Sexist Paterns,? 147).  
The curriculum in single-sex schools often reveals traditional gender ideology. 
Girls? schools do not offer technical skils and boys? schools do not offer domestic work 
or office work (Bailey ?Sexist Paterns,? 147 with reference to Bryne). Co-ed schools 
fare litle beter. Bailey notes that ?although the co-educational schools offer a fuller 
range of subjects, explicit practices such as cross-timetabling, as wel as implicit teacher 
and societal expectations and parental and peer presure, ensure that the gender divisions 
 23 
of the single-sex school are retained? (?Sexist Paters,? 147). Bailey adds that these 
gender divisions in the curiculum reflect and perpetuate the gender divisions in the labor 
force (?Sexist Paterns,? 149).  
One of the problems with the literature on this topic is that it often analyzes 
gender in isolation, as opposed to understanding gender as always, necesarily, working 
symbioticaly with race, clas and nation. It is my argument that the system of traditional 
gender norms unfairly constrains both males and females, although in diferent ways 
involving the complex intersections of gender, race, clas and nation and that these 
constraints are connected to isues of neo/post/colonialism. Some scholars, like Odete 
Pary, have argued that traditional constructions of masculinity are antithetical to the 
school environment and others like Barbara Bailey have suggested that males recognize 
that even with les education they can compete with women in the labor market. This, it 
is argued, leads to male underperformance. On the other hand, girls are unfairly 
rewarded for their succes in school with low paying jobs and limited carer 
opportunities. Barbara argues that ?any concern about gender disparities in educational 
participation about performance must be pited against a concomitant concern about the 
social value, to either group, of their educational certification and the fact that schooling 
contributes diferently to the futures of the two sexes? (Isues of Gender 8).  
While education in the Anglophone Caribbean has undergone serious reform in 
the post-independence era, and despite the fact that gender discrimination has been a 
consideration in these reforms, school atmosphere and ideology ? which dictate the 
?hidden curriculum? ? remains largely unchanged. Because there has been litle research 
on this isue, the efect of the hidden curriculum on the lives of women and girls is not 
 24 
known. ?Although linkages betwen early childhood experiences and socialization and 
later adult behaviour have been identified,? Senior contends that ?there has been litle 
exploration of these links in Caribbean female consciousnes? (4). Bailey cals for more 
in-depth research into the larger ideological isues that are afecting both boys and girls. 
Suggesting that boys? dropout rates are higher due to the financial constraints of families, 
rather than the culture of the schools, Bailey notes that the role of social forces outside 
the school have not been addresed in much of the research because ?the focus has been 
on the comparison betwen the sexes rather than on intragroup factors such as social 
clas, family form, and place of residence? (Isues of Gender 23). Profesor of 
Education, Elsa Leo-Rhynie echoes this asesment noting that while women in Jamaica 
?are not explicitly discriminated against at any level of the educational system,? there are 
?stil forces operating in the school and the society which influence girls to perpetuate the 
stereotypes of women through the choices they make in terms of school subjects, 
vocational areas and occupational roles? (qtd. in Senior 59). V. Eudine Bariteau from 
Barbados emphasizes that ?correcting biases against women to ensure aces to the 
market through public policy does not eliminate or reduce prejudices existing against 
women within domestic life or the extension of these biases into many areas of women?s 
public sector participation? (37). This disertation builds on the arguments of Senior, 
Bailey, Leo-Rhynie, and Barieteu by analyzing the role of the hidden curriculum in 
creating or hampering gender equality.  
While feminist theorists have exposed the flaws in Miler?s argument, I think that 
consideration of his original premise is useful in understanding the dynamics betwen 
school and culture. Miler rightly points out that gender in education has been 
 25 
manipulated to further colonial relationships. Baritueau also looks at the 
interelationship of gender and colonialism. Noting the recent surge in conflict over 
gender and feminism in Barbados, Bariteau points to the gender ideology with its 
separate but unequal rights and roles.  Bariteau blames the history of colonialism and 
the tenets of Liberalism for this conflict, noting that the legacy of the separate sphere 
ideology with its privileging of the public over the private has created the conflicts in the 
Caribbean. She says, ?These conflicts exist because liberal ideology cannot 
acommodate women?s participation as equals in the arenas of the public? (37). She 
argues that ?the state should acknowledge how ideological relations of gender in both the 
private and public spheres structure and complicate material relations of gender? (37). 
My disertation contributes to this analysis by looking at the relationship betwen the 
hidden curriculum, gender equality, and neocolonialism. 
 
Methodology 
 Administering Education is an interdisciplinary project, drawing on methods from 
the disciplines of Education, English, History, and Sociology. Interdisciplinary work 
offers the fredom to move in and betwen disciplines, alowing one to use the best 
methods possible in working towards the goal of the project. Removing disciplinary 
constraints encourages new conversations, and with them, new perspectives. The various 
sub-topics of this disertation have already been writen about in disciplinary projects. 
There are histories of the Anglophone Caribbean and of Belize. There are histories of 
misionary work in the British Empire. There are large bodies of both feminist and 
literary criticism that focus on the Anglophone Caribbean and there is an increasing 
 26 
amount of research on education. However, Administering Education is the first atempt 
to put these bodies of scholarship into an interdisciplinary conversation. I think that this 
conversation is esential to understanding the education of girls in the region. My hope is 
that this disertation wil lay the groundwork for further inquiries of this type.  
 While interdisciplinary work holds great promise for furthering the understanding 
of gender and education in the Caribbean, it also comes with some chalenges. Like most 
disciplinary work, the biggest chalenge of this disertation was balancing depth and 
breadth. The value of breadth is at the heart of interdisciplinary work ? looking at an 
isue from a variety of diferent perspectives can produce new insight.  However, the 
persuasivenes of one?s work is based on the degre of authority an author exhibits over 
the topic. The question that I came to over and over in this disertation was, ?How can I 
work with a number of bodies of scholarship at the same time?? In practical terms this 
question surfaced during my literature review. If each discipline has its own cannon, how 
could I possibly read everything? And moreover, how could I reference al of these 
works in my disertation while maintaining organization and focus in my writing? The 
answer, of course, is that I could not read or reference everything. While 
interdisciplinary work atempts to break down the borders of disciplines, I found that I 
had to erect other boundaries in order to make this project doable. These boundaries 
emerged slowly over the course of my work through decisions about which authors to 
reference, or which theoretical perspectives to include. These decisions were based on 
rhetorical strategy. I had to ask myself who was going to read this work and cater my 
references to them.  
 27 
 Because the overarching goal of this project is to make change ? to help identify 
and aleviate the obstacles to female achievement ? I decided to write for the audience 
that would be able to have a concrete efect on this isue: educators, writers of 
educational policy, and politicians. When I visited offices within Belize?s Ministry of 
Education I was told that there was litle published on education in Belize, but that there 
were a number of theses and disertations that had provided useful information. Based 
on this, I chose to define my audience as readers of the disertation manuscript, as 
opposed to readers of a later book that might emerge from the project. While many 
disertations are not read in the original manuscript form, I felt that mine would be. 
While I se this project as a part of feminist scholarship ? specificaly contributing to the 
body of Caribbean feminist work on education that I referenced above ? I deemphasize 
feminist language because I do not believe my imediate audience (educators, writers of 
educational policy, and politicians) would identify with this label. Indeed, because 
feminism is sometimes sen as a Western import, I felt that defining my work in such a 
way was not rhetoricaly strategic.  
 The boundaries that I have drawn around my project surely come at a cost. The 
bodies of scholarship that I do not include may be sen by those in particular disciplines 
as a weaknes of the disertation and my project may therefore lose authority in their 
eyes. For example, although I write about literature, my focus is not on literary criticism. 
Therefore, I only sometimes make use of the close readings of this methodology. From 
the eyes of a literary critic, my discussion of literature may leave them wanting a more 
detailed analysis of literary conventions and themes. Because interdisciplinary work is a 
recent development in academia, most scholars are stil disciplinarily trained. While 
 28 
scholars are being encouraged to do interdisciplinary work, I believe we also need to 
encourage scholars to read in interdisciplinary ways where they are cognizant of the 
disciplinary perspectives and biases they bring to an interdisciplinary work. The balance 
of depth and breadth in interdisciplinary work is dificult, but I believe the fresh 
perspectives that it offers outweigh the chalenges.   
This interdisciplinary project began seven years ago when I took a research trip to 
Grenada. During my stay, I met with educators and members of the Ministry of 
Education, gathered curriculum and reports, and generaly familiarized myself with the 
Grenadian education system. Inasmuch as the Grenadian education system shares 
characteristics with the other countries in the Anglophone Caribbean, this research laid 
the foundation for the history I write in Chapter 2. It also helped prepare me for my 
second research trip to Belize.  
 I did my fieldwork in Belize in August of 2005. I contacted wel-known 
researchers and conducted informal interviews with members of the Ministry of 
Education. These metings helped me to understand the church-state partnership that 
structures the education system in Belize. I collected current primary school curricula 
from the Quality Asurance and Development Service (QADS), that is tasked with 
developing and monitoring national standards for students, teachers, and schools. The 
Central Statistics Ofice (CSO) provided me with education statistics for the past 10 
years.  
My archival research was done at the Belize Archives in Belmopan. I focused on 
two primary bodies of information: records of misionary activities in Belize from the 
eightenth century to the present, and documents relating to the development of a formal 
 29 
education system in Belize. I supplemented my findings at the Archives by collecting 
newspapers articles and journals. Additionaly I gathered court records for the case of 
Maria Roches v. Clement Wade, which I discuss in the last chapter.  
To interpret the materials I collected during my fieldwork I read widely in the 
fields of history, sociology, anthropology, postcolonial theory, feminist theory, education 
theory and literary criticism in general and specificaly concerning the Anglophone 
Caribbean.  
In line with my analysis of Beka Lamb in Chapter 6, I interviewed Ze Edgel, the 
author of the novel.   
 
Definitions 
 Throughout this disertation, a number of terms and phrases appear that require a 
discussion in relation to how they are used in this work. The following provides the 
details of pertinent ideas and terms. 
  
Hidden Curriculum 
 The term ?hidden curriculum,? coined by Benson Snyder in his 1971 book by the 
same name, is used to discuss the informal knowledge that students learn in addition to 
the formal curriculum. The formal curriculum includes the skils and knowledge that the 
school is tasked with teaching students. Mathematical equations, historical events and 
the ability to organize a paragraph are part of the formal curriculum. The hidden 
curriculum, by contrast, includes the set of beliefs, values, and mores that are 
 30 
extracurricular or paracurricular, implied, or tacitly conveyed.
8
 For theorists like Bowles 
and Gintis, the hidden curriculum is linked to the reproduction of social clases: 
The educational system helps integrate youth into the economic system, we 
believe through a structural correspondence betwen its social relations and those 
of production. The structure of social relations in education not only inures the 
student to the discipline of the workplace, but develops the types of personal 
demeanour, modes of self-presentation, self-image, and social-clas identification 
which are the crucial ingredients of job adequacy. (131)  
Charles Rutheiser, who wrote his disertation on education in Belize, argues that, ?the 
hidden curriculum of schooling is ? primarily oriented towards hierarchical system of 
production. That is, academic students are encouraged to become managers or 
profesionals, and commercial students are oriented to clerical or secretarial work, while 
technical-vocational students are relegated to low status manual trades? (Rutheiser 41). 
My disertation builds on these understandings of the hidden curriculum by looking at 
gender in addition to clas. I ask what roles the hidden curriculum encourages girls to 
acept.  
 
Victorian Gender Roles 
 Queen Victoria reigned over the British Empire from 1837 to 1901. During this 
period distinct gender roles emerged as a response to growing industrialization. Men 
increasingly began working outside of the home, while women ? at least middle- and 
upper-clas, white women ? took greater control over work inside the home. This patern 
                                                
8
 Se David Hargreave?s ?Power and the Paracuriculum,? for an analysis of the major research on the 
paracuriculum.  
 31 
of divided labor emerged in response to changes in the economy, but it developed into a 
powerful and ?biologicaly-based? ideology around the ?natural? qualities of men and 
women. The separate sphere ideology, as it has come to be known, designates men?s 
world as the public sphere, which encompases paid work, politics, and money. The 
women?s sphere is caled the private sphere and includes things generaly connected to 
the home or raising children.  
During the ninetenth century, the ideal of women?s behavior revolved around 
four characteristics: piety, purity, submisivenes, and domesticity (Welter). Women 
were sen as having a natural afinity for religion. They were sen as the society?s moral 
compas and their most important work was the inculcation of ethics in their children. 
The concept of purity atached morality to sex. Women who remained virginous, chaste, 
and modest were good women, and women who did not were publicly scorned. Because 
sex was connected to morality and morality in turn to parenting, a daughter?s wanton 
sexuality shamed her family, particularly her father who was sen as the unquestioned 
head of the family. Men?s innate power over women was based on men?s greater size 
and physical strength, but extended to al aspects of life. Women were to submit to 
men?s leadership and dominance first as daughters to their fathers, and second as wives to 
their husbands. The only place where women exercised some modicum of power was the 
home, the private or domestic sphere. Women?s lives were so unquestioningly restricted 
to the home that historians refer to this ideology as the ?Cult of Domesticity.?  
The separate sphere clearly established a hierarchy betwen men and women, but 
what is les obvious is that this ideology worked to elevate whites and support 
colonialism. As Gail Bederman points out in her text, Manlines and Civilization, 
 32 
ideologies of race, gender, and civilization were intimately connected. Scientific theories 
of the time suggested that the roles of men and women became more diferentiated as 
races moved up the evolutionary ladder with the most advanced societies having 
completely separate lives for men and women. She says, ?In short, as civilized races 
gradualy evolved toward perfection, they naturaly perfected and deepened the sexual 
specialization of the Victorian doctrine of spheres? (28). Further, the segregation 
betwen male and female was positioned in a hierarchy with the man?s superior position 
naturalized and unquestioned. In this way, patriarchy became part of the marking of a 
civilized people. The female sphere rested on morality, spirituality, and sexual purity. 
Thus, any sexuality that veered from Victorian prudishnes marked a woman, and her 
people, as les evolved. Civilization became a gendered discourse, and the religious 
education system became one of the most important sites for articulating this ideology 
and thus regulating women?s sexuality. In this disertation I look at the role of 
denominational schools in encouraging Victorian gender roles and look at the possible 
consequences in terms of girls? aspirations. 
 
Respectability 
 The term ?respectability? has been the center of a long and complex discussion 
among scholars of the Anglophone Caribbean since Peter Wilson?s 1969 article, 
?Reputation and Respectability: A Suggestion for Caribbean Ethnography? and his 1973 
book Crab Antics: The Social Anthropology of English-Speaking Negro Societies of the 
Caribbean. Wilson made the case for a male/female binary value system betwen 
?reputation? and ?respectability.? In Wilson?s articulation, men?s status (reputation) is 
 33 
connected to African traditions and communal interaction. ?It is a response to colonial 
dependence and a solution to the scarcity of respectability? (Beson 16). Acording to 
Wilson, women?s status (respectability) is directly connected to a woman?s sexuality. 
Driven by the education system and Christian churches, respectability is tied to a colonial 
system of stratification based on clas, color, culture and mariage.  
 In her article, ?Reputation and Respectability Reconsidered: A New Perspective 
on Afro-Caribbean Peasant Women,? Jean Beson points to the flaws in Wilson?s 
argument. She says that the male value system of reputation is based on ?unequal and 
exploitive gender relations? and that Wilson figures resistance against colonial culture as 
exclusively male ?while Afro-Caribbean women are regarded as bearers and perpetuators 
of the Eurocentric colonial value system? (19). Carla Freman, author of High Tech and 
High Hels in the Global Economy, makes a similar argument claiming that, ?Wilson?s 
model of reputation and respectability tends to idealize the former as creative and even, 
in a sense, liberating, and to condemn the later as a direct expresion of ?mental 
colonialism? in which Caribbean people strive to imitate their white masters and 
mistreses in their conservative conventions (110).  
Lynn Bolles provides another way of looking at the isue. Rather than 
interpreting women?s behavior within the narow constructions of respectability and 
colonial miicry, she suggests that we use Chela Sandoval?s theory of ?oppositional 
consciousnes.? Sandoval interprets resistance ?as a theory and praxis exercised by those 
who refuse to asume or adhere to an ideology fixed by those in social and economic 
power in their society. The oppresed, by race, clas, gender, religion, ethnicity or other 
forms of diference establish their own position, their own sense of power on their own 
 34 
terms? (2-3). In this way what maters is not the outsider?s interpretation of a woman?s 
behavior ? whether or not her decision to get maried represents acommodation into a 
Eurocentric model of family ? but the way that the woman manipulates the ideology to 
her own empowerment. In this disertation I look at the ideology of respectability as a 
political tool, capable of both oppresion and resistance. Although Christian ideology 
stil retains a great amount of power in the region, this does not negate women?s agency.  
For the purposes of this disertation, I want to define what I wil cal ?the 
ideology of respectability? as a belief system that uses aspects of women?s sexuality to 
establish and maintain the middle clas. As I discussed above, during the colonial era, 
constructions of women?s sexuality were used to establish racial hierarchies that in turn 
legitimated the paternalism of the mother country towards colonized peoples. In the 
chapters that follow I wil explain how misionary influence has entrenched the ideology 
of respectability in the culture of the schools throughout the Anglophone Caribbean. The 
ideology of respectability surfaces in school policies like the expulsion of pregnant 
students, which I discuss in Chapter 5; however, it is often part of the hidden curiculum, 
unstated but powerful. It is dificult for researchers to gain aces to the hidden 
curriculum, but an understanding of the values and beliefs that schools instil in students 
is necesary to combating gender inequality. In chapters 2 and 5 I ilustrate the role 
literature can play in revealing the hidden curriculum.  
 
Organization of Ad/ministering Education 
In order to set the parameters of this multifaceted study the following outlines the 
intent of each chapter. In Chapter 2, I provide a history of misionary evangelism and 
 35 
British colonial education in the Anglophone Caribbean. In his introduction to Misions 
and Empire, Norman Etherington points to the seming reluctance or inability of scholars 
to talk about the role of Christian misions in the history of the British Empire. J.A. 
Mangan makes the same point noting that while there are detailed studies of colonial 
regions and religious institutions, that this work has not been connected to the history of 
imperialism. Etherington suggests that the reason for this gap in scholarship is because 
the relationship betwen Christian evangelism and the British Empire is complex in that 
it varies across the diferent colonies of the Empire and within the colonies over time (1-
3).  
Susan Thorne echoes Etherington?s point in her book Congregational Misions 
and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Ninetenth-Century England. She aserts a 
strong and symbiotic connection betwen misionary evangelism and imperial control, 
but she cautions that misionary interests and imperial interests were not synonymous ? 
misionaries pursued souls and converts rather than profits and trade. Thorne argues 
most misionaries believed that they were helping the people to whom they ministered 
and that they made great sacrifices out of this motivation: many died during their postings 
overseas, while others either endured long separations from their family, or risked the 
health of their wives and children by bringing their families with them on arduous 
journeys (8-9). At times misionaries even worked against imperial control (8-9). J.A. 
Mangan maintains that there needs to be much more work done to demonstrate the 
connection betwen education, evangelism, and imperialism in these histories (4).  
I add to this efort in Chapter 2 by demonstrating the connections betwen 
colonial conquest, religious proselytizing, and the emergence of a formal education 
 36 
system in the Anglophone Caribbean. Although there are obvious diferences betwen 
the histories of individual countries in the Anglophone Caribbean, there are also 
similarities. These similarities can provide important insights into the role of education 
in the British Empire and the spread of Christianity. Further, I take up an important 
theme that even Mangan fails to emphasize in his critique of these histories ? the role of 
the schools in establishing beliefs about gender that serve to structure hierarchies of race, 
clas and nation.  I return to this isue in chapters 6 and 7 
Although Chapter 2 is useful in providing an historical outline of the education 
system in the Anglophone Caribbean, the mision histories and British colonial reports 
which inform the chapter do not provide insight into the hidden curiculum. In order to 
addres the hidden curriculum of the present-day school systems in the region, we need to 
understand the way it has functioned in the past. I argue that twentieth-century 
Caribbean literature can provide us an important window into the hidden curriculum 
through literary memory. Therefore the purpose of Chapter 3 is not to contribute to the 
body of literary criticism on Caribbean literature or to do close readings of the texts. 
Rather, my intention is to use literature to contribute to the fields of history and 
education. 
Looking at the body of wel-known
9
 Anglophone Caribbean literature, I selected 
texts based on thre criteria. First, the naratives had to be autobiographical. Five of the 
texts are novels, one is a memoir, and one is a poem, but they al fal into a category that 
some critics have caled a creolized genre. The second criteria was the inclusion of 
clasroom scenes. I wanted the literature to iluminate the smal-scale interactions 
                                                
9
 By ?wel-known? I mean literature that has high sales, has received critical atention, and/or has won 
awards.  
 37 
betwen students, and betwen students and teachers. Finaly, I chose naratives that 
included a presentation and critique of the hidden curriculum. With these criteria in 
mind, I chose the following texts: George Laming?s In the Castle of my Skin 
(Barbados), Austin Clarke?s Growing Up Stupid under the Union Jack (Barbados), Merle 
Hodge?s Crick Crack, Monkey (Trinidad), Merle Collins?s Angel (Grenada), and Jamaica 
Kincaid?s Annie John and Lucy (Antigua).
10
 
George Laming is one of the world?s most wel known Caribbean writers. He 
was born in Barbados in 1927, a time of tension betwen British colonialism and the 
emerging nationalist movement. Laming was nine years old during the Bridgetown 
riots that protested the deportation of Clement Payne, a Trinidadian union organizer 
(Paquet 8).  Laming witnesed the growing trade union movement of the 1930s and 
40s, and the rise of the independence movements in the 1950s, both of which influenced 
his novel, In the Castle of My Skin, which was published in 1953. In the Castle of My 
Skin tels the story of a poor black boy named G, who struggles to come of age against 
the backdrop of 1930s Barbados. I chose to use this novel for two reasons. First, In the 
Castle of My Skin, provides one of the earliest and most vivid acounts of colonial 
schooling in the Anglophone Caribbean. The schoolroom scenes Laming richly 
describes provide an acount of both the formal and hidden curriculums of Barbadian 
education in the 30s. Most importantly for this disertation, the narative traces the 
afects of the schooling on G and his friends. In the Castle of My Skin describes the 
proces by which the mind is colonized and the efects of this socialization on a child?s 
growing sense of self and his political worldview.   
                                                
10
 I considered using Michele Clif?s Abeng but ultimately decided to omit it because even though it 
criticizes the hiden curiculum of colonial education, it does not have many useful clasrom scenes or 
direct references to the formal curiculum. 
 38 
The second reason I chose In the Castle of My Skin is the novel?s conscious 
intervention into history. One of the themes that is central to al Laming?s work is the 
relationship of the past to the present. He says, 
The colonial experience is a mater of historical record. What I?m saying is that 
the colonial experience is a live experience in the consciousnes of these people. 
And just because the so-caled colonial situation is over and its institutions may 
have been transfered into something else, it is a falacy to think that the human-
lived content of those situations are automaticaly transfered in to something else, 
too. The experience is a continuing psychic experience that has to be dealt with 
long after the actual colonial situation formaly ?ends.? (Kent 92) 
Laming tasks the writer with the responsibility of shaping of a postcolonial national 
consciousnes, which he emphasizes in his collection of esays, The Pleasures of Exile. 
 Austin Clarke, author of Growing Up Stupid under the Union Jack, A Memoir, 
was born in Barbados in 1934. As a child he atended Cobermere School, the seting for 
much of Growing Up Stupid under the Union Jack. He emigrated to Canada in 1955 to 
atend University of Toronto. Although not wel-known in the U.S., Clarke is a 
celebrated writer in Canada who has received a number of awards including the 1980 
Casa de las Americas Prize for Literature, the Dr. Martin Luther King Achievement 
Award, the Rogers Communication Writer?s Trust Fiction Prize, the W.O. Mitchel 
Literary Prize and the Order of Canada. Inasmuch as the other stories I look at in this 
chapter are autobiographical fiction, Clarke?s memoir is fictionalized autobiography. 
That is, having writen nine novels (some autobiographical) and several collections of 
short stories, Clarke?s narative style in Growing Up Stupid under the Union Jack is 
 39 
indistinguishable from that of his novels. Indeed, al of the texts that I use are genericaly 
?creolized?; they exist betwen and among various genres, particularly literature, history, 
and autobiography. Growing Up Stupid under the Union Jack is set in the same country 
(Barbados) and the same school (Cobermere) as In the Castle of My Skin. I consciously 
group Clarke?s memoir and Laming?s novel to chalenge the generic boundaries 
betwen fiction and autobiography ? they are both histories, and like al histories, they 
are both subjective.  
Crick Crack, Monkey, an autobiographical novel by Merle Hodge, plays with 
genre in the same ways as Laming and Clarke, but Hodge?s work brings another 
contribution ? an analysis of gender. Merle Hodge was born in Trinidad in 1944. In 
1962 Hodge won the Trinidad and Tobago Girls Island Scholarship, which alowed her to 
atend University College in London.  After earning her PhD in French, Hodge went to 
Grenada in 1979 to work as a director of curriculum development for Prime Minister 
Maurice Bishop. After the asasination of Bishop and the U.S. invasion in 1983 Hodge 
left Grenada, eventualy returning to Trinidad to work for the University of the West 
Indies.  
Hodge?s novel, published in 1970, marks a shift away from the mostly male 
writers that had characterized the previous 20 years of Caribbean literature. Kathlen 
Renk, author of Caribbean Shadows and Victorian Ghosts: Women?s Writing and 
Decolonization, argues that 
even though [the earlier male] naratives react to colonial hierarchy and focus on 
Caribbean rather than English landscapes and culture, they retain characteristics 
of ?imitative elite? naratives in that they do not overturn the basic asumptions of 
 40 
English nationalist literature, which encode monolithic national and gender 
identities and hierarchical gender systems. (5) 
Renk suggests that Hodge and the female Caribbean novelists that followed her 
chalenged the ?Victorian myth of family? to make visible the ?close ties betwen the 
rhetoric of nationalism? and ?consolidated identities based on discrete categories of sex-
gender, race, color, and nation.? She contends that women writers overturned ?the very 
basis of the discourse ?the myth of the family that perpetuates hierarchical systems and 
hegemony, discrete limiting categories, and an inexorable colonialism that stil pervades 
the Anglophone Caribbean? (Renk 7). 
 Like Hodge, Merle Collins worked for the Bishop government. Her novel, Angel, 
chronicles the years leading up to the Bishop government. Collins was born in 1950 and 
atended St. Joseph?s Convent, where she later returned to teach. She received her 
bachelor?s degre from the University of the West Indies, her master?s degre from 
Georgetown University, and her PhD from the University of London in 1990. Collins?s 
schooling was multidisciplinary including the study of English, Spanish, Latin American 
studies, and government. Throughout her years in higher education, she continued her 
creative writing publishing Callaloo: A Grenada Anthology and Because the Dawn 
Breaks. After leaving University of London Collins continued publishing novels, short 
stories and poetry including Rain Darling (1990), Rotten Pomerack (1992), and The 
Colour of Forgeting (1995). She currently teaches literature and creative writing at the 
University of Maryland.  
 Angel includes an acount of Angel?s early schooling, but Collins?s novel is 
diferent from the other stories in that it follows the protagonist to the University of the 
 41 
West Indies. At university, Angel experiences a completely diferent type of education 
than the one she was exposed to in primary and secondary school. She moves away from 
the ?banking? style of education, being encouraged instead to think criticaly and ask 
questions, and she escapes the rigid gender norms which were a part of her life growing 
up. The description of Angel?s university education marks a moment of progres. As 
with In the Castle of My Skin, Growing Up Stupid under the Union Jack, and Crick 
Crack, Monkey, Angel criticizes the system of British colonial education, but unlike the 
others, Angel follows the protagonist to a non-colonial school. The comparisons betwen 
Angel?s university education and her earlier education in Grenada provide a fuller 
critique of the hidden curriculum of colonial education.  
 The last author that I consider is Jamaica Kincaid, an Antiguan writer who has 
achieved both commercial and critical succes. She has won a number of awards 
including the Anifield-Wolf book Award and The Lila-Walace-Reader?s Digest Fund 
Award. She was a finalist for the international Ritz Paris Hemingway Award, and was 
nominated for the 1997 National Book Award for My Brother. Kincaid was born Elaine 
Potter Richardson in 1949 and lived in Antigua until the age of 17 when she moved to 
New York to work as an au pair. She gained popularity by writing for The Vilage Voice, 
and later, The New Yorker, where she became a staf writer in 1976. In 1985 Kincaid 
published her first novel, Annie John, and in 1990 she published what many consider to 
be the sequel, Lucy.  
 Annie John tels the story of the coming-of-age of Annie, a smart and defiant girl 
who is pained by her gradual separation from her mother. At the end of the novel, 
Annie?s independence becomes complete. She has not only distanced herself from her 
 42 
mother, and thus created her own unique identity, but she is preparing to leave colonial 
Antigua. Lucy, an au pair for a wealthy white couple in North America, picks up the 
story as a tenage girl struggling to fit in with the family she works for. Lucy stil retains 
a strong, although conflicted, bond with her mother who remains in Antigua, but the 
novel focuses on her relationship with the woman she works for, Mariah. Mariah, who is 
meant to represent Western feminism, has good intentions, but is completely incapable of 
seing past her privilege and so her relationship with Lucy ultimately fals apart.  
Annie John and Lucy both engage with British colonial education, although in 
Annie John school is more of a focus. What I am ost interested in, however, is the way 
these novels portray resistance. Both novels present and critique the colonial school?s 
construction of the oppresed mind, but they also demonstrate the resistance to this 
proces. For Annie, this resistance is figured as defacement of a textbook, while for Lucy 
it is in her rejection of Mariah?s neocolonial relationship. In Chapter 3, therefore, I use 
Caribbean literature as a tool to understand the hidden curriculum of colonial schools and 
the resistance to it.  
In her esay, ??Somebody Forgot to Tel Somebody Something?: African-
American Women?s Historical Novels,? Barbara Christian notes that literary memories 
surface at key moments. The literature that I look emerges in the period before and after 
independence in the Anglophone Caribbean. (I look at novels published betwen 1953 
and 1990). Because these novels have, as one focus, the colonial education of their 
protagonist, I argue that these memories are therefore connected to nationalism. These 
authors recognize the power of education and their works emphasize the importance of 
these memories to postcolonial reforms and nation-building.  
 43 
The first thre chapters look at the Anglophone Caribbean as a region. In order to 
balance breadth and depth subsequent chapters (Chapters 4-7) focus on one country 
within the Anglophone Caribbean, Belize. Belize provides a particularly interesting case 
because of its unique history within the British Empire, which I explain in Chapter 4. 
Belize existed in an imperial no-man?s-land until the middle of the ninetenth century. 
The British did not oficialy claim Belize as a crown colony until 1862 despite the fact 
that British setlers populated and colonized the area from the late sevententh century. 
Even after Britain claimed Belize, it remained a ?backwater? colony. Chapter 5 recounts 
how the forgotten status of Belize alowed misionary groups more influence and power 
than they had in other colonies. This influence has remained quite strong in the post-
independence era and it can be sen clearly in the role of religious groups in the present-
day education system. Misionary groups were important in al of the countries of the 
Anglophone Caribbean. They were the principal operators of, and investors in, the 
education system prior to independence. In most countries in the Anglophone Caribbean, 
the government has taken control of the education system and while religious groups stil 
have great influence and often stil run the most prestigious schools, their power has 
diminished as the governments have increased standardization, oversight, and centralized 
organization. This general patern, however, has not been true of Belize. In Belize there 
is church-state partnership in the education system in which religious managements (each 
management represents a diferent sect of Christianity) control the day-to-day 
administration of the schools. The Belizean government pays 100 percent of primary 
school teacher?s salaries and 70 percent of secondary school teacher?s salaries, but the 
religious managements handle al personnel isues including the hiring and firing of 
 44 
teachers. In the past ten years the Belizean government has taken a stronger role in 
developing curriculum for primary schools, but the religious managements are in charge 
of how this curriculum is taught. The codes of conduct for schools in Belize are based on 
Christian precepts, which creates problems for pregnant students and unwed teachers, 
which I discuss in Chapter 6 and 7 respectively.  
The two chapters based on historical and archival evidence help to explain why 
Belize is one of only two countries
1
 in the Anglophone Caribbean that use a church-state 
partnership to administer education (Miler 5). Further, in order to understand why 
religious groups have maintained so much power in Belize, it is necesary to look closely 
at Belize?s past. In Chapter 4 I trace the history of Belize from the first European 
setlements to the mid-twentieth century nationalist movement explaining Belize?s 
ambiguous status within the British Empire. This chapter also demonstrates the 
important ideological and symbolic roles women play in traditional histories of Belize. 
Specificaly, Christian ideologies of propernes and respectability have contained or 
erased the historical memories of Belizean women and constructions of respectable 
femininity have served political interests. This chapter provides an important 
historiography that exposes and chalenges the construction and maintenance of 
patriarchy in Belize in both the colonial and postcolonial eras.  
Belize?s ambiguous legal status had important consequences for the development 
of the Belizean education system. Chapter 5 traces the interconnected histories of 
misionary work and formal schooling. Other than a handful of disertations, there is 
litle writen about the education system in Belize. This chapter represents the first 
atempt to tel the history of Belizean education in tandem with the history of misionary 
                                                
1
 St. Lucia is the other.  
 45 
groups by bringing together information scatered throughout traditional histories, and 
combining that with misionary acounts and colonial reports.  
Charles Rutheiser notes that ?few social scientists of either foreign or local birth 
have efectively described the complexity of just what exactly goes on in schools in 
postcolonial societies. Generaly the richly-textured acounts of life in schools, and, by 
extension the societies in which they are embedded, are found in works of fiction, like 
Wole Soyinka?s Ake: The Years of Childhood (1983) or Ze Edgel?s Beka Lamb (1984)? 
(30). Building on Rutheiser?s suggestion, Chapter 6 uses Belizean author Ze Edgel?s 
novel, Beka Lamb, to expose the hidden curriculum in mid-twentieth century Belizean 
schools. Beka Lamb tels the story of Toycie Qualo, a girl who gets pregnant shortly 
before graduating from secondary school. Toycie is expeled from the Catholic school 
she atends and this sets in proces a series of events that lead to her death. Beka, the 
protagonist and Toycie?s best friend, is left to make sense of her friend?s demise. In fact, 
watching Toycie?s fal from grace gives Beka the tools to succed. Toycie?s story is 
connected to what has become a controversial isue in Belize in the last thre decades. 
Traditionaly, pregnant students have been expeled from school and this isue has 
become a feminist ralying point for the Women?s Bureau and other Women?s NGO?s in 
Belize. I use Edgel?s novel to extend the conversation beyond the isue of expulsion, to 
the efect this practice has on women?s identity throughout Belize. Besides a textual 
reading of segments of the novel, I also include email correspondence with the author for 
further insights concerning gender equity, religion, and education. 
Chapter 7 caries on with the isues of pregnancy that were part of Beka Lamb?s 
fictive commentary. However, in this chapter I focus on the real lived experience and 
 46 
common practice of firing or suspending unwed teachers who become pregnant. 
Although the government disapproves of this practice, the church-state partnership alows 
the religious managements complete discretion over personnel isues. In 2004 the legal 
system became involved. A teacher who had been fired after geting pregnant sued the 
Catholic management and the court found in her favor. Although this has been an 
important precedent in Belize, the courts cannot solve the larger problem. For female 
teachers, their sexuality ? who they live with, their marital status, the number of children 
they have ? has direct consequences on their employment. Chapter 7 considers the legal 
isues surrounding the case, but also the impact that this practice has on the identity of 
women in Belize. The surveilance of female teacher?s sexuality remains an important 
isue in Belize and it evidences the power religious groups hold in the society.     
 47 
Chapter 2: ?Bought by a New Master?: A History of Misionary Work and 
Education in the West Indies 
 
With the Bible in one hand, and the sword in the other, 
Columbus and those who succeded him 
 sought to convert the native peoples to Christianity 
by coercion while exploiting their human resources. 
 -Nathanial Samuel Murrel 
 
As cultural and emotional currency which is readily 
appropriated and manipulated, religion has 
always accompanied imperialistic expansion.  
- Patricia Rooke 
 
 
Charles Rutheiser, author of ?Culture, Schooling, and Neocolonialism in Belize,? 
argues that the causal connection betwen education and liberation has become axiomatic 
around the world. ?Belief in the miraculous eficacy of schooling to efect social and 
individual changes has been one of the most widely acepted exports of the metropolitan 
industrialized nations to the rest of the world,? acording to Rutheiser (26-27). However, 
the history of education in the Caribbean makes clear that education was not always 
intended to empower. To the contrary, education in misionary schools was sen by 
many imperialists as a tool for maintaining colonial hierarchies.  
We also know that despite the importance of education in the postcolonial world, 
it is not a cure-al. In order to have true change and increased equality there needs to also 
be a shift in the thinking of the society. If empowerment is the goal, education is 
necesary, but not sufficient. Proof of this was presented in the last chapter: girls 
throughout the Caribbean are out-achieving boys and yet these succeses are not 
 48 
translating into more economic, political, or social power. To beter understand the role 
of education in creating progresive change, the present-day system requires 
contextualization.   
In his preface to Educational Policy and the Mision School, J. A. Lauwerys 
emphasizes the importance of understanding the history of education in addresing 
present problems and chalenges: 
[O]ften in education the problems of today cannot be understood without taking 
full acount of the way in which they were generated: the historical dimension is 
esential to the analysis. This is particularly true in the evaluation of misionary 
efort: policy decisions were taken in the very early days and institutions created. 
The efects were permanent and persist?. [The history of the misionary school 
is important] but not for the sake of antiquarian devotion; mainly in order to 
iluminate present conflicts and disputes. (vii) 
Therefore, this chapter provides a brief history of misionary work in the Caribbean, with 
particular atention paid to misionary involvement in the education system. At the end 
of the chapter I suggest lesons we might learn from this history and how those lesons 
might afect policy choices surrounding the pedagogy and administration of education in 
the Anglophone Caribbean.  
 
Conversion and Conquest 
The history of the education system in the Anglophone Caribbean is inextricably 
linked to the history of proselytizing in the region. To understand the enduring power of 
the Christian churches in the Caribbean it is important to remember the context in which 
 49 
the New World was discovered. From the 8
th
 century to the 13
th
  century Spain and 
Portugal were under the control of Arab and Moorish rulers. In his book, The Shaping of 
the West Indian Church: 1492-1962, Arthur Dayfoot explains the importance of the wars 
that Spain and Portugal fought to achieve their independence. Religion?s unifying power 
and the papacy?s support both played important roles for Iberian Christians during the 
Reconquista. The ?Re-conquest? created a lasting legacy of religious intolerance in 
Spain and Portugal. ?In a day when religion was so closely alied to government it was 
thought dangerous to have what the twentieth century would cal a ?fifth column? within 
the country? (Dayfoot 1). Religious uniformity was sen as necesary for sovereignty. 
Thus, by the beginning of the 1490s, Jews and Muslims were expeled from Spain unles 
they converted to Catholicism, and the Spanish Inquisition, which persisted until the 
ninetenth century, tortured and executed Jews, Muslims, and Protestants acused of 
heresy. Acording to Dayfoot, Spain?s use of religious conversion to achieve political 
control established a precedent that guided setler behavior in the New World. In dealing 
with the Amerindians and Africans, Spain relied on the same tactics they had used 
against Jews and Muslims. Throughout the sixtenth and sevententh centuries when 
England and France established setlements in the New World, they followed Spain?s 
lead, relying on religious belief and charges of heresy to establish sovereignty.  
The relationship betwen conquest and conversion was formalized in the 1493 
Papal Bull of Demarcation: 
Almighty God confered upon us in blesed Peter and of the vicarship of Jesus 
Christ, which we hold on earth, do by tenor of these presents, should any of said 
islands have been found by your envoys and captains, give, grant, and asign to 
 50 
you and your heirs and succesors, kings of Castile and Leon, forever, together 
with al their dominions, cities, camps, places, and vilages, and al rights, 
jurisdictions, and appurtenances, al islands and main lands found and to be 
found, discovered and to be discovered towards the west and south, by drawing 
and establishing a line from the Arctic pole, namely the north, to the Antarctic 
pole, namely the south, no mater whether the said main lands and islands are 
found and to be found in the direction of India or towards any other quarter, the 
said line to be distant one hundred leagues towards the west and south from any 
of the islands commonly known as the Azores and Cape Verde. 
Papal bulls are usualy considered in relation to their political consequences, but Dayfoot 
notes that they also established the symbiotic relationship betwen colonialism and 
evangelism, laying the foundation for centuries of misionary work. ?The expresly 
stated rationale of the document is the asignment of misionary duties in new teritories 
and only secondarily the mater of international arbitration? (Dayfoot 21). For Dayfoot, 
the significance of the papal bulls lies in their asertion that ?faith could best be caried 
out to new lands in an orderly and efective way under the aegis of the political powers 
which had pioneered their ?discovery?? (21). In other words, governments would need to 
control the church in order to Christianize their teritories. 
In his article, ?Dangerous Memories, Underdevelopment, and the Bible in 
Colonial Caribbean Experience,? Nathaniel Samuel Murrel echoes Dayfoot?s argument, 
insisting that the Pope saw Christianizing and civilizing as two sides of the same coin: 
The historical role that the Bible and Christianity played in the Caribbean 
 51 
experience was not just happenstance; it was planned as an esential part of the 
European expansionist program to make the Amerindians and their lands an 
extension of Western Europe. Pope Alexander VI (Roderigo Bogia) as Vicar of 
Christ and head of the republica Christiana in Europe not only blesed 
Columbus?s mision to the ?Indies,? but he commisioned the Genovese explorer 
to go and discover and claim lands, gold, and precious stones for the crown, 
spread the gospel, and convert the heathens to Christ and to the Christian Church 
?. Later, a series of five Papal Bulls gave half of the world to Spanish sovereigns 
and authorized the veritable Christianization and civilization of the so-caled 
heathens of the Americas. (10) 
When the Pope gave ?monarchs the sole right to appoint bishops and other eclesiastical 
authorities, it also enabled them to employ coercion in converting infidels and heathens to 
their religion at home and abroad? (Etherington ?Introduction? 14). Etherington notes 
that even though the King was the head of the Church of England, Anglican misionaries, 
enjoined with similar precepts, never had a mandate as strong as the one given to the 
Spanish and Portuguese Empires by the Pope (14). Nevertheles, as Britain chalenged 
Spain?s monopoly on the New World, the British used religion strategicaly as a tool to 
establish and maintain political control. 
England?s earliest colonization eforts ? guided somewhat more by mercantilism 
than evangelism, with the founding of ?companies? chartered by the state ? stil 
embraced misionary work in the New World, at least rhetoricaly. King James I?s 1606 
Virginia charter reads, in part: 
 52 
We would vouchsafe unto them our Licence, to make Habitation, Plantation, and 
to deduce a Colony of sundry of our People into that Part of America, commonly 
caled VIRGINIA, and other Parts and Teritories in America, either appertaining 
unto us, or which are not now actualy possesed by any Christian Prince or 
People.. We, greatly commending, and graciously acepting of, their Desires for 
the Furtherance of so noble a Work, which may, by the Providence of Almighty 
God, hereafter tend to the Glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating of 
Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darknes and miserable 
Ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God, and may in time bring the 
Infidels and Savages, living in those Parts, to human Civility, and to a setled and 
quiet Government; DO, by these our Leters Patents, graciously acept of, and 
agre to, their humble and wel-intended Desires; 
British officials frequently argued that misionary work was esential to continued 
imperial rule. Wiliam Knox, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1770-1782 
and a member of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Lands (SPG) 
insisted that ?the Prevalence of the Church of England in those Colonies is the best 
security that Great Britain can have for their Fidelity and atachment to her Constitution 
and Interests? (qtd. in Harlow 738).  
Catholic misionaries initialy enjoyed greater succes in the Americas than their 
Protestant counterparts. As Michael Twaddle says in ?Christian Misions and Third 
World States,? Protestant Christian leaders ?were far too busy quareling among 
themselves and struggling to establish new national churches in Europe, or ones fre from 
state control there, to concern themselves seriously with misionary work among non-
 53 
European peoples outside North America until comparatively late in the eightenth 
century? (2). Protestant sects, though, made up ground quickly, with many blacks 
atracted to the churches? advocacy for abolition and an end to slavery (Twaddle 2). The 
Established Church was present in the colonies from the beginning, but prior to 
emancipation, they catered mostly to white planters? families.  
By the 1840s misions were ubiquitous in British colonies around the world and 
misionary work had earned public appreciation and official support (Porter 47). By the 
early ninetenth century evangelical Christianity, commerce, and civilization had become 
explicitly linked (Porter 50). 
 
Slavery and the Birth of Formal Education 
Throughout the British Empire during the eightenth and ninetenth centuries the 
proceses of Christianizing and civilizing became blurred. Acording to Murrel, ?the 
evangelistic vision of Christianity that fueled the misionary enterprise was at the heart of 
the European expansionist explorations to the West, [consequently] from the very 
beginning a Eurocentric theology was concocted from biblical materials to defend and 
support European interests and domination at Africans? expense? (Murrel 12). Christian 
leaders provided support for the institution of slavery in the West Indies for more than 
375 years by choosing certain pasages of the Bible, while overlooking others. Scripture 
was edited and interpreted in ways that justified the colonial system
12
 and Christian 
precepts were used to justify punishment for slaves that resisted or disobeyed. In some 
cases planters supplemented the low salaries of the ministers in exchange for teaching 
                                                
12
 Murel notes that scriptures including: Mat. 28:18-20; Eph. 6:5-9; Phil. 2:5-8; Col.3:2-25; I Peter 2:5-
25; Rom. 13:1-10; and 1Cor. 7:20 were used as justification for slavery and colonialism. 
 54 
their slaves obedience (Murrel 14). Many misionaries owned slaves and used their 
Sunday sermons and homilies to support slavery (Murrel 14). But even misionaries 
who found slavery reprehensible were instructed by their home misions to keep their 
objections to themselves (Murrel 14). For example, instructions to Wesleyan 
misionaries made clear that their ?only busines [was] to promote the moral and 
religious improvement of the slaves to whom [they] may have aces, without in the least 
degre, in public or private, interfering with their civil condition? (qtd. in Porter 86). Of 
course, this advice was dificult to follow for some misionaries, who witnesed first-
hand the horrors of slavery, but by in large such instructions were adhered to.  
Despite the fact that Christian precepts were used to justified slavery, slave 
owners generaly opposed religious instruction for their slaves
13
. This created a level of 
animosity betwen planters and misionaries that varied greatly betwen colony and sect, 
but in many cases was severe. In Jamaica, for example, misionaries were harased and 
in some cases imprisoned. The preamble to an 1802 act made clear the contempt that the 
plantocracy had for the misionaries: 
[T]here now exists in this island an evil, which is daily increasing and threatens 
much danger to the peace and safety thereof, by reason of the preaching of il-
disposed, iliterate, or ignorant enthusiasts, to metings of negroes and persons of 
colour, chiefly slaves, unlawfully asembled; whereby ? the minds of the hearers 
are perverted with fanatical notions. (qtd. in Porter 87) 
There were thre principal reasons the plantocracy opposed religious instruction for their 
slaves. First, Christianity teaches that God is the most powerful leader. Thus, Christian 
ideology threatened a shift in the master/slave relationship by creating a third player in 
                                                
13
 There were a few exceptions like Christopher Codrington in Barbados and the forestocracy in Belize. 
 55 
this power hierarchy, God, and by teaching slaves that they were the spiritual equals of 
their masters ? Heaven was open to everyone, slaves included (Rooke 27). Second, 
religious instruction taught some slaves leadership skils by alowing them to be leaders 
of Bible groups and in some cases preachers. The planters worried that these leadership 
roles might lead to organized revolts. In his book, A Century of West Indian Education, 
Shirley Gordon explains that some slave owners feared religious instruction because they 
believed that ignorance was key to maintaining subservience. Gordon reasons, ?If 
[slaves] are not instructed in any arts or skils other than those required for their unpaid 
labor, they are les likely to contemplate alternatives and so resist their masters? (34). 
Third, slave owners resisted religious instruction for their slaves because slaves? heresy 
provided theological underpinning for the master/slave relationship. If the rationalization 
for colonization and slavery was based, at least in part, on the idea of slaves as heathens, 
Christianizing them would eliminate that justification. In his 1657 History of Barbados, 
Richard Ligon explains how this concern prompted many slave owners to disalow 
religious instruction for their slaves: ?Being once a Christian, he [the planter] could no 
more acount him a slave, and so lose the hold they had of them as slaves, by making 
them Christians; and by that means should open such a gap, as al the planters in the 
island would curse him? (quoted in Gordon 9).  
Despite the objections of many slave owners, religious instruction became 
available to a large number of slaves throughout the Anglophone Caribbean in the late 
eightenth and early ninetenth centuries; these smal-scale lesons in Christian doctrine 
became the precursor to formal academic education in the region. Lesons were 
 56 
infrequent and often eratic, but they were generaly administered as Sunday and night 
schools.  
Government-sponsored education in the West Indies began only in 1833 with the 
resolution to emancipate British slaves. Prior to emancipation, there were few day 
schools in the Anglophone Caribbean. Whites living in the British colonies stil 
overwhelmingly thought of England as ?home? and so most children were sent back to 
England for their education. A relatively smal number of schools did exist for ?fre 
coloured? children and for whites who could not aford to send their children to England. 
These schools were private, often run by Anglican or Catholic clergy, but sometimes by 
private individuals. Emancipation threatened the profit margins of the colonial industries 
? like sugar ? that depended on slave labor. Many planters, though, felt that 
emancipation posed a more iminent danger; with the 1791 Haitian revolution a not-too-
distant memory, many thought emancipation would threaten British control over the West 
Indies and encourage revolt. In his 1835 report, Reverend John Sterling argued, ?[T]he 
stability of colonial society in the West Indies wil be at stake once full fredom is 
atained.? With physical fredom granted, the need for thought control became more 
important than ever. Sterling argued: 
It is plain therefore that something must be done and it must be done imediately. 
For although the Negroes are now under a system of limited control 
[apprenticeship] which secures to a certain extent their orderly and industrious 
conduct, in the short space of five years ? their performance of the functions of a 
labouring clas in a civilised community wil depend entirely on the power over 
their minds of the same prudential and moral motives which govern more or les 
 57 
the mas of people here. If they are not so disposed as to fulfil these functions, 
property wil perish in the colonies for lack of human impulsion.  
From the perspective of the British colonial authority and the local planters, state 
education provided a key to maintaining ?the power over their minds.? 
 
The Rise of the Misionary School 
British intelectuals had long argued that slavery was inhumane and uncivilized, 
and the Haitian slave revolt of 1791 had inspired widespread fear of slave violence and 
revolt, but it was the petitioning of religious groups that brought about a widespread 
change in opinion regarding the morality of slavery. During the final decades of the 
eightenth century religious movements like John Wesley?s Methodists and the 
Evangelical reformers of the Anglican Church mobilized thousands in support of 
abolition (Rogozinski 179). Jan Rogozinski argues that the religious revival of the 
eightenth century ?provided not only ideas but institutions that could bring presure on 
the government. Methodists in Britain and North America ? perhaps 300,000 strong by 
1830 ? formed a vocal and highly organized presure group? (179). In addition to 
presuring the British government, Methodists and Baptists increased abolitionist 
sentiment within their own congregations by sending misionaries to the colonies to 
convert increasing numbers of slaves, who were then sen as brothers and born-again 
members of their respective churches (179). Rogozinski suggests that the ?extremely 
rapid spread of Christianity? in the beginning of the ninetenth century may have also 
furthered the abolitionist cause by encouraging slave rebelions (183). Indeed, slaves 
 58 
trained as deacons and preachers led insurrections such as the Jamaican revolt of 1831-2, 
often refered to as the Baptist War.  
Inasmuch as the misionary movement helped mobilize public opinion and bring 
about the end of slavery, religious institutions were instrumental in the transition to 
fredom. In June 1833, imediately prior to emancipation, the British government 
pased legislation providing for ?the moral Education of the Negro.? For two years, the 
British government made no decision as to how this education should be administered. 
However, misionary groups ? particularly Protestants ? imediately set up schools in 
the West Indies with the help of financial contributions from British congregations. The 
British government decided in 1835 to officialy sanction the eforts of these religious 
schools and began subsidizing their work with the Negro Education Grant. During the 
first two years of this program the British government paid two-thirds of the expenses for 
building schools, while religious bodies contributed the rest of the needed funding, 
including teachers? salaries (Gordon 23). Thereafter, the colonial authorities alowed 
religious groups to use grant money to pay up to one-third of the teachers? salaries 
(Gordon 23). However, the Negro Education Grant subsidies only lasted for ten years, 
after which the British government decided that the colonies should pay their own 
schooling expenses, devolving responsibility for colony education to the West Indian 
legislatures.  
Publicly, the British government made a case for subsidizing misionary schools 
through the Negro Education Grant by noting that religious organizations had already 
established an infrastructure in the colonies, and by arguing the benefits of a Christian 
 59 
education. An 1834 circular from Downing Stret positions Christianity as central to 
West Indian education: 
It is enough to say that His Majesty in acordance with Parliament and with the 
great body of the people of this Kingdom, recognizes in its full extent and force, 
the obligation of providing by al practicable and prudent means for the extension 
of Christianity among that large Body of Colonial Subjects, to whom our Holy 
Religion has not yet been, or has been imperfectly made known;-of imparting 
sound instruction on that subject to those who are yet governed by the prejudices 
and misconceptions arising out of the ignorance characteristic of their former 
servile state;-and of training up the Youth of the British Colonies in that early 
familiarity with the doctrines and the precepts of the Scriptures, which afords the 
soundest Basis of useful knowledge and of virtuous habits. (qtd. in Johnson 199)  
Although publicly unacknowledged, it is likely the British government also realized the 
financial advantage working with of misionary educators. By providing clergy for 
teaching positions and using funds contributed by their congregants from home, 
misionary organizations defered significant colonial government education expenses.  
The end of the Negro Education Grant in 1845 coincided with a decline in sugar 
revenues for the West Indies. Beginning in 1846, the colonies lost their preferential 
treatment in the British sugar market. This loss of profits reduced the plantocracy-
controlled West Indian legislatures? wilingnes to spend money on education. By 
contrast, misionary organizations remained wiling to invest in schools because they saw 
a benefit for their cause ? the spread of Christianity. The eightenth century evangelical 
awakening among Protestants in Europe focused on individual conversions rather than 
 60 
mas conversions, as was the case in the late period of the Roman Empire and the early 
period of colonialism under Portuguese or Spanish governments (Twaddle 11). Because 
of the focus on ?individual conversion as wel as (later) on the needs of European 
colonies for literate civil servants, education was an important part of the modern 
misionary movement?s work among Roman Catholics and Protestants alike? (11). 
Schools were important outposts in for the spread of Christianity because they efectively 
indoctrinated for their charges, and because of parents? and community members? 
veneration for misionaries who provided education, and consequently offered the 
possibility of social mobility. Such admiration often led to additional conversions.  
Because most misionary groups saw the reading of the Bible as esential to the 
spreading of their faith, teaching literacy became an important step of proselytization. 
The belief that inspired the London Misionary Society?s 1825 training at Hoxton was 
that ?Education and the [printing] pres are the two great means, which in connection 
with preaching, wil bring about the moral revolution of the world? (qtd. in Porter 104).  
Establishing misionary schools for former slaves thus served a strategic purpose for both 
church and state. Etherington says, ?It was commonplace for ninetenth-century 
misionaries to point to the growth of the British Empire as specificaly intended by 
Divine Providence as an instrument for the conversion of the world to Christianity, just as 
promoters of Empire spoke of misions as partners in the work of spreading commerce 
and civilization? (6).  
After the ten-year period of the Negro Education Grant expired, religious bodies 
took greater control of education across the region. When the grant ended the expense of 
education officialy transfered to the local level and education in the West Indies began 
 61 
to operate under joint ? although sometimes conflicting ? control by the religious bodies 
and the West Indian legislatures, each with their own interests and agendas. There were 
significant diferences in how each colony approached the administration of education, 
diferences often connected to larger political isues. For example, even though the 
British government generaly supported religious schools and promoted church-state 
partnerships, they encouraged secular schools in colonies that were largely Catholic, 
concerned that Catholics would bring with them foreign influence that might chalenge 
imperial control (Gordon 43).  
As the profits from sugar and other exports waned, local governments, and 
particularly the plantocracies that supported them, increasingly alowed religious groups 
to take on educational expenses. The long legacy of this partnership should not be 
underestimated. The first government primary school in Grenada, for example, was not 
established until 1884, while the first government secondary school in Grenada was not 
established until 1885. This first government secondary school remained the only one 
until the end of British rule (Brizan 456).  Etherington aserts, ?It is impossible to 
imagine what education under the British Empire might have been without the presence 
of Christian misions. They so dominated the provision of educational services for 
indigenous populations that in many lands the term ?native elite? was synonymous with 
?Christian-education?? (273). In 1945 Eric Wiliams wrote, ?Secondary education is so 
severely restricted to the few that the English education that it provides becomes a sign of 
clas distinction? (Education 31). Half a century later, the best schools in the region are 
stil Christian schools and the graduates of those schools stil, overwhelmingly, become 
the elites.  
 62 
Later, when many of the West Indian legislatures were disolved in the switch to 
Crown Colony governments (Belize in 1871, Jamaica in 1886, Grenada in 1887), the 
administration of education moved from the local West Indian legislatures back to the 
British colonial administration. This change in oversight had an important efect on the 
education systems in the colonies. The colonial authorities believed that introducing 
practices and procedures used in England would increase eficiency overseas. The 
?payment by results? system, introduced in England in 1861, became established practice 
for elementary schools throughout the Caribbean region. The ?payment by results? 
system rewarded schools with grants based on their students? performance in the ?thre 
Rs?, as wel as atendance and sometimes teachers? management and disciplinary abilities 
(Gordon 79). Teachers? salaries became based on their students? succes. A Report of 
the Inspector of Schools in Trinidad in 1872 provides an example of how the ?payment by 
results? system operated: ?The atendance fe is 50 cents (2s.1d.) for every child who has 
atended 30 days or upwards in the quarter. The results fes which constitute another part 
of the salaries of the Teachers and of the grants in aid, are paid on those children only 
who have atended the School 100 days in the year.? 
The development of secondary schools betwen 1865 and 1885 was somewhat 
more laudable then the development of primary schools during that time, although 
progres varied considerably by area. In Jamaica and Barbados endowments left by 
wealthy planters and merchants, originaly intended to provide education to poorer white 
children whose parents could not send them ?home? to England, were used to provide 
secondary schools for the middle clas of al races (Gordon 80). However, Eric 
Wiliams, a Caribbean historian and former prime minister of Trinidad, argues that 
 63 
despite the possibility of increased education for some, the development of secondary 
schooling in this era created serious problems. Secondary schooling in the Anglophone 
Caribbean copied European and U.S. models with a focus on preparing students for 
college, and later civil service or profesional positions. ?[F]amiliarly caled ?general? 
education,? Wiliams says that secondary schooling is ?the very reverse of general.? He 
argues: 
The ideal of the graduates is government service ? [and because of this] people 
develop a contempt for manual labor, which already has to struggle against the 
stigma impresed on it by its long asociation in many colonies with slavery. 
They become parasites rather than fil any but a ?white collar? job. The result is 
the creation, first, of a vested interest in the colonies in favour of the alien system 
because of the opportunities it offers to a few educated colonials, and, secondly, 
white collar unemployment when the supply of secondary school graduates 
exceds the openings in government and similar services.  
Religious groups had an interest in creating secondary schools for proselytization , but 
also because they needed a middle clas laity and local ministers (Gordon 80). The 
power of religious groups over education was resisted in many of the islands. In Trinidad 
and British Guiana, for example, the isue of religious education was continualy debated.  
 
Ninetenth-Century Criticism of the Misionary School 
The benefits to the British government and misionaries notwithstanding, there 
were many problems with misionary education during the ninetenth century. In the 
Governor?s Mesage to the Legislative Council in April of 1851, Lord Haris of Trinidad 
 64 
argued the divisivenes of religious education, noting ?We have a mixed community to 
deal with .? There are the members of various bodies of Christians, there are 
Mahomedans,
14
 there are Gentoos,
15
 and Heathens .? If doctrinal instructions ought to 
be given to al Christians, it should also be aforded to the Mahomedan, to the Gentoo, 
and to the worshippers of Mumbo Jumbo, and the believers in the Fetish.? 
Other problems arose from the asesment that religious schools produced 
substandard results. Arthur Mayhew, a member of the Advisory Commite on Education 
in the Colonies, reported that the foundation of the education system in the West Indies 
was weak because ?[f]or several decades after emancipation inadequate measures were 
taken by the governments; the churches, which, from the start, were given the bulk of the 
work, were financialy weak, divided, and jealous of one another? (259). Furthermore, 
acording to Mayhew, expansion in the second half of the ninetenth century happened at 
?too rapid a rate for eficiency to be secured? and that, among other problems, ?methods 
discredited at home, including the pupil-teacher system, found a haven in the West 
Indies? (259). Interestingly, despite Mayhew?s serious criticism of the education system 
in the Anglophone Caribbean, he asures his readers, ?[t]he educationist may reasonably 
asume that there is no post or position to which those of African or Indian descent 
cannot hope to rise if they take advantage of the educational facilities which are ofered? 
(252). Historian George Brizan of Grenada argues precisely the opposite point, that 
maintaining the education system did prevent the non-white population from advancing 
in the ninetenth century. Brizan says that from emancipation onwards, education in 
Grenada was ?a conditioning proces aimed at civilizing the children of the transplanted 
                                                
14
 Muslims 
15
 Hindus 
 65 
Africans, making them appendages of Anglo-Saxon culture, and teaching them their 
proper place in the social hierarchy? (161). In keeping with British imperial ideology, 
?the curriculum of the schools for the remainder of the [ninetenth] century was to be 
guided by instructions in the thre Rs, aceptance of one?s social status and respect for 
the status quo? (162). 
The pupil-teacher system, widely relied upon instead of teacher training colleges 
to produce educators, was criticized for turning out untrained teachers. Almost every 
commision that evaluated the West Indian education system ? including the Kenan 
Report in 1869, the Mitchinson Report in 1875, the Lamb Report in 1899, and the 
Mariott-Mayhew Report in 1933 ? identified the pupil-teacher system as a serious hurdle 
that needed to be overcome to improve West Indies education. 
 
Riots and Reform 
During the 1930s protests and violence swept the region. The discrimination 
black soldiers faced while serving in the British military during World War I combined 
with the severe economic hardships of the 1930s resulted in the emergence of nationalist 
movements throughout the British colonies in the Caribbean. The British government 
sought to calm colonial unrest and stymie increasingly outspoken demands for self-rule 
and independence through a series of ameliorative reforms. The education system 
became one such focus for reform. These reforms were more realistic and practical than 
earlier more half-hearted atempts. Shirley Gordon suggests that this was ?almost 
certainly because, for the first time in the century after emancipation, there were in fact 
 66 
economic and social equivalents betwen the situation in Great Britain and the West 
Indies? (8-9).  
Education systems throughout the Caribbean suffered from severe neglect in the 
second half of the ninetenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. 
Wiliams notes, ?Alowing for the diference in the cost of living, the English expenditure 
per child remained about six times as large as the expenditure in the West Indies? (457-
8). Iliteracy rates from the 1930s demonstrate the efect of this neglect: 80 percent in 
Haiti; 43 percent in Trinidad; 60 percent in British Guiana; and 35 percent in Puerto Rico 
(Wiliams 456). One of the reasons for this neglect was the power of the plantocracy and 
their belief that mas education threatened their economic interest. One planter made the 
case in 1926 to a commite of the Trinidad Legislative Council: 
Give them some education in the way of reading and writing, but no more. Even 
then I would say educate only the bright ones; not the whole mas. If you do 
educate the whole mas of the agricultural population you wil be deliberately 
ruining the country ? Give the bright ones a chance to win as many scholarships 
as they can; give the others thre hours education a day ? but if you keep them 
longer you wil never get them to work in the fields. If you want agricultural 
labourers and not disatisfaction, you must not keep them longer. (qtd. in 
Wiliams 456) 
However, the plantocracy?s self-interest was not the only problem. Gordon notes that 
poverty, unemployment, health, and race relations were also serious obstacles - problems 
that remained unaddresed by landowners and legislators (7). The afect of these 
obstacles on education was almost entirely absent from official debate. Not until the 
 67 
1933 Mariott-Mayhew Report were social conditions outside school given serious 
consideration.  
After the riots of 1938, British Colonial authorities established the West India 
Royal Commision to monitor the social and economic conditions in the Caribbean 
colonies.
16
 In 1938, the Royal Comision caled for: 
An end of the ilogical and wasteful system which permits the education of a 
community predominantly engaged in agriculture to be based upon a literary 
curriculum fiting pupils only for white-collar carers in which opportunities are 
comparatively limited ? Curricula are on the whole il-adapted to the needs of 
the large mas of the population and adhere far too closely to models which have 
become out of date in British practice from which they have been blindly copied. 
(qtd. in Wiliams 461) 
The British government listened to the recommendations of the Royal Commision and 
made eforts to move the curriculum away from literary studies to the study of science 
and technology, subjects with a practical value for agricultural societies. However, these 
reforms were often thwarted by a lack of funds, a direct result of the 1930s depresion.  
                                                
16
 The West Indies Development and Welfare Organisation (WIDWO) and the Colonial Development and 
Welfare Act of 1940 grew out of this comision. WIDWO, headed by the Comptroler for Development 
and Welfare, was an advisory comite that sent regular reports to both the local West Indian 
governments and the colonial authorities in Britain. The Comptroler oversaw advisors on education, 
health, housing, economics and other isues important to the colonies. To facilitate greater coperation 
betwen colonies in the West Indies, the Anglo-American Caribean Comision (AC) was also 
established during this time. The Comptroler of WIDWO also served as co-chair of AC. In 1945 
French and Dutch colonial authorities joined the AC with the same mision of coperation and the name 
of the organization changed to the Caribean Comision. In conjunction with local governments the 
WIDWO sugested plans for long-term economic and social development, including reforms to the schols 
systems. The Colonial Development and Welfare Act funded these programs, as recomended by the 
Comptroler. These grants increased in 1945 and ended in 1958 with the creation of the Federation of the 
West Indies. 
 
 
 68 
Jamaica was the first colony in the Anglophone Caribbean to make significant 
strides reforming education. In 1939, the Jamaican school system introduced a revised 
curriculum with a focus on life in the Caribbean. By the middle of the twentieth century 
most colonies in the Anglophone Caribbean had folowed Jamaica?s lead and were 
beginning to use readers, history books and geography books that represented the 
Caribbean experience in primary schools (Wiliams 30). 
 
Post-Independence 
The Moyne Commision was a delegation sent by the British government to look 
into the causes of unrest in colonies in the 1930s. The 1940 Moyne Report recommended 
that Britain work toward self-government in the colonies and universal suffrage. It took a 
number of years and a second world war to bring about these goals, but the Moyne 
Report laid the foundation for independence. Problematicialy, British colonies in the 
Caribbean began to move toward independence right at the time when the regional 
economy began to suffer severely ? certainly one reason the British government was 
wiling to grant independence. This would have a lasting impact on the newly 
independent governments? ability to provide social services; education would suffer for 
decades.  
Despite significant financial constraints, there were noteworthy reforms in the 
second half of the twentieth century. Postcolonial governments first focused on creating 
universal and compulsory primary education ? making sure there were spots available for 
al children and that parents understood the value of education. Of course the economic 
need of some children?s work in order to sustain their family was a significant part of the 
 69 
problem that was connected to more overarching reforms intended to aleviate poverty. 
There was also a focus on teacher training, and raising teacher?s salaries. Perhaps the 
most important reform throughout the region was the abandonment of the Oxford and 
Cambridge exams. These exams completely directed the curriculum, which was 
problematic because they focused exclusively on the British experience: 
On one occasion British West Indian students were asked to write a composition 
on ?a day in winter.? The English examinations require a knowledge of Roman 
history rather than West Indian history, of the British monarchy rather than the 
crown colony system, of empire geography rather than West Indian geography. 
Furthermore, English examiners do not and cannot have a competent knowledge 
of West Indian conditions. British West Indian teachers, therefore, are not 
encouraged to study their environment, nor is there any incentive to provide text 
books with materials suited to the West Indian environment. (Wiliams 32-3) 
The Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) was established in 1972 to addres these 
isues. Currently, the CXC offers two types of exams taken at the end of secondary 
school: the Caribbean Secondary Education Certification (CSEC), sometimes refered to 
as simply the CXC exam; and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Exam (CAPE). 
Either exam can be used for college admisions, but the CSEC (or CXC) is often used for 
employment purposes when education concludes at secondary school, while the CAPE is 
more frequently used to met college entrance requirements.  
 Generaly, as the various postcolonial West Indian governments move into the 
21
st
 century, there is a focus on centralizing their education systems, which usualy 
results in les church control. The extent to which the church loses control, though, is 
 70 
usualy dependent on a country?s economy and the consequent dependency on the 
financial contributions from religious groups. In the following sections of this chapter I 
look at the legacy of misionary schools. In the above history I demonstrated that 
Christian education helped produce a colonized mind. That is, denominational schools 
played an important part in establishing and maintaining British colonial power over the 
Anglophone Caribbean. In the following analysis I investigate the role denominational 
schools play in the postcolonial period  
 
Religious Ideology vs. Education Reform 
In his book, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire?s End, John 
Wilinsky poses a provocative question: ?What comes, we now have to ask, of having 
one?s comprehension of the world so directly tied to one?s conquest of it?? (3). He 
argues: 
By the time the age of empire was al over, no branch of learning was left 
untouched. New academic disciplines of anthropology and orientalism were born 
and the old ones of geography, philology, and anatomy were recast in the ordering 
of the new orld. Colonial rule gave rise to a new clas of knowledge workers in 
universities, government ofices, industry, and profesions devoted to colonial 
conquest by clasification and categorization. (26) 
The connection betwen knowledge and conquest has shaped the methodology around 
the way we learn. Markers of this system include: binary and center/periphery thinking; 
hierarchy as a primary organizational tool; an emphasis on abstract concepts (academics) 
versus vocational preparation; and a focus on diferences rather than similarities.  
 71 
In this section, I suggest that Christian ideology is structured in a way similar to 
Wilinksy?s description of colonial knowledge and that that makes Christian-based 
schools inherently problematic for acomplishing postcolonial education reforms. I think 
that an understanding of the history of the churches? political interests in the region 
should provide a foundation for criticaly examining the churches political interests in the 
present day. Unfortunately, even with an acknowledgement of the symbiotic relationship 
betwen misionary evangelism and colonial control, scholars do not always interogate 
the churches position in contemporary politics.  
For example, in "Dangerous Memories, Underdevelopment, and the Bible in 
Colonial Caribbean Experience," Nathanial Samuel Murrel provides a multifaceted 
critique of the collusion betwen misionaries, slavery, and colonialism in the pre-
independence era, but he fails to ask the same questions about the role of religious groups 
in the present-day education system. He congratulates the church for its modern role in 
the education system, crediting the church with good works on behalf of the public, 
despite a somewhat murkier legacy from years gone by:  
In Jamaica, Guyana, and the smal islands the Church has an established record of 
cooperating with government to ofer elementary public education to the mases 
and educating a smal ?talented tenth? of the population at secondary school and 
college levels. So clearly the Church performed a dual role in Caribbean 
historical experiences: first as oppresor and later as advocate of public education 
and liberation. (Murrel 18) 
He maintains that these eforts came ?too litle too late? and were not enough to reverse a 
long history of wrong-doing, yet he does not question the current influence of 
 72 
Christianity in the Caribbean. Not considered is whether the same elements of 
Christianity that encouraged pasivity and helped maintain social stratification during 
colonial rule stil function today, encouraging underdevelopment, rigid social hierarchies 
around gender, clas, and race, and the (re-)introduction of foreign influence. The 
historical relationship betwen conversion, conquest and education, and their interplay in 
the modern Caribbean, demands a closer look at Christian ideology and its functions in 
postcolonial societies.  
 
Christianity and the ?Banking? Concept of Education 
 The misionary movement brought important benefits to West Indians. Before 
emancipation, misionaries offered something that governments could not ? the promise 
of fredom. Christianity ofered manumision in the afterlife, as wel as a sense of 
belonging and aceptance into a community. As Rooke points out, ?A nobody becomes 
somebody, and outsider and insider. Conversion was a revolt against invisibility and 
marginality? (31).  The misionary movement was also, in large part, responsible for 
changing the image of slavery into something sinful and abhorrent, an argument that 
eventualy led to abolition and emancipation.  
It must be remembered though, that while Christianity might have offered escape 
from one social hierarchy, slavery, it did so through the induction into another. The title 
of this chapter, taken from a quotation by Rooke, is meant to suggest the problems with 
this transition. ?Deprived of cultural terms of reference, it can be asumed that by being 
incorporated into the official religious framework of white society a major psychological 
transformation took place. Bought by a new master [Christ], the slave was redeemed by 
 73 
that same master in a psychologicaly powerful compensation for the loss of social self? 
(33). She goes on to say that after slavery was abolished and misionary groups were 
given a grant from the colonial authority to provide education in the colonies, the 
misionary groups came into unrivaled social power, because they controlled aces to 
social mobility.  
Provision of such opportunities for social mobility combined with the real power 
of the misionary leadership meant that conformity could be exacted without 
either coercion or prolonged doses of socialisation. It was, after al, the white 
misionaries who could confer status, approve salaries and make appointments 
and promotions. In brief, their opinion matered as this social and psychological 
reality proved powerful ? as a form of social control, it was as potent as a whip. 
Imperialism succeded not only by coercion, but also because of its system of 
rewards for its colonial elites of al colours?.If during slavery the possibility of 
manumision proved to be a mechanism for social control and conformity, the 
same purpose was served later in the threat to status or by the promise of 
improved status. (Rooke 37) 
Rook explains the role of evangelism in creating and maintaining the British Empire, but 
I want to take that argument further and suggest that the ideology of Christianity naturaly 
facilitates any type of social hierarchy ?in that it is a religion comprised of dichotomous 
notions of superiority and inferiority, for example, the elect/heathen, redeemed/damned, 
saints/sinners? (24). If binary structures (center/periphery, colonizer/colonized) were 
used as a tool of oppresion by imperial oversers, and if one step of establishing a 
postcolonial identity is moving away from such imperialist binary thinking, it raises the 
 74 
question: should schools be legitimating that model of thought by supporting continued 
Christian indoctrination? 
 To explore this question I want to invoke Freire?s Pedagogy of the Oppresed. 
There have been important critical debates around a number of the ideas that emerge 
from Freire?s work, but for the purposes of this discussion I want to focus on the 
relationship betwen his ?banking? concept of education and the dynamics of Christian 
ideology. A comprehensive analysis of Freire?s pedagogy or the influence of liberation 
theology on his work is beyond the scope of this disertation, but a brief description is 
necesary. Emerging in the 1960s, liberation theology was a reformative concept of 
Christianity that emphasized social justice and action. The church had been a tool in 
maintaining the status quo by encouraging believers to trust that God would solve their 
problems, or at least compensate them for their suffering on Earth with a beter life in 
Heaven. Supporters of liberation theology wanted to invest individuals themselves with 
the power to fight their oppresors.  
The paradigm of liberation in theology rejects conceptions of God that colonize 
the mind and spirit and perpetuate the political and economic status quo. 
Liberation theology weaves together compeling God images: as in the example 
of the Israelite Exodus, God has historical agency in liberating the oppresed from 
their bondage in Egypt and God seks justice through human prophecy and 
political action. (Lange 82) 
Liberation theology also chalenged church leaders by re-imagining their role in society. 
?Liberation theologians determined that churches are caled on not to take sides, but to 
 75 
change sides: from siding with the ?powers and principalities? to siding with the poor? 
(82).  
Freire blamed Christianity for encouraging the pasivity of the oppresed, but he 
faults the role Christianity was playing in society, not the belief system itself. Indeed, 
Freire?s theories are based on the relationship betwen God and man. In her article, 
?Freire and Theology,? Giliam Cooper says, 
Christianity presents us with a picture of humanity created by God for relationship 
with God and with one another. Although human beings are imperfect, they are 
uniquely valuable in the created order, reflecting God?s very nature to the extent 
that God was able to be incarnated as a human being in Christ. Human beings 
have a destiny which is bound with God?s purposes for the world, and they have 
responsibility not only for their relationship to God, but for one another and for 
the world. Thus Freire?s ontology is firmly within the Christian traditions. (71) 
Freire does not se progresive pedagogy and Christian ideology as incompatible in the 
context of a radicalized church. If not incompatible, I want to suggest that this 
relationship is at least chalenging. I argue that a somewhat contrarian application of 
Freire?s banking concept of education can help us ask questions about this chalenge.  
The banking concept refers to a type of pedagogy where a teacher deposits 
knowledge into the minds of students. ?Instead of communicating? the teacher ?makes 
deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat? (Freire 53). The 
banking concept of education discourages critical thinking because it could lead to a 
chalenge of the oppresor?s power. Moreover, it works in ?conjunction with a 
paternalistic social action apparatus? to maintain social hierarchies (55).  
 76 
I believe that the student/teacher relationship the banking concept describes is 
similar to the relationship betwen Christian ideology and its believers. Freire says, ?[i]t 
follows logicaly from the banking notion of consciousnes that the educator?s role is to 
regulate the way the world ?enters into? the students,? which is not unlike the role of the 
priest in interpreting scripture. Freire says that the teacher fils the student by ?making 
deposits of information which he or she considers to constitute true knowledge? (56). 
Similarly, religious beliefs are, by definition, based on faith, and therefore 
unquestioningly true. ?Translated into practice? the banking concept ?is wel suited to 
the purposes of the oppresors, whose tranquility rests on how wel people fit the world 
the oppresors have created? (Freire 57). Correspondingly, biblical justifications prevent 
women from entering into the power structure of the Catholic Church. The feminist 
theologians who have questioned this practice have implicitly and explicitly chalenged 
the patriarchal structure of the church. Therefore, the ?tranquility? of the church leaders 
?rests on how wel people? acept women?s second-clas status. If we look at the role of 
Christian doctrine in maintaining social hierarchies ? for example, betwen men and 
women ? can we realy say that this is a diferent proces than what Freire describes? Is 
it fair to say that churches paternalisticaly ?deposit? doctrine in the minds of believers?  
 The isue of sex education in schools is worth considering. In Belize, Christian 
groups oppose sex education unles it is an abstinence-only program. They believe that 
presenting knowledge on safe sex practices wil encourage promiscuity and legitimate 
sex before mariage. Supporters of comprehensive sex education counter that students 
should understand both sides and make an informed decision for themselves. Restricting 
information about sex and preventing individuals from making their own decisions gives 
 77 
the church a monopoly on knowledge, miroring the relationship betwen teacher and 
students under the banking concept.   
My criticism goes further than liberation theology, which questions the hierarchy 
of church leadership and/or their decisions, but does not se the hierarchical and binary 
structures of Christian belief as inherently chalenging to their liberation.
17
 By 
comparing Freire?s concept of oppresive education to Christian beliefs I am suggesting 
that there are possible contradictions betwen Christian doctrine and a postcolonial 
pedagogy and that Christian ideology may conflict with the goals of the state. In his 
book Ideology and Curriculum, Michael Apple reminds us that if we do not make 
connections betwen schooling and ?the distribution, quality, and control of work, power, 
ideology, and cultural knowledge outside of our educational institutions, educational 
theory and policy making may have les of an impact than we might hope? (14).  
 
 
                                                
17
 For example, leaders in the Catholic Church have publicly oposed some of the more ?socialist? aspects 
of liberation theology. 
 78 
Chapter 3: ?Learning is Next to Godlines?: Literature as Counter-Discourse 
 
The white myths, firmly planted by conquest and enslavement, have 
been internalized, and continue to work like litmus on the black 
rock whose history we have not yet summoned to our rescue 
- George Laming 
 
Discourse, canon, texts, words as Latinate as the tradition from which  
they come, are quite familiar to me. Because I went to a Catholic Mision  
school in the West Indies I must confes that I cannot hear the word  
?canon? without smeling incense, that the word ?text? imediately brings 
back agonizing memories of Biblical exegesis, that ?discourse? reks for 
me of metaphysics forced down my throat in those courses that traced  
world philosophy from Aristotle through Thomas Aquinas to Heidegger. 
-Barbara Christian  
 
 
In his book, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Tery Eagleton traces the study of 
literature. He argues that English studies, as it has come to be known, emerged in the late 
ninetenth century as an ideological substitute for religion (20).  Religion is a powerful 
vehicle for social control. Thus, when the potency of religious ideology waned in the 
second half of the ninetenth century due to new scientific theory and the social change 
inspired by the Industrial Revolution, another ideological vesel was needed to maintain 
the hierarchies of race, clas, gender, and nation that were a dominant feature of the 
British Empire. Eagleton says, ?As religion progresively ceases to provide the social 
?cement?, afective values and basic mythologies by which a socialy turbulent clas-
society can be welded together, ?English? is constructed as a subject to cary this 
ideological burden from the Victorian period onwards? (21). Schools became the site of 
indoctrination; clasrooms became the new church and literature the new gospel. British 
 79 
literature impresed upon its readers (both at home and in the colonies) the importance of 
morality, patriotism, and clas cohesion.  Like religion, literature encouraged people to 
se themselves as part of a larger group and to sublimate their individual desires in 
deference to the more important national image and agenda. It is no surprise, then, that 
the study of literature was first designed for the British working clas and women (24). 
Later it became an important tool in maintaining the hierarchy betwen England and her 
colonies.  
 Dipesh Chakrabarty makes a similar argument about the rise of History as an 
academic discipline. In his article, ?Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History,? he 
contends that the creation of academic history as a discourse is inextricably tied to 
imperialism and the nation state. As such, the generic structure of ?history? works to 
maintain Europe?s imperial status even when Europe is not the apparent subject. For 
Chakrabarty, even histories that focus on the story of Europe?s ?others? are at best 
examples of what Homi Bhabha cals ?mietic?? (384). Chakrabarty acknowledges that 
?the rhetoric and the claims of (bourgeois) equality, of citizens? rights, of self-
determination through a sovereign state have in many circumstances empowered 
marginal social groups in their struggles,? but he maintains that ?[w]hat efectively is 
played down ? in histories that either implicitly or explicitly celebrate the advent of the 
modern state and the idea of citizenship is the represion and violence that are as 
instrumental in the victory of the modern as is the persuasive power of its rhetorical 
strategies? (386-7). For example, Chakrabarty argues that ?peasant/worker constructions 
of ?mythical? kingdoms and ?mythical? past/futures find a place in texts designated 
?Indian? history precisely through a procedure that subordinates these naratives to the 
 80 
rules of evidence and to the secular, linear calendar that the writing of ?history? must 
follow? (384).  
 In this chapter I am blending the disciplines of English and History. Therefore, I 
think it is important to recognize the socio-historical context out of which these 
disciplines emerged. Recognizing that these disciplines were constructed in specific and 
politicaly useful ways encourages us to ask questions not only about what stories were or 
were not remembered, but how these two genres have functioned to position certain 
stories as more or les ?true? and therefore legitimate. Therefore, before I discuss the 
stories that are the focus of this chapter, I want to interogate further the relationship 
betwen genre and power.  
As Eagleton notes, literature has been used to create and maintain social 
hierarchies, but it is also true that literature has given a voice to women, people of color, 
and individuals in colonial and postcolonial countries. Indeed, disempowered groups 
have had more aces to literature than to traditional histories or most other types of 
political speech. There are two semingly contradictory reasons for this. First, 
disempowered groups have been given more aces to literature because the very 
characteristics of the genre that made it apt for social control mitigate the power of the 
speech. Eightenth-century sentimental novels, for example, could be covertly didactic: 
women may have read the stories for pleasure and recreation, but they were also being 
socialized into a set of rigid rules around sexuality and morality. This idea of literature 
functioning on multiple levels and having more than one meaning, however, has also 
marked these stories as undisciplined, unstable, and, consequently, the opposite of 
disciplined and stable histories. 
 81 
Second, disempowered groups have chosen literature as a site of speech because it 
can offer a kind of narative ?cover.? That is to say, the author is more protected from 
the consequences of his or her political speech. By putting potentialy incendiary speech 
into the mouths of fictional characters the author can achieve the efect of political speech 
without necesarily being held acountable for it. This has been an important tool for 
disempowered groups, particularly in hostile or represive contexts. In her article, ?The 
Race for Theory,? Barbara Christian points to literature as a site of political speech for 
oppresed and subordinated groups, and she makes connections betwen the structure of 
literature and particular characteristics of theory: 
[P]eople of color have always theorized ? but in forms quite diferent from the 
Western form of abstract logic ? our theorizing ? is often in narative forms, in 
the stories we create, in riddles and proverbs, in the play with language, since 
dynamic rather than fixed ideas sem ore to our liking ?. And women, at least 
the women I grew up around, continuously speculated about the nature of their 
life through pithy language that unmasked the power relations of their world ?. 
My folk, in other words, have always been in a race for theory ? though in the 
form of the hieroglyph, a writen figure which is both sensual and abstract, both 
beautiful and communicative. (457-8) 
Thus, acording to Christian, the generic diferences betwen literature and history may 
have les to do with truth and fiction than with culture. Fiction can sometimes be the 
most powerful way to convey truth. George Laming makes this point in reference to 
his writing of In the Castle of My Skin. He said that he took liberty with facts ?in the 
interest of a more esential truth? (xl). Edward Said makes a similar point that stories are 
 82 
?the method colonized people use to asert their own identity and the existence of their 
own history? (qtd. in Guanahani). 
 A number of writers and scholars, including Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, 
and Marlene Nourbese Philip, have addresed the connections betwen literature and 
history in the Caribbean by invoking the idea of memory.
18
 In She Tries her Tongue, 
Philip describes memory, as opposed to history, as a story invested with emotion and 
inheritance (Hollingsworth 2). There have been similar conversations in and around the 
work of African-American writers. In her article, ??Somebody Forgot to Tel Somebody 
Something?: African-American Women?s Historical Novels,? Christian examines the 
particular ways that African American women have used literature as a space for 
negotiating history and memory. She says, ?Language is not only an expresion of one?s 
everyday experience but also of those deeper labyrinths of dream and memory? (332). 
While Christian is talking primarily about Black, female writers from the United States, I 
would like to build on her discussion of memory and shift the focus to the Anglophone 
Caribbean. Christian begins her argument by ataching memory to power. Slave owners 
recognized this connection, which is why they labored to eradicate both the communal 
memory of African culture and the individual familial memory. ?Slave owners were 
aware of the power of memory, for they disrupted generational lines of slaves in such a 
way that many slaves did not know even their own parents or children? (333, emphasis 
original). Referencing Toni Morrison?s novel, Beloved, Christian argues that the story of 
al the beloveds was not ?one that could be pased on in the records of historians or the 
slave narators. And yet it remains in dream, in the ?folk tale,? ?in the wind,? in the 
                                                
18
 For an in-depth study of history and memory in the works of these authors se Joyce Tingle 
Holingsworth?s 200 disertation, The Empowering Re-Membering of History and Myth in the Poetry of 
Thre African-Caribean Writers: Walcot, Brathwaite, and Philip. 
 83 
imagination, in fiction. Paradoxicaly, only when history is explored and evaluated is 
memory fre to flow? (340). Similarly, I maintain that the record of the hidden 
curriculum of colonial schooling, and in particular its efect on girls, exists in the literary 
memory of the region.  
 In her esay, ?The Silence and the Song: Toward a Black Woman?s History 
through a Language of Her Own,? Barbara Omolade names the recorders of these 
memories ?griot historians.? She says, ?A ?griot historian? is a scholar in any discipline 
who connects, uses, and understands the methods and insights of both Western and 
African world-views and historical perspectives to further develop a synthesis ? an 
African American woman?s social science with a unique methodology, sensibility, and 
language? (284). Omolade notes the way intelectual boundaries can stymie the work of 
the ?griot historian?: ?The Black woman scholar faces the index cards of facts and 
references as she sits down to write, and the voices of the academy come to haunt: ?Bad 
history are those set of asertions which cannot be verified with primary sources.? ? 
?Quote from authorized sources!? ? ?Your work is too rhetorical, too lyrical?? (290). 
She contrasts this experience with that of Black women novelists, poets, activists, 
dramatists, artists, singers and dancers who have used ?a combination of historical 
voices, spiritual consciousnes, liberation politics within creative mediums and works 
designed to empower and enlighten? (290). The methodology of this chapter takes its 
cue from Omolade. In this chapter I demonstrate the importance of literary memory to 
historical record and progres.  
In the last chapter I traced a history of education in the Anglophone Caribbean 
using misionary and colonial reports and correspondence, and academic histories. I 
 84 
privileged the master?s narative and the master?s language. In this chapter I want to 
provide an important counter-discourse by bringing together literary acounts of colonial 
education. Primarily, I use novels, but also poetry and memoir, from Antigua, Barbados, 
Belize, Grenada, and Trinidad. In some cases the authors have intentionaly made 
connections betwen the countries in the Anglophone Caribbean by seting their narative 
in nameles places, or fictitious places. The efect is to suggest a common heritage 
within the West Indies. George Laming, for example, said that he wanted the seting of 
In the Castle of My Skin to be ?applicable to Barbados, to Jamaica, and to al of the other 
islands. [He] wanted to give the vilage that symbolic quality? (qtd. in Paquet 5). 
Sometimes authors make connections un/intentionaly by participating in a discourse that 
circulates through the region. I do not want to conflate important diferences betwen 
these countries, but I think because of their shared history of British colonial education, 
there are important similarities.   
While these stories cut across genre, culture, and time period they each provide 
insight into the history of education in the Anglophone Caribbean in at least one of four 
ways. First, these texts provide a window into the colonial clasroom that is completely 
absent from the histories of the last chapter. That is to say, we know that education has 
been used as a form of social control, but without regional literature we have litle sense 
of what this proces of control looked like. Images of student/teacher interaction, of 
clasroom dynamics, and of the subtle conflation of color and clas do not exist in 
misionary or colonial records. Second, while scholars like Frantz Fanon and Edward 
Said,
19
 have given us theoretical models to understand the internalization of colonial 
hierarchies of race, clas, and nation they do not give us micro-level acounts that can 
                                                
19
 Se Fanon?s Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, and Said?s Orientalism 
 85 
trace the smal-scale interactions that work to create the colonized mind. Third, while 
Christianity has been criticized for its role in slavery and colonialism, the historical 
records of the last chapter keep hidden the efects of Christian dogma. And lastly, 
women are al but absent from historical records from the colonial and even postcolonial 
eras.
20
 This absence makes invisible the important ways in which constructions of gender, 
and particularly women?s sexuality have been manipulated to establish hierarchies of 
race, clas, and nation. 
Shirley Gordon notes that while there is a large body of government documents 
and reports, misionary acounts and leters, and pres reports, ?the mas of people 
concerned have not left us their views; apart from a few precocious secondary school 
pupils who wrote to the newspapers, the children have not been in a position to have their 
say? (vii). Putting literature in dialogue with history helps to incorporate the voice of the 
?griot historian? and democratize the memory of British colonial education. As the 
proces of decolonizing schools continues, it is imperative that these stories become 
?history? so that the legacy of colonial education can be fully and acurately understood. 
Indeed, the body of Anglophone Caribbean literature that I discuss leaves us with very 
useful questions to ask about the present-day system.     
 
The Discourse of Civilization 
 The last chapter demonstrates the power and pervasivenes of the discourse of 
civilization. Europeans justified colonization and slavery through the premise that 
Africans and the indigenous populations were uncivilized. They argued that it was their 
                                                
20
 Se Bridget Brereton?s article, ?General Problems and Isues in Studying the History of Women,? in 
Gender and Caribean Development. 
 86 
duty to civilize the barbaric peoples who were consistently represented as imoral and 
perverse. Caribbean writers have chalenged this discourse through narative techniques 
including irony. Merle Hodge?s Crick Crack, Monkey (Trinidad), George Laming?s In 
the Castle of My Skin (Barbados) and Austin Clarke?s Growing Up Stupid under the 
Union Jack (Barbados) al question the discourse of civilization by presenting clasroom 
scenes that dramatize and subvert the tenets of the civilized/uncivilized binary.  
The discourse of civilization used the apparent ignorance of the colonized people 
to demonstrate the racial superiority of whites. Crick Crack, Monkey uses a clasroom 
scene to emphasize the self-serving constructednes of this definition of ignorance. The 
protagonist, Te, remembers the anger of one of her teachers, 
Sir ? used to suffer painful seizures, almost prancing up and down with ofended 
awarenes of the self-evident, the fundamental and the esential. Once in a 
dictation nearly the whole clas had either spelt ?slet? wrong or left an inglorious 
blank, and he had lined us up and given us each thre with the tamarind-whip for 
not knowing how to spel it, and six more because none could offer any 
suggestion as to what ?slet? might be. (67) 
As we read the above text we se Sir?s reaction as incongruous and unsemly. In order to 
make sense of the scene, the reader has to proces and acknowledge the colonized mind. 
Sir, a black primary school teacher, has internalized Eurocentricism to a degre that 
borders on comical. Living in a warm climate, slet is a foreign concept. Not 
surprisingly, it is dificult for the students to remember and the disproportionate amount 
of reprimand makes clear to the reader that there is something else going on. Sir, as an 
educated middle-clas black Trinidadian, has learned ? through his education that in 
 87 
order to maintain his status he needs to miic the white/colonizer?s culture and repres 
any afinity he has for black/colonized culture.  
These scenes of clasroom violence are common in Caribbean literature and as In 
the Castle of My Skin and Growing Stupid under the Union Jack demonstrate, this 
violence was not mere corporal punishment, but rather manifestations of the insecurity of 
a middle clas defined by its ability to mark themselves as diferent from the ?other.? 
Moreover, the use of violence by the ?more civilized? teacher, chalenges the civilization 
ideology that undergirds the paternalistic relationship betwen Britain and its colonies. 
In an interview, Jamaica Kincaid emphasizes the irony of the civilized/uncivilized binary. 
She says, ?When I hear people talking about 'The Great Western Tradition,' I think, wait 
a minute, what are they talking about here? Al I se is a tradition of incredible cruelty 
and suffering and injustice ? not to mention murder, complete erasing of whole groups of 
people" (Kincaid, Backtalk 136). 
In George Laming?s novel, In the Castle of My Skin, violence was an integral 
part of school life. When a student giggled during an asembly, the headmaster ? like 
Te?s teacher ? responded with disproportionate violence.  
?I?ve never wanted it said that my boy are hooligans,? he said, ?grinning like 
jackases when respectable people are around. I?ve always wanted it said that the 
boys at Groddeck?s Boy School were gentlemen. But gentlemen don?t grin and 
giggle like buffoons, and in the presences of respectable people, people of power 
and authority?. Who was it, I ask?? he shouted, taking the thick leather from his 
desk. It was the cured hide of the cow which had been soaked in resin and which 
he used to punish?. The teror mounted. The silence was heavy and terible, like 
 88 
the certainty of death? A boy got up?. trying to make some explanation?. He 
could not speak. Four boys were summoned, and they bound him hands and fet 
and stretched him flat over a bench. The teacher removed his jacket and gripped 
the leather. The first blow rent the pants and left the black buttocks exposed. The 
boy made a brief howl like an animal that had had its throat cut. No one cold say 
how long he was beaten or how many strokes he had received?.The knees 
tottered and filth slithered down his legs. (Laming 43). 
This violence in this scene is severe and unnecesary. We se a near identical scene in 
Growing Up Stupid under the Union Jack set 10 years later, also in Barbados. Here again 
the headmaster is represented via the imagery of a slave driver. The violence here is 
triggered by insignificant breaches of conduct, causing the narative to question the 
civilized/uncivilized binary. The narator says, 
The headmaster acepted no excuses. Once a boy told him, ?Please, sir, I had was 
to go ?cross the road five times to bring water for my mother and for the sheeps, 
?cause my mother sick with badfels.? The headmaster listened carefully and 
patiently. In our hearts we cheered for the litle boy. There could be no beter 
excuse. But when the confesion was over, the pee-soaked black snake
21
 was 
wrapped six times across the boy?s back, like the Cross of St. Andrew. And when 
it was over, four of us had to cary the boy out like a casualty, to the pipe across 
the school yard, and wash the feces from his legs and pants. (Clarke 9-10).  
What this incident teaches the young boys is not charity, morality, civility ? the stated 
goals of education. Instead, they learned the asociation of power, masculinity, and 
violence: ?We al swore then, as we stood under the pipe, in the frightened secrecy of our 
                                                
21
 The ?pe-soaked black snake? was a whip the headmaster used to flog his students. 
 89 
hearts, to soon become men, strong men, and come back for the headmaster with bull-
pistle whip? (10).  
 
Religion as Social Control 
 One thing that Caribbean literature can tel us that the official histories cannot is 
the large- and smal-scale ways that Christianity functioned as a method of control and 
containment within the British Empire. Furthermore, this literature helps us se the ways 
in which Christian ideology has become reified, and thus is usualy beyond critique, 
despite the fact that elements of Christian dogma have a long history of being used to 
mark women, people of color, and people in colonial and postcolonial countries as 
?other.? Novels like In the Castle of My Skin, Merle Collins?s Angel, and Jamaica 
Kincaid?s Lucy do important historical work in recording the ways in which religious 
schools, and government schools ? through their adherence to Christian-based concepts 
of morality ? reinforce hierarchies of race, clas, gender and nation. 
Throughout Laming?s novel, In the Castle of My Skin, Christianity is 
consistently asociated with social control. The stories about Ma and Pa, the elders in the 
community, form the backdrop of G?s story. Ma and Pa are communal characters whose 
function in the story is primarily symbolic. Ma represents the product of, and the 
problems with, Christian indoctrination. When Ma and Pa talk about the landlord seling 
the land they live on, and the consequences, Ma says, 
It ain?t in me to hurt my head ?bout such things. I not goin? to fly in God?s face 
?cause He knows best, an? what He think right ain?t in my power to know. That?s 
 90 
why I always says to you, pray, you just pray an? let the wil o? the Lord have it?s 
way.  
In The Novels of George Lamming, Sandra Paquet argues, ?[R]eligion fails the people [in 
the novel] by reinforcing their sense of inadequacy and helplesnes, and by convincing 
them of their need of an alien master and guide. It directs the people away from their 
best interests, in favour of a system which makes it possible for a distant power to foster 
false loyalties and rule without incurring resentment? (21).  Indeed, ?the wil o? the 
Lord? fails Ma and Pa, leaving Pa to spend his final days in the Alms house, ?the final 
stage in human degradation, the grave of those who though dead had been alowed to go 
on living, and the point at which no noble human atribute could be claimed by the 
victim? (Laming 253).  
The novel demonstrates the way the education system contributes to Ma?s blind 
aceptance of Christianity by emphasizing the way G?s school legitimates and reifies 
Christian ideology. G?s school and the local Presbyterian Church are part of the same 
compound. Paquet argues that 
Laming insists on their afinity as alien in orientation and emasculating in their 
efects on the vilage community. Christianity is sen as reinforcing the concept 
of empire which the educational system encourages and promotes. Hence the 
English school inspector can claim divine authority for British colonial rule in his 
addres to the schoolboys?. This stance of halowed paternalism draws 
confidently on Christianity for its authority and justification? (Paquet 20). 
Laming?s novel develops this theme by showing the ways in which Christianity gained 
legitimacy through asociation with schools. The narator explains how the 
 91 
internalization of racist ideas of white supremacy caused poor blacks to turn their anger 
and frustration against middle-clas blacks, rather than against whites or British 
colonialism:  
Even the beter educated who had one way or another gone to the island?s best 
schools and later held responsible posts in the Government service, even these 
were afected by this image of the enemy which had had its origin in a layer from 
which many had sprung and through acidents of time and experience forgotten. 
The image of the enemy, and the enemy was My People. My people are low-
down nigger people. My people don?t like to se their people get on. The 
language of the overser. The language of the civil servant ? and later the 
language of the lawyers and doctors who had returned stamped like an envelope 
with what they caled the culture of the Mother Country. (Laming 26-7) 
This image of the enemy surfaces in Mis Foster?s acount of meting Mr. Creighton, the 
white landlord. When she gets to Mr. Creighton?s house, she demands that the overser 
let her se Mr. Creighton to tel him about the terible flood that had destroyed her house. 
Worried that Mis Foster is going to get him in trouble, the overser says that Mr. 
Creighton cannot do anything about the weather and refuses to let her se him. Mr. 
Creighton, who overhears the exchange, intervenes and lets Mis Foster in. Mis Foster 
tels the story to Bob?s mother and G?s mother, 
[Mr. Creighton] gave me half a crown, sixty cents, believe it or not. I went down 
on my knees and I say, ?May the Almighty God bles you always, Mr. 
Creighton??. I walk down the yard that mornin? with me head high in the air, an? 
not King George on the throne of England was greater than me. When I come out 
 92 
and se the bad-minded black son-of-a-bitch we cal the overser, I shake my 
backside (God forgive me) at him, just to let ?im know that I was people too.? 
(Laming 34)  
The novel uses irony to expose both the construction and the consequences of the 
colonial discourse. Mis Foster grants Mr. Creighton God-like status for sixty cents and a 
cup of tea and is blinded to the larger dynamics of the situation.  
While characters like Mis Foster have disdain for middle-clas civil servants and 
the overser, they show no contempt for teachers. Because the characters of the novel 
se education as the only means of social mobility, they confer on the teachers the God-
status usualy reserved for whites like Mr. Creighton. The position of teachers as 
gatekeepers to the limited number of middle-clas jobs in the society protect them from 
the anger that G?s mother fels towards the other middle-clas characters. However, it is 
the educators and not the overser, the sanitary inspector, or the police officer who do the 
most harm to the vilagers. The novel chalenges the teachers? privilege and impunity by 
paraleling the relationship betwen the head teacher and the school inspector to the 
relationship betwen the overser and the landlord, and by scenes representing the head 
teacher with the iconic whip. 
The novel presents the head teacher and Mr. Slime as clasroom despots with no 
concern for their students and as ruthles businesmen who manipulate and then evict the 
vilagers from their land. They replace Mr. Creighton, and take on al the symbolic 
meaning of the landlord. This use of irony ? the men who are most revered are the 
betrayers ? makes an important political point about the status of schooling in the 
Caribbean. Education is as capable of harm as it is of good.   
 93 
Although Laming?s novel chalenges hierarchies of race and nation, patriarchy 
sems to go unquestioned. The fact that the novel continualy presents disempowerment 
in the language of emasculation has the efect of reifying patriarchy. The problem, 
acording to the novel, is that certain men are being disempowered, not patriarchy itself. 
Although the novel contains women who are presented as strong, independent and 
powerful within the limits of the domestic sphere and sometimes romantic relationships, 
these characterizations are used primarily as tools to develop the male characters. So the 
story that the whipped boy tels the others, that the head teacher is cruel because his wife 
beats him, figures power as something a man loses and tries to regain. The woman 
functions as a tool of emasculation, but is never herself rightfully empowered. 
 
Patriarchy and the Construction of Women?s Sexuality as a Mechanism of Social 
Control  
In her book, Making Men, Belinda Edmondson argues that literature from the 
Anglophone Caribbean is preoccupied with Victorian literature. She points to the 
relationship betwen Wilson Haris?s Palace of the Peacock and Joseph Conrad?s Heart 
of Darknes, V.S. Naipaul?s and CLR James?s references to Anthony Trollope and 
Wiliam Thackeray, Jean Rhys?s reteling of Jane Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea, and to 
Jamaica Kincaid?s reference to Wordsworth?s poem, ?Dafodils,? in Lucy (5). For 
Edmondson this preoccupation with Victorian literature is part of the Anglophone 
Caribbean?s ongoing confrontation with ?Englishnes,? and specificaly Victorian 
constructions of manlines. 
 94 
 Merle Collins?s novel, Angel, makes clear the connections betwen patriarchy, 
Christianity, colonialism and education. There is a sign hanging in Angel?s house that 
reads, ?Christ is the Head of the House,? and a picture of Jesus with a globe in his hand. 
By introducing these images at key moments where the narative focuses on the power 
struggles betwen Angel?s parents, Doodsie and Alen, or the diferences in the expected 
gender roles of Angel and her brother Simon, the novel demonstrates how Christian 
ideology creates and reinforces hierarchies of gender, race, and nation. 
 The image of Jesus, always ?smiling down at? Angel (97, 98), provides the 
narative backdrop for the discussion of Angel?s education: 
[Alen] agred that if the worst came to the worst, he would have to find money to 
send Simon to high school. 
 ?And Angel?? Doodsie asked.  
 ?Huh! Look, that?s a diferent thing, you know. We might have to 
choose. We mightn be able to send both of them, and Angel is a girl. They grow 
up and before you know it is confusion, the don even finish school or they finish, 
get maried, their name not even yours again and somebody else get the praise.? 
(99) 
The novel naratively connects Angel?s education to her sexuality. After Alen?s 
discouragement, Doodsie thinks to herself, ?She go get de bes if even ah have to scrub 
floor to give er? (101). Imediately following this thought, Doodsie lectures Angel 
about boys while they peel bluggoe. Simon is playing. 
?Look, you big for ten years. You body develop aready and you look more than 
you age. I tel you aready be careful. Any day now you could expect that ting I 
 95 
tel you about?. Anybody interfere with you on the stret come an tel me. And 
study you head. Nobody does expec good out of litle girl and al thos you tink is 
you frien just waitin to se you fal for them to laugh?. Ah want the best for 
Simon too, but he is man, so he start off?. Simon, now, because he is man, he 
start off as boss aready. You have to work for it. Study youself!? (101-2)   
Society wants to define Angel by her sexuality, as a future falen woman, and education 
is presented as the (only) way to avoid this. Many of the female characters in the novel 
have children outside of mariage, and yet it is asociated with shame and because it is 
presented as the opposite of education, it is asociated with a lower social clas. Doodsie 
tels Angel, ?Tings easier for a man. Don shame yourself an me. Show dem dat nobody 
could pull you down? (103). The importance of Angel?s sexuality is further emphasized 
when Doodsie takes Angel to register at the Convent High School. Although the novel 
spends les than a page describing this event, the Virgin Mary is mentioned four times, 
overwhelming the short narative. 
Skipping ahead a year in time, the novel naratively links Doodsie?s lectures and 
Catholic ideology through their proximity in the story. During her second year at the 
Convent High School, Angel finds out ?how serious things were with her soul? (106). 
Indeed, Angel finds out that her whole family was living in sin: 
[O]ne day, during the religious knowledge clas in second form, Angel had a rude 
shock. Mother Superior said that not only was living together without being 
maried a mortal sin but if a Catholic got maried in a non-Catholic church, then 
that was no mariage and the person and the whole family was living in sin until 
there was a confesion and repentance and a real mariage in a Catholic Church. 
 96 
When Angel got home that day, Doodsie confirmed her fears. Angel went quietly 
to her room and wept her disappointment. (108) 
Like Angel, Jamaica Kincaid?s, Annie John emphasizes the connections betwen 
patriarchy, colonialism, religion and education. Annie?s mother chalenges the Victorian 
gender roles that define a woman by her sexual ?purity? by defying her father's wishes 
for her to remain living at home, ?respectably.? The novel emphasizes the connections 
betwen the control of women through Christian ideology and the control of the ?other? 
through colonial education by naratively linking this story of Annie?s mother to Annie?s 
rebelious defacement of her school textbook. Annie recounts, 
Shortly after I first discovered [the picture of "Columbus in Chains"] in my 
history book, I heard my mother read out loud to my father a leter she had 
received from her sister, who stil lived with her mother and father in the very 
same Dominica, which is where my mother came from. Ma Ches was fine, 
wrote my aunt, but Pa Ches was not wel. Pa Ches was having a bit of trouble 
with his limbs; he was not able to go about as he pleased; often he had to depend 
on someone else to do one thing or another for him. My mother read the leter in 
quite a state, her voice rising to a higher pitch with each sentence. After she read 
the part about Pa Ches's stif limbs, she turned to my father and laughed as she 
said, 'so the great man can no longer just get up and go. How I would love to se 
his face now!'  When I next saw the picture of Columbus siting there al locked 
up in his chains, I wrote under it the words "The Great Man Can No Longer Just 
Get Up and Go." (78) 
 97 
After Annie is caught vandalizing her textbook she is sentenced to copy John Milton?s 
Paradise Lost. ?For defaming one of the empire?s great men, she is required to pay 
homage to another great man? (Simons 113). Paradise Lost is highly symbolic in this 
scene because it was both a product of colonial discourse and an instrument in its 
perpetuation, but perhaps more importantly Paradise Lost is a reteling of Eve?s fal from 
grace, the most powerful story in Christian ideology for justifying patriarchy and defining 
women?s sexuality as dangerous and in need of control. 
Despite the fact that In the Castle of My Skin, Angel and Annie John are al set in 
the past the critiques that these thre novels offer are important for understanding the 
present-day education system in the Anglophone Caribbean. Even as Britain?s colonial 
influence has lesened in the Anglophone Caribbean, Christianity has remained a 
powerful force, at least in part through religious schools. In the Castle of My Skin, Angel 
and Annie John demonstrate the possible consequences of internalizing certain Christian 
beliefs and the power that religious schools have to legitimize Christian ideology. In 
these novels we also se the ways in which religious groups often exist beyond critique. 
Although British colonial influence has been systematicaly deconstructed throughout the 
region, an examination of the role of Christianity in producing social hierarchies and 
introducing foreign influence has remained largely unquestioned.   
 
Curiculum, Language, and Resistance 
In Kincaid?s novel Lucy, Lucy remembers ?an old poem [she] had been made to 
memorize when [she] was ten years old and a pupil at Queen Victoria Girls? School? 
(Kincaid 18). At her school, a bastion of cultural imperialism ? note the appropriate 
 98 
name
2
 ? Lucy had been required to memorize a poem about dafodils. This event 
becomes a significant marker in Lucy?s understanding of herself as a colonial subject. 
She was taught to give value to a poet, a content, and a context foreign to her own 
experience. Although there are numerous flowers and many talented writers native to the 
Caribbean, Lucy was forced to memorize a poem about a dafodil writen by a British 
poet. This memory points to the importance of these colonial exercises and the specific 
problems that they create for the development of a Caribbean identity.  
Lucy was praised for memorizing and reciting this poem. She recounts that she 
had ?recited the whole poem to the auditorium full of parents, teachers, and my felow 
pupils? and that after she was finished: 
everybody stood up and applauded with an enthusiasm that surprised me, and 
later they told [her] how nicely [she] had pronounced every word and how [she] 
had placed just the right amount of special emphasis in places where that was 
needed, and how proud the poet, now long dead, would have been to hear his 
words ringing out of [her] mouth. (Kincaid 18)   
Such praise was meant to encourage Lucy to define herself in relation to her ability to 
miic an imperial artifact that in fact devalues her sense of self. Lucy understands this 
moment to be one of cultural colonialism, confesing, ?I was then at the height of my 
two-facednes: that is, outside I semed one way, inside I was another; outside false, 
inside true? (Kincaid 18). Lucy recognizes this event as a moment of self-betrayal: she 
was legitimating, with eagernes, the very value system responsible for her oppresion. 
Paravisini-Gebert argues: 
                                                
2
 Quen Victoria was in power for much of the 19
th
 century, which for the British was the age of empire.  
 99 
For children being schooled in the West Indies in the early part of the twentieth 
century, like George Laming, Edward Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, and Kincaid 
herself, [Wordsworth?s] poem glorifying flowers that were not found in the 
Caribbean has become emblematic of a colonial system that imposed its own 
values and cultural standards through a system of education that fel outside local 
control. (123) 
The dafodil becomes a symbol of the proces of the native interpelation of these values 
and with them the dismisal and erasure of a native identity. Lucy recognizes that in her 
recitation of this poem she has been unwiting agent in British cultural colonialism. 
Crick Crack, Monkey also demonstrates the efect of curriculum and language in 
creating and maintaining colonial hierarchies. Like Lucy, Te uses the language of 
doublenes to talk about the efect of her education. Te says that she created an 
imaginary double, a British and ?proper? girl named Helen that Te created based on her 
desire to be part of the English world that books presented as ?real? and ?civilized.? Te 
says, 
Books transported you always into the familiar solidity of chimneys and apple 
tres, the enviable normality of real Girls and Boys who went a-sleighing and 
built snowmen ? and caled things by their proper names, never saying 
?washicong? for plimsoll or ?crapaud? when they meant a frog?. Why, the whole 
of life was like a piece of cloth, with a rightside and a wrongside. Just as there 
was a way you spoke and a way you wrote, so there was the daily existence which 
you led, wich of course amounted only to making time and makeshift, for there 
was the Proper daily round, not necesarily more agreable, simply the valid one 
 100 
? there were the human types who were your neighbors and guardians and 
playmates ? but you were al marginal together, for there were the beings whose 
validity loomed at you out of every book, every picture. (62) 
The binary language that Te uses emphasizes the presure of asimilation in pre-
Independence Trinidad (Paravisini and Webb). In her article, ?Crick Crack Monkey: A 
Picaresque Perspective,? Ena Thomas say that ?[b]y the end of primary school, Te has 
developed a schizophrenic personality characterized by self-hate and an admiration for al 
things foreign thanks to colonized teachers like Mr. Hinds and a British-oriented 
curriculum that symbolicaly starts with ?A is for apple?? (213). Although Te eventualy 
discards Helen she ?ses herself as lacking, inadequate, ?incomplete? ? not because she is 
a girl but because she is not the ?right? kind of girl? (Paravisini and Webb).  
Curriculum reform has made significant changes in who is represented as ?right? 
and ?proper,? by making sure that textbooks reflect the life and culture of the region. 
Although the curriculum has changed, the language of instruction has not. Schools 
throughout the Anglophone Caribbean stil teach (in) standard English despite the fact 
that for a large part of the population Creole is the first language.  
 Language has been an esential tool in colonization throughout the world. In the 
British Empire, English was imposed as a method of social control. In the Anglophone 
Caribbean, forcing slaves to adopt English and forget their African languages was a 
strategy to prevent revolt and the use of English has continued to enforce hierarchies of 
race, clas, and nation throughout the period of British colonialism and into the 
postcolonial era. Schools have been the first line of atack in the asault of the master?s 
language. Although peoples throughout the Anglophone Caribbean have resisted British 
 101 
English in their everyday lives, the legitimation of English in the school systems has 
marked Creole as uneducated and backwards. Collins emphasizes the connection 
betwen language and oppresion in Angel. 
In particular, after the seven-year-old Angel wins a scholarship that alows her to 
pursue her education at a respected Catholic school, she finds that her working-
clas dialect is an object of mockery to the other students, who generaly come 
from more afluent backgrounds. Angel, worried that she ?can speak proper,? 
atempts to learn to speak in more standard English?. In this way, Collins 
indicates the clas divisions of colonial Grenada, with the upper clases 
scrambling to imitate their British masters, whose cultural superiority they have 
uncriticaly acepted. (Booker and Juraga 173) 
 While the enforcement of British English has been one of the most obvious 
continuities from colonial to postcolonial education systems in the Anglophone 
Caribbean, language has also been an important site of resistance for Caribbean writers. 
Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Louise Bennet, and Merle Collins have brought legitimacy to 
Creole, Patois, or what Brathwaite cals ?nation language? by using it in their writing. 
Because, as Te says above, British literature was an important instrument in creating the 
hierarchy betwen ?good? English and ?bad? English, Caribbean literature has been a 
particularly useful site for chalenging it.  
 If Te showed us how language was used as a tool of subordination in British 
colonial education, the narator of Merle Collins?s poem ?The Leson? shows us how it 
can work as resistance. ?The Leson? tels the story of the narator?s great-
grandmamy?s colonial education. The narator says that her ?great-grandmamy? was 
 102 
?living proof of the power of the word? because she ?Spoke knowlingly of/Wiliam the 
Conqueror/Who was the fourth son/Of the Duke of Normandy? and ?knew that 
Wiliam/Maried Matilda/That his children were/Robert, Richard, Henry, Wiliam 
and/Adela,? but ?didn?t remember no/Carib Chief/No Asante king or queen.?  
But the poem akes clear that Collins also knows ?the power of the word.? By 
teling the story of great-grandmamy?s ?weltaught,? ?carefully-learnt? leson in 
Grenadian Creole, she simultaneously subverts the power of Te?s dichotomy betwen ?a 
way you spoke, and a way you wrote,? and demonstrates a history of resistance to British 
language. The fact that the narator, thre generations younger than her great-
grandmamy, stil speaks Grenadian Creole is a testament to the refusal of Grenadians to 
acept the master?s language.  
 103 
Chapter 4: A Political History of Belize 
 
If the world had any ends, British 
Honduras would surely be one of them. 
British Honduras is not on the way from 
anywhere to anywhere else, has no  
strategic value, is all but uninhabited. 
-Alexander Huxley 
 
Guatemala claims Belize from Britain through  
rights inherited from Spain, and Spain got rights from 
the Pope, and who are we going to get rights from? 
-Beka in Beka Lamb 
 
 
In the Introduction I discuss the disconnect betwen girls? educational 
achievements and women?s power in the Anglophone Caribbean. In Chapters 2 and 3, 
my focus stays on the Anglophone Caribbean as a region. Here I wil focus on one 
country, Belize. This chapter is necesary to an understanding of Chapters 5, 6, and 7 for 
thre reasons. First, Belize has a complicated history. As I discuss below the 
development of their colonial status in the region was unique. In the next chapter I argue 
that the British government?s delayed recognition of Belize as a colony afected the 
development of the Belizean education system. An understanding of this argument 
depends on a basic knowledge of Belizean history. Second, because I focus on gender 
roles in Chapters 6 and 7, here I explain the larger historical context in which those roles 
developed. To understand the gender ideology of a society, one must analyze the stories 
that are told about women in that culture. Third, because this disertation is ultimately 
 104 
about female empowerment, it is important to make clear the important roles women 
have played in the history of the Belize.  
In Belize, as in other parts of the Anglophone Caribbean, women are largely 
absent from traditional histories. Histories that do include women overwhelmingly figure 
them as behind-the-scenes supporters of men and when women are presented in 
leadership roles, it is within church and community groups ? friendly societies with litle 
political impact. Should it come as any surprise then that Belizean society expects 
women to adopt these positions in contemporary society? Belizean scholars such as 
Asad Shoman have emphasized the role of ideology in maintaining colonialism. He 
says, ?The most coveted area of conquest is always the mind; empires can lose land, but 
if they control people?s minds their domination is asured? (Thirten Chapters xvii). 
However, few scholars have looked at the way this same type of mind control has ben 
used to maintain patriarchy in Belize or the way that gendered ideology was used to 
establish the racial hierarchies that were so central to British colonialism.   
Recognizing the ways women contributed to the society in important ways may 
help change the gender norms that position women in les powerful roles. Certainly 
chalenging traditional gender roles wil add more currency to girls? educational 
achievements by providing them with a wider set of occupational choices. Because the 
stories a culture tels about itself are always connected to power, we should also ask 
questions about who has benefited from the historical invisibility of women in Belize. 
Specificaly, we should ask questions about how making women invisible helped 
maintain colonial, national, and patriarchal power. That is, how does the erasure of 
women in Belizean history work to further strategic interests in Belize? 
 105 
In this chapter I look at the five stories central to Belizean identity: 1. the 
?discovery? of uninhabited land; 2. piracy and the establishment of the setlements; 3. the 
Batle of St. George?s Caye; 4. the history of benevolent slavery; and 5. the social 
protests of the first half of the twentieth century. It is my argument these stories have 
been used to maintain racial hierarchies and patriarchy during the colonial period and 
after independence. That is to say, these stories have been manufactured and 
?remembered? in politicaly useful ways.  
 
The ?Discovery? of Uninhabited Lands 
The land that is now Belize was part of the Maya empire and includes several 
important archeological sites that continue to provide information about the Maya people, 
how they lived, and their achievements. The earliest known Maya setlement, dated as 
early as 2500 B.C.E., existed close to Orange Walk in Belize (se map), and although the 
Maya empire declined during the tenth century, Nigel Bolland, one of the most wel 
known historians of Belize, argues that there were stil significant numbers of Maya in 
Belize when the Europeans arived during the sixtenth and sevententh centuries 
(Colonialism and Resistance 18). Like many peoples native to the Americas and the 
Caribbean, the lives of the Maya were forever changed with Columbus?s voyage to the 
?new orld.? Columbus ?discovered? Belize on his fourth and final voyage in 1502.  
 106 
 The Spanish never established 
setlements in Belize, but they did encounter 
the Maya in entradas in the sixtenth and 
sevententh centuries in places that are now 
part of Belize (Bolland, Colonialism and 
Resistance 18). Several Spanish explorers ? 
including Hernan Cort?s ? landed in or 
sailed around the coastline of Belize. When 
Cort?s ?pased through the south-western 
corner of Belize in 1525, scatered 
setlements of Manche Chol Maya were in that area. These Maya were later forcibly 
removed by the Spanish to the Guatemalan highlands when they ?pacified? the region in 
the sevententh century? (Bolland, A New Nation 12). Indeed, the Spanish disrupted and 
regulated Maya communities during most of the sixtenth and sevententh centuries 
(Shoman, Thirten Chapters 5).  
Bolland?s asertion that the Maya existed in Belize at the time of the first British 
setlements represents an important counter to the widespread claim that the Maya had 
deserted the land prior to the arival of the Europeans. In fact, this argument has been so 
pervasive that in his 1994 text, Thirten Chapters of a History of Belize, Shoman writes, 
?Almost al previous texts on Belizean history have tended to deny or downplay the 
existence or extent of both the Maya and Spanish presence in Belize before the British 
came and in subsequent years? (5). We can se this type of downplaying in George 
Henderson?s 1811 text, An Acount of the British Setlement of Honduras. Henderson 
 107 
makes repeated mention of ?Indians? living in and around the setlement, but he describes 
the British as unobtrusive to the lives of the Maya: ?The English setlers had established 
themselves, with the friendly approval of the Indians, their imediate neighbours, on the 
east coast of Yucatan? (2). Other acounts that mention the Maya often use the Mayan 
presence to justify colonization. Mision reports such as The Wesleyan-Methodist 
Misions, in Jamaica and Honduras, Delineated, for example, point to the need for a 
misionary presence. In this report Rev. Peter Samuel describes the population of Belize 
as consisting of ?Europeans, Indians, Mosquito
23
 men, and a mixture of others? and he 
characterizes the Maya as ?a timid inoffensive set of creatures? noting that ?the moral 
state of the whole, until the influence of the Gospel began to be felt, was very low? (313).  
Bolland argues that the common asertion that the Maya in Belize left the land 
before the British setlers arived is a myth created as part of British colonial propaganda 
(Colonialism and Resistance 18). By erasing the history of the Maya in Belize, the 
British setlers, who came to be known as the Baymen, are invested with origin and thus 
the lineage of Belize begins with white men. This creation story imbues white men with 
natural power to control the land because history begins with their ownership. There 
were few European women in the initial setlements, and so the real genesis of British 
communities in Belize is a product of the rape and the sexual enslavement of indigenous 
women. The origin myth, however, makes these women invisible, thus making the white 
male setlers the sole (pro)creator and giving them the exclusive power of birthing the 
first generation of the British setlement. The colonial narative therefore creates a new 
social order that naturalizes both patriarchy and imperialism. 
 
                                                
23
Indigenous people who lived on an area of coastline along present-day Nicaragua.  
 108 
Piracy and the Establishment of the Setlements 
The first British setlers were pirates, themselves symbols of militant masculinity 
and imperial conquest. Hostility betwen England, France, the Netherlands, and Spain 
during the late 1500s and throughout the1600s resulted in numerous batles over trade 
and land in the Caribbean and this hostility gave rise to piracy by men who were aligned 
with imperial interests, as wel as men who were motivated only by personal gain. Narda 
Dobson, a historian of Belize, notes, ?The buccaneers who roamed the Caribbean and the 
coast of the Spanish mainland from the late sixtenth century until the1670s were French, 
Dutch and British privaters, sometimes acting on the authority of their sovereigns and 
sometimes without it? (54). Although Spain was the common enemy for French, Dutch 
and British pirates, Dobson says ?there was litle sense of community among these 
highwaymen of the seas as they raided the Spanish treasure flets? (54).  
Pirates were atracted to the coast of Belize because of the ?scores of habitable 
islets, some with central lagoons in which vesels could be hidden or carened, the many 
river mouths and coastal lagoons suitable for lairs, the protection against surprise atack 
aforded by the refs and tricky channels and the deserted nature of the coastal country? 
(Anderson 34). Walter Gadsby, a Methodist misionary who lived in Belize in the 
beginning of the twentieth century, provides a more dramatic description: 
A nimbus of romance encircles the early history of the Colony, for in legendary 
lore refering to that period many a thriling adventure and daring exploit are 
recorded as having taken place on the waters of the Caribbean Sea. It sems to 
have been part of the historic fishing ground where pirates, otherwise known as 
gentlemen with a roving commision, used to catch fish from the surface of the 
 109 
waves in the shape of Spanish vesels laden with silver from the mines, and 
valuable dye-woods from the forests of Central America. (9) 
After the European governments agred to outlaw piracy in 1667, many buccaneers 
turned to the trade of logwood and Belize was one of the places these ?gentlemen with a 
roving commision? setled. Although these early buccaneer setlements were close to 
the coast, it marked the beginning of the displacement of the Maya.   
Most historians set 1638 as the date of the first British setlements in Belize, 
although it was not until piracy was outlawed that there was a strong incentive to develop 
communities there. By 1670, when the Godolphin Treaty was signed, British logwood 
setlements were scatered across Belize. Existing in Spanish-controlled Central 
America, these British communities were possible only because Spain had not invested 
any resources into setling the area. So while Belize was officialy a colony of Spain, it 
was in name only. There was, in fact, no significant colonial presence from any imperial 
country until British ex-pirates and buccaneers began to harvest logwood.   
The Godolphin Treaty is an important moment in the history of Belize because in 
this document Spain ceded al of her teritories in the West Indies to England. Seing 
themselves as part of the West Indies even though their setlement was on the mainland 
not an island, the Baymen argued that the Godolphin Treaty therefore legalized their 
setlements and made clear their status as a British colony. Further, they believed that 
because this document officialy transitioned them into the British Empire they should 
start receiving the same resources as other British colonies. The treaty, in fact, never 
mentioned the setlements in Belize, and their status as part of the West Indies was 
questionable since the name ?West Indies? generaly included only islands in the 
 110 
Caribbean at that time. Therefore, the setlers? interpretation of the Godolphin Treaty 
hinged on their identification as part of the West Indies, which semed to itself rest 
merely on the fact that the they were British. This interpretation of the treaty was not 
entirely convincing to the British government, who remained indecisive about the 
setlements and offered litle support to the setlers.  
Inasmuch as England turned a blind eye to Belize, so too did Spain. While 
Catholic Spain was surely displeased at the idea of a Protestant outpost in Central 
America, the Spanish government neither officialy condoned nor objected to the 
setlements at the time of the Godolphin treaty.
24
 And so, Belize existed in uncertainty. 
Spain did not want to invest in the area to establish setlements, and England did not want 
to upset the delicate political relationship with Spain (Dobson 57). With no mother 
country, the origin myth takes on greater significance. Although the colonists clearly 
identified as British, the fact that they were a colony outside of the system, one with litle 
support, lends symbolic weight to the origin story: The Baymen created the country by 
themselves. Without imperial power, the Baymen relied only on militant masculinity to 
maintain the setlements.  
Although the Spanish government had previously ignored the British setlements 
in Belize, and therefore alowed the communities to grow, they did begin to object a few 
years after the Godolphin Treaty when they became aware of the value of logwood, 
which was used to make dye. Wanting to prevent the British from harvesting the 
lucrative logwood, even if they had no practical interest in harvesting it themselves, the 
                                                
24
 Ironicaly, though neither country oficialy tok a stand regarding the setlements, and despite the fact 
that the Godolphin Treaty never mentioned Belize, this document is important to Belizean history in that it 
marks the begining of the legal ambiguity that would eventualy undergird Guatemala?s atempts to usurp 
Belize. 
 111 
Spanish government began to enforce their sovereignty in the area (Dobson 58). They 
ordered raids on British setlements and the seizure of British ships carying logwood. In 
1672, the Spanish declared that anyone trading in one of their ports without a license 
would be treated as a pirate (58). Raids on British logwood ships continued with 75 ships 
being atacked betwen 1671-4, and in 1680 Spain atacked the island of Trist, a logwood 
setlement just off the coast of Belize, and imprisoned the British setlers (58-9). These 
atacks increased over the next 20 years (58-9). The fact that Sir Thomas Lynch, the 
Governor of Jamaica, made several atempts on behalf of the British government to 
remove the setlers ? despite the lucrative sales of logwood ? demonstrates that the 
British saw the increasingly hostile situation in Belize as a real threat to their diplomatic 
relationship with Spain (59).  
Spain and England were in almost constant batle during the eightenth century 
and the Belize question surfaced in many of the resulting treaties. In the Treaty of 
Utrecht of 1713, Spain refused to grant any rights to the Baymen (Dobson 61). Despite 
this, the trading of logwood increased and in 1717, in the Council of Trade, Britain 
aserted the rights of the Baymen to the land (62). This was the first time the British had 
taken an official stand regarding the setlements. However, despite British support for 
the Baymen, atacks by the Spanish continued, although acording to Bolland, ?even 
when the Spanish atacks were succesful [the Spanish] did not atempt any subsequent 
resetlement, so the British would return and resume operations after they had left? 
(Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance 21).  
It was not until the Treaty of Paris in 1763 that Spain officialy acorded the 
Baymen limited rights to harvest logwood. Spain refused to give up dominion, however, 
 112 
emphasizing that they would remain the sovereign ruler of Belize despite the British 
setlements (Dobson 66). Acording to the treaty, the Baymen were alowed to harvest 
logwood, but they could not set up any permanent setlements. 
The profitability of logwood decreased in the second half of the eightenth 
century when new methods for dyeing cloth arose. However, as the logwood trade 
waned, the market for another kind of Belizean timber, mahogany, expanded. British 
recognition of Europe?s increasing desire for mahogany increased England?s desire to 
maintain a stronghold in the area (Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance 102). The shift 
from logwood to mahogany also changed the relationship betwen the setlers and the 
Maya. Bolland argues that up until the 1770s ?there would have been litle cause for 
contact, the British obtaining most of their logwood near the coast, where it could be 
easily loaded on their ships, and the Maya probably prefering to retire and keep out of 
their way? (Colonialism and Resistance 102). However, mahogany is a tre that grows 
further inland. Thus, the shift from logwood to mahogany had a geographical 
consequence. It required the woodcutters to move from the coast into what is now central 
and northwest Belize. Bolland notes that this brought the setlers into increased, and 
often violent, contact with the Maya who, having already been displaced, were 
atempting to repulse any further encroachment of their land (103).  
Ignoring the restrictions of the Treaty of Paris, the Baymen continued to establish 
and expand permanent setlements in Belize, with an increasing amount of recognition 
and support from Britain. Although the Spanish continued to atack the setlements, they 
never kept any permanent forces in the area, and so the setlements quickly returned. 
One important consequence of these atacks and the limits placed on the Baymen was that 
 113 
there was no incentive for the setlers to establish social institutions, like an education 
system, for example. As Norman Ashcraft notes in his esay Education and Economic 
Development in British Honduras, the nature of timber extraction combined with the 
omnipresent threat of atack by the Spanish encouraged a focus on making money 
quickly and investing litle into the community (10). ?Intent on pursuing their main 
economic objective,? Ashcraft explains, ?the setlers neglected other sectors of the 
economy and the social services in general. Because they controlled the government 
almost completely, the forest owners and timber merchants could protect their interests? 
(11). Thus, the Baymen exercised their power over public funds to ensure that money 
was channeled into the forest industry and not into social services. Ashcraft points to 
specific examples of the Baymen?s power: 
Atempts to develop agriculture were frustrated and construction of roads was 
neglected since the forest industry relied on river transport. There was opposition 
to levying an income tax since the persons most imediately afected would be 
the forestry group. Welfare services were considered to be the responsibility of 
anyone except the forestry-controlled government. This was evident in the field 
of education. Although the government was able to provide adequate funds for 
education and other social services, its contribution was limited. (11) 
The inability, or reluctance, to develop an education system would have long-reaching 
consequences for Belize, particularly after 1838 when slaves were emancipated.  
 
 
 
 114 
Benevolent Slavery 
There is litle historical record of slavery in Belize, so it has been dificult to 
reconstruct the Belizean slave system with any real specificity. There are a few leters 
and diaries of travelers to Belize but, because of the ambiguous legal status of Belize, 
there are few of the official reports produced by misionaries and British officials that 
have provided information in other parts of the West Indies. Dobson notes that the 
visitors that did come to Belize focused on the woodcutters and that ?the lot of the 
ordinary domestic slaves? was often ignored (150).  Thus, it is particularly dificult to 
understand the lives of female slaves in Belize, for the acounts that are available focus 
almost exclusively on male slaves.  
Acording to Dobson, the earliest reference to slavery comes from a Spanish 
misionary who noted in 1724 that slaves were part of the population of the setlements 
(147). She argues that because the slave population made up 2,132 of the 2,915 people in 
Belize at the end of the eightenth century, it is clear that ?the economy, and indeed the 
very existence of the setlement, was dependent on slave labour? (147). Because there 
was no direct trade with Africa, slaves were usualy purchased in Jamaica or other West 
Indian slave markets.  
Slavery increased in Belize with the switch from logwood to mahogany. 
Logwood grew in concentrated patches close to the coast, while mahogany, a much larger 
tre, was spread out across the interior (Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance 204). The 
cuting and shipping of mahogany required greater amounts of laborers than were 
available, therefore, more slaves were needed. This explains the dramatic increase in the 
number of slaves during the late eightenth and early ninetenth century (204). 
 115 
Because Belize focused on the extraction of logwood and mahogany, and not 
sugar, Belize did not have the plantation system that was so ubiquitous in the West 
Indies. The extraction of timber was seasonal work, so male slaves would spend many 
months living in the forest and then return to Belize Town where their families were 
located. Markedly diferent from plantation organization, Belizean male slaves worked 
in smal groups, without a lot of oversight. Henderson notes the smal group structure 
that characterized the work of cutting mahogany: ?The gang of negroes employed in this 
work consist of from ten to fifty each; few exced the later number? (47).  
Because of the diferences betwen the woodcutting in Belize and the plantations 
that existed throughout the Anglophone Caribbean, a myth has emerged that Belizean 
slavery was benevolent and that racial prejudice was al but absent. This myth has 
consistently surfaced throughout the history of Belize. It began with colonial reports that 
the woodcutters treated their slaves with ?kindnes, liberality and indulgent care? and that 
no other ?labouring clas of people? possesed ?anything like the comforts of the Slave 
Population of Honduras? (qtd. in Grant 41). Henderson writes, ?In no part of the world, 
where slavery prevails, can the condition of beings so circumstanced be found of milder 
or more indulgent form. The labour they undergo bears no proportion to that which they 
sustain throughout the islands: nor is it more to be compared with what they experience 
in the States of America? (59-60). This characterization of a benevolent slavery has 
continued throughout the twentieth century. In his 1981 book, Formerly British 
Honduras: A Profile of the New Nation of Belize, Wiliam Setzekorn says, 
Being in a smal isolated frontierland, living with daily threats from hostile 
neighbors and impending natural disasters, the Baymen had litle time for racial 
 116 
prejudice. There was no ?plantation? economy to perpetuate the slavery 
institution as in the islands of the West Indies so these Negro imigrants, while 
technicaly slaves until emancipation in 1838, found a place alongside the 
European woodcutters as companions and wiling alies against the chalenges of 
their inhospitable land and soon outnumbered their ?owners? thre to one. (18) 
Setzekorn?s description makes invisible the realities of slavery and its long-lasting 
consequences in stratifying the society, and by refering to Belizean slaves as 
?imigrants,? he completely dismises the trans-Atlantic slave trade. While Bolland 
agres with Setzekorn that ?the whip-wielding drivers, who were ubiquitous on the 
plantations, were unknown in Belize,? Bolland points out that this does not mean that 
slaves did not face harsh treatment (Bolland, Slavery in Belize 16)  
The evidence of slave uprisings and escape indicate that the relationship betwen 
the Baymen and their slaves was not as amicable as Setzekorn and others would have us 
believe. Bolland notes that there were thre significant slave rebelions betwen 1765 
and 1773, and that throughout the eightenth century and up until 1838, the year of 
emancipation, there were continual complaints from the setlers that Spaniards in the 
adjoining teritories were giving asylum to their runaway slaves in exchange for a 
conversion to Catholicism (?Colonialism and Resistance? 26-7). Further, Henderson 
reports that female slaves frequently aborted pregnancies although he does not sem to 
se this as a political act. He says, ?A preparation from the root of [the Contrayerva] is 
known to produce abortion, and is much used for such purpose by negro females. This 
practice is extremely common with these people? (92). Evidence of rebelion, escape, 
and abortion ?does not support the view that the slaves were content to be dominated or 
 117 
that they felt ?devotion? towards their masters? (Boland ?Colonialism and Resistance? 
25). Further, as C.H. Grant notes in his book, The Making of Modern Belize: Politics, 
Society and British Colonialism in Central America, ?Physical cruelties were matched by 
the cultural. As elsewhere, slavery entailed the almost complete destruction of African 
institutions and customs. Of necesity, the slaves adopted the English language. Their 
religious beliefs and practices were suppresed? (43). Thus, as Bolland aserts, ?The 
felings of the slaves should be deduced not from the ideological statements of their 
masters, but from reports of the actions of the slaves themselves? (?Colonialism and 
Resistance? 25).    
This having been said, there is evidence that some slaves in Belize did receive 
milder treatment than those in the rest of the West Indies. Dobson suggests several 
reasons that might acount for this diference. First, she suggests that the Baymen saw 
Belize as their home, unlike a lot of plantation owners from other parts of the West Indies 
who were often absente landlords. The Baymen, therefore, had more personal contact 
and longer relationships with their slaves. Second, Dobson notes the close proximity of 
the Spanish colonies and suggests that harsh treatment may have resulted in financial 
losses to the Baymen as escape was always an option for the slaves. A statement made in 
1825 by a fre coloured slave owner named George Hyde ilustrates Dobson?s point: ?As 
for punishments or il-usage, you are aware (if ever so deserved) we dare not inflict it, so 
easy is their retreat to the Spaniards? (qtd. in Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance, 73). 
Third, the slaves were generaly armed with machetes for clearing paths, axes for cutting 
tres, and guns for shooting prey. Henderson notes this unusual custom: ?The whole of 
the slaves of Honduras are permited to use arms, and possibly a more expert body of 
 118 
marksmen could not where be found? (73). Lastly, Dobson notes that the nature of 
woodcutting simultaneously involved the Baymen in work with the slaves while making 
constant oversight and control of the lives of the slaves impossible. With escape much 
more achievable than in the sugar plantations, the Baymen had to balance their treatment 
of their slaves with the constant threat of escape (145-158).  
Dobson?s acount of milder treatment is acurate for most male slaves, but 
troublesome in that it generalizes the experience of Belizean slavery around the 
woodcutters ? that is so say, the male slaves. Slavery in Belize was marked by a much 
stronger gender division than in the rest of the West Indies. Male slaves were used to 
extract timber outside of the city, working in the interior of the country for many months 
out of the year. Female slaves, however, were almost always domestic slaves and stayed 
in the setlement. As Shoman points out, this division of work had important 
consequences for the relative value and power of male and female slaves. Shoman says, 
The fact that the amount of male slaves owned was used as an indicator of rights 
for the owner is a clear recognition on the part of the elite that the political 
economy was based not only on racial and clas considerations but also on 
gender. Slave women had a diferent role in society, since they were not the 
direct producers of the wealth pursued by the cutters, but rather were regarded as 
necesary for the task of physical and social reproduction that would fre up the 
men for production. (Thirten Chapters 22) 
Shoman also notes that mesages about male power and female weaknes were instiled 
through the gendered division of labor by including in the ?women?s work? children and 
men who were too old or weak to work as woodcutters (32).  
 119 
Many female slaves were forced into sexual slavery. Because the Baymen were 
unable, ?like members of the ?true? upper clases, to import European wives,? female 
slaves were often forced into sexual relationships and cohabitation (Grant 45). This is 
significant in that many of the arguments for the somewhat milder treatment provided by 
Dobson and others do not take into consideration the diferences betwen the lives of 
male and female slaves. For example, Dobson suggests that the fact that slaves could 
easily escape to the surrounding Spanish teritories prevented cruel treatment. When we 
consider that females slaves would not have had the same ability to escape to the Spanish 
teritories as male woodcutters, a new set of questions arise. If it was more dificult for 
female slaves to escape, was there les of a check on the cruelty of the masters towards 
them? Indeed, there is evidence that domestic slaves in Belize ?were often subjected to 
il-treatment and occasionaly the most appaling torture? (Bolland, Slavery in Belize 15).  
Belizean slaves could buy their fredom for a relatively smal price and slaves 
were alowed to earn money. For example, male slaves cutting timber worked five days a 
wek as slaves with the option to work on Saturdays for pay at the rate of 3/4d per day 
(Dobson 151). This information supports the argument that Belizean slaves had some 
advantage over slaves in the West Indies. Here again, though, we must keep in mind that 
female slaves worked principaly as domestics, not woodcutters, and so would not have 
had the same options to work for pay. 
Belize had high rates of manumision. Indeed, by the time of emancipation the 
number of slaves had dropped to les than half the population owing to a rise in fre 
blacks (Bolland, Slavery in Belize 5). Using census information and reports, Bolland says 
that approximately 57 percent of slaves who were fred betwen 1808 and 1830 were 
 120 
female (?Colonialism and Resistance? 65). This imbalance is even more disproportionate 
in light of the fact that the majority of slaves in Belize were male. Bolland acounts for 
this imbalance by suggesting that many slaveowners fred their concubines: 
Adult white males outnumbered adult white females by at least two to one, so  
many of them took slave women as their concubines, subsequently freing them 
and their ofspring. The fact that the most common forms of manumision were 
by means of gift or bequest of the owner also suggests that many of these 
manumisions secured the fredom of mistreses and their children. (65) 
I suggest that this high rate of female manumision might be misleading, though. In his 
discussion, Bolland sems to equate this path to manumision with the others, like buying 
one?s own fredom, or having one?s fredom bought by someone else. However, I think 
it is important to remember that concubines were forced into sexual slavery with their 
masters, and that their transition from slave to mistres, while certainly bringing about 
certain kinds of increased fredom and status, was not likely to end the sexual 
relationship. Further, these women would stil have been financialy dependent on their 
masters, for both themselves and their children, and so would not have had the physical, 
legal, and economic fredoms of other fre blacks.  
The myth of benevolent slavery or slavery in name only, has been significant to 
the development of a Belizean consciousnes. Bolland says of this myth, ?Such a 
colonialy-oriented version of Belizean history is not an academic creation, but is a story 
which pervades and afects the thinking of many contemporary Belizeans about 
themselves. Some people who are aware of the mythical nature of the story are yet 
unwiling to dispel it? (?Colonialism and Resistance? 18). It is an understanding of 
 121 
slavery that denies the cruelty of the slave system and makes invisible the lives of female 
slaves. Indeed, making the lives of female slaves invisible helps perpetuate the myth of 
benevolent slavery in that it silences the more restrictive treatment that a significant 
portion of the slaves received. In the next section I look at another story in which women 
are made invisible, the legendary the batle of St. George?s Caye.    
 
The Battle of St. George?s Caye 
Somewhere out there in 1798, the battle of St. George?s 
Caye had been fought. A few British masters assisted 
 by black slaves had beaten back a flet of Spanish 
 man-o-wars, and this event was celebrated throughout 
 the colony on September Tenth each year. Granny 
Ivy said that Belize people liked to remember the battle, 
 because it was one of the few things attempted in the 
country that hadn?t broken down. The slavery part, 
what was known of it, Granny Ivy often commented, 
 many liked to pretend hardly ever existed.  
-Beka Lamb 
 
The patern of the Spanish atacking the setlements with the Baymen returning 
shortly after continued until Spain declared war on Britain in 1796. Shortly thereafter, 
the Baymen learned that Spain was planning a large-scale atack to permanently destroy 
the setlements. The Baymen began elaborate preparations to, as they saw it, defend their 
homeland. The Spanish wanted to wipe out the setlements once and for al, and thus 
reasert and emphasize their sovereignty over the area, but their eforts had the opposite 
efect. The batle, in fact, proved a decisive moment for the development of a Belizean 
consciousnes and cohesivenes and marked an important milestone in the Baymen?s 
atempt to remove themselves from Spanish control.  
 122 
On September 10, 1798, in a David-versus-Goliath batle, the Baymen defeated a 
flet of Spanish ships at St. George?s Caye. The Spanish forces, including thirty-two 
ships with 500 sailors and 2,000 soldiers, were much greater than those of the Baymen, 
with barely 350 men (slaveowners and their male slaves) and 30 guns (Fernandez 12). 
However, despite the strength of the Spanish forces and likely aided by in-fighting and 
yelow fever, the Baymen were victorious (Fernandez 12).  
While the victory did not change the legal status of the British setlements, it did 
stop further Spanish atacks. This relative stability alowed the setlements to develop 
and spread more rapidly. The batle also functioned to unify the Baymen because it 
inspired a deeper sense of community and a shared identity as a people both strong and 
unyielding. The legendary heroism that began to define the Baymen can be sen in this 
pasage by Gadsby: 
The early setlers, who were caled Baymen, were of a hardy, resolute, intrepid 
type of Englishman, and cheerfully endured the most terible of hardships and 
dificulties in their search for wealth. Despite the dangers of a trying climate, a 
fever-haunted country, myriads of microscopical bites by vicious flies, exposure 
to an open life in the bush and forest, danger from venomous reptiles, and sudden 
atacks from their cruel and inveterate enemies, the Spaniards, these pioneers of 
civilisation, laid the foundations of a British Colony in Central America. (11) 
However, as Macpherson points out, the batle story as origin myth has important 
repercussions for the construction of race and gender relations in Belize. The idea of 
slave and slaveowner fighting side-by-side against the Spanish became the basis for the 
?slave owners? argument of harmonious race relations and slave loyalty? (Macpherson 
 123 
30). Further, the story of this batle continues the tendency to make Belizean women 
invisible, thus naturalizing men?s right to power: 
The founding of the Creole people and their homeland came in a fraternal 
embrace across the vertical gulf betwen African slave and white master, an 
embrace that preserved hierarchy among men and entirely excluded women, 
particularly the historicaly real slave and fred women with whom the Baymen 
founded the racialy hybrid families of the Creole middle clas. As a public, 
political narative of native origins, the Batle myth eschewed the intimately 
connected facts of miscegenation and a female role in the founding of the people. 
(Macpherson 31)  
Supporting Macpherson?s argument, Dobson notes that while the batle of St. George?s 
Caye was a ?noteable achievement? for the setlers, it ?has acquired an unjustified 
predominance in the history of the country? (78).  
This origin myth has resurfaced during several contests for power in Belizean 
history when the idea of native unity was rhetoricaly useful. However, perhaps its most 
long-lasting efect was that of marking Belize?s history as a contest betwen men. The 
lore of the Batle of St. George?s Caye has been the foundation for the construction of 
Belizean masculinity and political power. Inasmuch as women are absent from the origin 
of the setlement, and the legendary batle to protect it, women?s important role in the 
nationalist movement has been erased. 
 
 
 
 124 
Protest and Social Reform 
 Traditional histories of Belize credit the twentieth-century formation of the 
Belizean nationalist movement exclusively to men. They trace the birth of Belizean 
nationalism from returning male World War I veterans, to men rioting for labor reform, 
to male union leaders. Scholars have focused on the relationship of race, clas, and 
nation, but have been al but silent on isues of gender. This silence is rendered more 
problematic in that it prevents an understanding of how power was gendered during this 
time period.  
In his article, ?The Growth of Black Consciousnes in Belize, 1914-1919: The 
Background to the Ex-Servicemen?s Riot of 1919,? Peter Ashdown positions the riot of 
1919 as the beginning of the nationalist movement in Belize. He argues that the riot was 
a result of the racist treatment Belizean soldiers received while serving in World War I. 
Motivated both by high unemployment rates and a desire to prove their loyalty to the 
empire, two contingents of Belizean men voluntarily served in the British West Indies 
Regiment during the war. Serving in Mesopotamia, the men were given substandard 
quarters and medical care, received smaler rations and les pay than white soldiers, and 
experienced ?continual humiliation at the hands of white troops? (Ashdown 33). Not 
surprisingly, many returned ?il-disposed to white colonial authority? (13).  
Ashdown contends that the returning soldiers caused the 1919 riot:  
On July 22
nd
 a section of the contingent members started a riot in the capital. For 
nearly two days Belize was in the hands of Sergeant Vernon and his contingent 
followers and the disafected of the populace while the beleaguered Governor and 
his officials suspected they might have been the victims of a ?coup d? etat.? (13-4) 
 125 
Making a similar argument, Grant claims that ?the need for a more open political system 
was dramaticaly emphasized in 1919 when the demobilized soldiers and the unemployed 
rioted. The political unrest was part of a patern which the First World War nurtured in 
the West Indies? (59). In his history of Belize, British Honduras: Past and Present, 
Stephen Caiger also connects the disilusionment of the returning soldiers to the riots 
noting that the protests against ?unemployment, homelesnes, and high prices? were 
supported by ?the demobilized soldiers just returned from Mesopotamia? (148).  
Anne Macpherson, one of the few scholars who focuses on women in Belize, 
criticizes Ashdown and other historians who explained the riots as a result of ?returning 
war veterans? radicalized political consciousnes of British autocracy and racism? 
(?Those Men? 45). She says that this interpretation ignores the discontent of the poor 
while constructing ?political agency as exceptional and male? (45). Ashdown, presents 
the politics of the time as inherently male, describing the ?political impotence? of the 
Creole middle and working clases and the ?emasculated? Belize branch of the Universal 
Negro Improvement Asociation (UNIA) (30, 29).  
Although Bolland makes note of the 1919 riot, he argues that the trade unions and 
political organizations of the 1930s formed the basis of the nationalist movement in 
Belize. The beginning of the 1930s was marked by a devastating hurricane that al but 
leveled Belize City, the then capital of the country. Combined with the efects of the 
Depresion, the hurricane destroyed the economy of Belize and brought high levels of 
unemployment, poverty, and homelesnes. Bolland argues that the organizations that 
developed to demand relief from the government mark the birth of the nationalist 
movement. He argues that the Labourers and Unemployed Asociation (LUA) of 1934-
 126 
46, the British Honduras Workers and Tradesmen Union of 1939-43 (BHWTU), and the 
General Workers Union (GWU) were the first movements to succesfully organize and 
politicize the working clas (Colonialism and Resistance 172-3). Bolland suggests that 
these labor organizations and leaders like Antonio Soberanis Gomez led to the 
development of the People?s Unified Party (PUP), Belize?s first nationalist political party. 
He does not, however, discuss the role of women in these organizations. This is an 
important oversight because acording to Macpherson the militant activism of Creole and 
Garifuna women in the LUA ?embedded within the emerging nationalist culture a strong 
legitimacy for women?s labor and political rights? (?Those Men? 160). The women of 
the LUA helped create a labor movement ideology that saw omen as workers. 
Indeed, Macpherson argues that Belizean women were actively involved in all the 
important political movements of the twentieth century: 
the 1919 riot, Garveyism in the 1920s, the recovery of representative government 
and the eruption of subaltern labor mobilization in the 1930s, legal trade unionism 
in the 1940s, popular nationalism in the 1950s, the achievement of self-
government in 1964, party politics and its radical and ultimately feminist critics in 
the 1960s and 1970s, the transition to ful independence in 1981. (?Those Men? 5) 
Macpherson?s work notwithstanding, the histories of this period do not include women. 
The roles women have played at these critical moments in the nation?s history have been 
erased.  
 Eliminating women?s role in the record of important historical events has a 
consequence in terms of power in the present day. If men are the founders of the country, 
if men are the ones who defended it, and if men are the originators of the nationalist 
 127 
movement, then it can be no surprise that Belizean culture continues to se politics as a 
male realm. Forty-nine percent of registered voters are women, but women are 
?underepresented at the highest levels of political decision-making? (CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-
4). In 2005, there was one woman in the twenty-nine-member House of Representatives. 
Out of thirten Cabinet Ministers, only one was a woman and out of thirten Senators, 
only thre were women?
25
 (CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). The same patern is evident at the 
local level. In 2003, only 36 of the 142 candidates for Municipal Elections were women 
and only 22 of those women were elected (CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). Moreover, there are 
few female diplomats, ?partly due to the fact that women [are] not considered asertive 
enough to represent the country? and ?most ethnic groups stil [view] women as unable to 
engage in the ?dirty busines? of politics? (WOM/1134).  
 The invisibility of women in Belizean history is also important to an 
understanding of education. Girls are out-performing boys in school, but girls? 
achievements are not translating into greater economic, political, or social power. 
Women are beter educated than men ? sixty-five percent of the students at University 
College of Belize are female. (WOM/1134). And yet women have twice the 
unemployment rate of men ? 21 percent for females and 10 percent for males ? and are 
concentrated in lower-paying jobs (WOM/1134).  
In order to acount for this discrepancy we must look at the stories that are told 
about women. In this chapter I looked at how women fared in history. In the next 
chapter I turn to education. The Women?s Department maintains that 
                                                
25
 There has ben some progres with this isue. The government comited to hiring at least 30% of 
leadership positions in the public service and other statutory bodies (CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). 
 128 
one of the main obstacles to the advancement of women in society has been the 
manner in which young girls are socialized. Many women in Belize continue to 
suffer from a lack of self-estem, making them unwiling and unable to chalenge 
traditional gender stereotypes or to take on leadership roles. (CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-
4) 
Both history and education play an important role in the developing self-estem of girls.  
  
 
 129 
Chapter 5: A History of Misionary Work and Education in Belize 
 
Education apparently is considered to be closely 
allied with Evangelicism and the denominations 
act on the implied assumption that there is an 
indisoluble union betwen education and religion.  
-Norman Aschraft 
 
 ?It is not possible to fully understand religion 
 and religious education in Belize today 
without reference to the past. 
-Nancy Lundgren  
 
 
In Chapter 2, I argue that there was a symbiotic relationship betwen conquest 
and Christianity throughout the Anglophone Caribbean and that because of this history 
religious groups maintain a high degre of power in the present-day education systems 
throughout the region. It is useful to talk about the Anglophone Caribbean as a region 
because it helps make clear the policies and efects of British colonialism but, of course, 
each former colony has its own unique history. Therefore, in order to balance breadth 
and depth, in this chapter I want to look closely at only one country within the 
Anglophone Caribbean, Belize, and se how the particulars of its history afect the 
present-day influence of religious groups in the education system.  
With the exception of St. Lucia, Belize is the only country in the Anglophone 
Caribbean that stil employs the denominational system of school governance (Miler 
5).
26
 In Belize the education system is administered by what is caled a ?church-state 
partnership.? The Belizean government and the Ministry of Education (MOE) run only 
                                                
26
 In the other countries in the Anglophone Caribean education is administered either by individual schol 
boards or directly by the government.  
 130 
16.1 percent of al the schools in the country (se Table: 5.1) (Education Statistical 
Digest 2004-2005). The denominational schools, which make up most of the remaining 
83.9 percent, have control over the administration of schooling, including power over the 
hiring and firing of teachers, the code of ethics that teachers and students must abide by, 
and much of the curriculum. In the last decade the government has taken important steps 
to centralize and standardize the education system; however, the government?s role 
remains mostly financial. Currently the government provides 100 percent of primary 
school teachers? salaries and 70 percent of secondary school teachers? salaries and 
pensions, plus an annual stipend to primary schools.
27
 
 
Table 5.1: Primary Schools by Management ? 2004-2005
28
 
Management Number Percent 
Roman Catholic 116 41.1 percent 
Government 52 17.7 percent 
Anglican 18 6.4 percent 
Methodist 16 5.7 percent 
Seventh Day Adventist 21 7.4 percent 
Nazarene 7 2.5 percent 
Asemblies of God 4 1.4 percent 
Community 2 1.4 percent 
Other 46 16.3 percent 
Total 282 100 percent 
                                                
27
 The few government schols are fuly funded by the government. 
28
 From Educational Statistical Digest 204-205 
 131 
 
While religious groups have significant influence throughout the region, it is my 
argument that Belize represents a kind of extreme example. The church-state partnership 
in Belize is sacrosanct. The partnership has been adhered to by every administration of 
Belize from the early setlements, to the British colonial government, through the post-
independent era to the present day. Neither political party opposes it, the few academics 
who do criticize it do so in carefuly diplomatic terms, and the general population is 
extremely loyal to the churches and believe that the church-state partnership is an aset to 
Belize. Amidst al this praise the historical role of misionary groups in slavery and 
colonialism has been erased from the collective memory. This erasure is important 
because it masks the role that religious groups continue to play in the creation and 
maintenance of hierarchies of race, clas, gender, and nation.  
Girls are out-achieving boys in al levels of education in Belize, and yet these 
succeses have not translated into beter jobs or more decision-making power for women. 
Belizean women stil have higher unemployment rates than men, and they remain 
marginal in the political realm. In order to understand this disconnect betwen school 
achievement and employment we must look at the hidden curriculum of Belizean 
schools. Christian denominations in Belize, particularly the Catholic Church, which is by 
far the most powerful, have a rigid ideology around gender and power and it is my 
argument that this influence, legitimated through the schools, helps acount for the 
disconnect betwen the educational achievements of women and their status in the 
society. 
 132 
 Although it is my argument that the influence of religious groups in Belize has 
hurt women?s power, their influence afects men too. As I discuss in the first chapter, the 
sexuality of colonized women was used to mark and support racial hierarchies throughout 
the British Empire. This marking continues. Beliefs around mariage, unwed mothers, 
and tenage pregnancies continue to support hierarchies of race and clas in postcolonial 
Belize. In the next chapter I shal look closely at the efects of Catholic constructions of 
morality on the social hierarchies that continue to structure Belizean society. Here I 
focus on the history of misionaries in Belizean education to make visible the ways in 
which religious groups continue to bring in foreign influence. Misionaries were 
instrumental in the colonization of Belize, and I think it is important to ask whether they 
contribute to the current neocolonialism of the U.S. The Catholic Church in Belize is a 
U.S.-based institution and it has encouraged Belizians to switch their alegiances from 
England to the U.S. 
In her disertation, Socialization of Children in Belize: Identity, Race and Power 
within the World Political Economy, Nancy Lundgren points to the lack of research 
around gender and education in Belize. She argues that while mothers are the primary 
power holders in the household ? particularly Creole households ? the culture of Belize is 
patriarchal. Her work demonstrates the efect this has on how members of the family se 
themselves and others, and how parents raise their children. Most importantly for my 
research is Lundgren?s view that there is ?evidence to suggest that these diferences 
afect children within the educational system. However, these isues have not been 
explored systematicaly within the Caribbean area generaly or Belize specificaly? (65). 
Although there has been new research on gender and education in many parts of the 
 133 
Caribbean in the twenty years since Lundgren?s work, there have been no studies of this 
kind in Belize.
29
 The Belizean government has done a great deal to addres gender 
discrimination in education, but they have not analyzed the efect of religious ideology on 
women?s power in society or looked at how this ideology afects the translation of girls 
education into carer choices and positions of power within the society.
30
 This chapter 
represents the first atempt to trace the history of misionary work and its connection to 
the education system from the inception of the colony to the present. 
 
?Vile Passions and the Lust of Gain?: The Early Years of the British Setlements in 
Belize 
Christianity and ?civilization? have been at the nexus of Belizean history since the 
1493 Papal Bull of Demarcation in which Pope Alexander VI awarded the New World to 
Spain and Portugal. Although it is known that Spanish conquistadores traveled to 
Mexico and the adjacent region shortly after Columbus?s voyages, and that with the 
conquistadores came the misionaries, the presence of Spanish misionaries in Belize at 
this time is unclear. Even if Spanish misionaries had not yet come to Belize, these early 
colonial moments had lasting efects for Belize and the rest of the New World. As I 
discuss in Chapter 2, they established the symbiotic relationship betwen church and 
state, betwen proselytizing and colonizing. In his book, A History of Christianity in 
Belize, 1776-1838, Walace Johnson argues, ?With the army came the Church, united in, 
if not common objectives, certainly mutualy agred-upon objectives. The army sought 
                                                
29
 Wilma Wright?s 205 disertation, Education Reform in Belize: The Relationship betwen Teacher 
Characteristics and Stages of Concern, might be an exception in that she loks at gender as one factor of 
her analysis.  
30
 The Women?s Bureau has loked at the isue of suspension or expulsion of pregnant students and the 
firing of teachers who have children out of wedlock, which I discus in Chapters 6 and 7, respectively.  
 134 
to subdue; the priests sought to convert? (3). Although Johnson?s point may be true over 
the long term, D.A.G. Waddel, another historian of Belize, suggests that in the early 
colonial period religion was not especialy important to the British setlers, or Baymen as 
they came to be known (68). Indeed, he contends that ?in the early ninetenth century 
misionaries denounced the unparaleled worldlines and iniquity of Belize? (68). Robert 
Cleghorn, a Baptist misionary in Belize from 1889-1939, quotes one writer as saying 
?there was probably not a more wicked place under heaven? (11). An epitaph from the 
period sems to support this characterization of the Baymen: ?In Reverend Memory of 
George Hume, Mahogany Cutter and Bayman, but God-fearing? (Caiger 122, my 
emphasis).  
Frederick Crowe, a Baptist misionary working in Belize in the 1840s, described 
the ?Bay? during and before his stay as ?proverbial for licentiousnes, dishonesty and 
every kind of exces? (321). He says, ?In short, ignorance, intoxication, profanity, and 
the lust of gain openly triumphed over decorum as wel as religion? (323). When Crowe 
says ?licentiousnes? he is refering to the sex betwen the Baymen and slave women and 
indigenous women. Because of the conditions of the setlement, the intermitent atacks 
by the Spanish, and the ambiguous legal status of the country, few European women 
came to Belize in the early period of the colony. Crowe says, ?Mariage was the 
exception, and concubinage the rule, in al ranks of the community? (328). Cohabitation 
was so common that it was refered to as ?living Baystyle? (Johnson 149). The Baymen 
frequently took slave women as ?mistreses? (a privilege acorded the men by the slave 
system and which ? we should remember ? did not require consensual agrement). A 
Baptist misionary makes this clear when noting in his journal that ?property was kept 
 135 
about the premises of the slave-owner for the purposes of breding and raising stock? 
(qtd. in Crowe 328, my emphasis).  
White slave owners used female slaves for sex throughout the Caribbean ? this is 
not unique to Belize. However, in the minds of European misionaries this practice may 
have been more threatening in Belize because there were few hite women in the 
setlement. As I discussed in the introduction, European women served an important 
symbolic function in maintaining racial hierarchies elsewhere. In Belize, where slave 
women were made mistreses without the counter representation of the chastity and 
prudishnes of white women, sex betwen the slave owners and slave women had a 
diferent efect in Belize than it did in other parts of the Anglophone Caribbean where 
there was a higher number of white women. Rather than marking slave women, and by 
extension their race, as inferior to whites as they did in much of the Caribbean, these 
relationships had the opposite efect ? they disrupted and destabilized the constructed 
boundaries betwen racial groups. The early misionaries had contempt for Baymen who 
took female slaves as mistreses, which can be sen in Chaplain George Arthur?s 1816 
leter to George Hyde, ?the coloured son of a prominent setler, who had a black slave as 
a mistres? (Johnson 78): 
The connection you have formed is neither honourable nor creditable and I 
should suppose it would not require so great an efort as crossing the Atlantic to 
emancipate yourself from the fascinating charms of a female negro slave. 
This Setlement, unhappily has long laboured under great moral darknes 
and connections such as you have formed I am aware have not been infrequent, 
nor held so dishonourable as they should have been, but I trust, through the mercy 
 136 
of God that the light of the Gospel is beginning to dawn amongst us, and that its 
influence wil no longer suffer such degrading vice to endure amongst those who 
profes Christianity. (qtd. in Johnson 78) 
As I discussed in the last chapter, the Baymen?s practice of taking slave women as 
mistreses has been erased from most of the histories of Belize and is not part of the 
general knowledge of Belizeans, which indicates that this history is threatening to those 
in power. Certainly the revision of this early history of Belize was influence by 
misionaries like George Arthur. 
 
The Coming of the Misionaries: 1776-1850 
As I explain in Chapter 2, slaveowners in the Anglophone Caribbean were often 
at odds with misionary societies because slaveowners believed that education might 
encourage slaves to question the master/slave hierarchy and possibly rebel. This was not 
true in Belize where misionary societies faced litle resistance in their eforts to educate 
slaves. Narda Dobson writes that, while ?ninetenth-century English factory owners saw 
no need for their employees to learn to read? and West Indian ?sugar planters feared the 
efects of education on their slaves,? slave owners in Belize ?sem to have been rather 
more enlightened; at least they did not positively prevent the education of their slaves, 
however litle they may have done to encourage it? (162). The Baymen?s aceptance of 
education, but reluctance to fund it, not only laid the foundation for a church-controlled 
education system. It also began a long history of the government?s hands-off policy 
towards education. 
 137 
The first chaplain of Belize was Robert Shaw, ariving in 1776 as a member of 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). The SPG, founded in 
1701, was closely linked to the Anglican Church, and although not officialy part of the 
church, was presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Shaw came to Belize from 
the Mosquito Coast
31
 to restore his health and stayed on as chaplain at the request of the 
Baymen. Alhough Shaw?s ministry was wel-received by the Baymen, his tenure was 
short-lived. In 1779 during a Spanish atack of the setlement, Shaw, along with many of 
his followers, fled and their place of worship was destroyed. Shaw returned in 1786, but 
the frequent Spanish atacks that I discussed in the last chapter made it dificult to 
establish any permanent physical structures (Johnson 16-23). Therefore, it is clear that 
when the Baymen started building a new Anglican Church in 1812, they did so because 
they felt a ?growing sense of permanence? as a result of their victory over the Spanish 
during the Batle of St. George?s Caye (42). The church, later caled St. John?s, was the 
first Protestant church in ?Spanish America.?
32
  
The second Anglican chaplain, George Arthur, arived in Belize in 1814. 
Acording to Johnson, it was under Arthur?s administration that ?Evangelical 
Anglicanism took root and grew? (73). Johnson describes Arthur as a righteous man who 
had rigid notions of right and wrong (74-5). It was under Arthur?s guidance that the 
Baymen began to use notions of respectability to order people in the society. As the 
leter I quote in the previous section demonstrates, Arthur saw black slaves and 
indigenous peoples as de facto sinful; his moralisms were intended to influence the 
behavior of the white men in the setlement. Arthur was instrumental in geting St. 
                                                
31
 An area of coastline along present-day Nicaragua, named for the Mosquito Indians who lived there.  
32
 Johnson notes that technicaly the first Anglican church was built during Shaw?s ministry betwen 179-
1789, but it was destroyed son thereafter by the Spanish (68). 
 138 
John?s built and the church became a space for him to enforce his ideas about right and 
wrong. The construction of the church brought with it a new legislation of morality, one 
that had important ramifications in terms of constructions of race and gender. The 
churchwardens isued an edict in 1816 saying that ?the pews on the East End of the 
church shal be solely appropriated to white and maried persons, and no kept mistres 
shal be entitled to sit in any pew at that end of the church? (qtd. in Caiger 122).
3
 This 
edict legislated a connection betwen race and respectability. White was asociated with 
mariage, and black with promiscuity. As I shal discuss in the next chapter, women?s 
sexuality ? particularly whether women have children out of wedlock ? has been used to 
establish race/clas hierarchies in Belize throughout its history up to the present day. 
The focus on making money, the ambiguous status of the country and the ongoing 
batles with the Spanish made the Baymen reluctant to invest in any infrastructure 
including education, which is why Arthur had to direct much of his fundraising for the 
construction of St. John?s to English congregations. Crowe says that the Baymen ?were 
too eagerly bent on wealth, to cultivate even their own intelects or those of their 
ilegitimate children; and when the appetite for acumulation was satisfied, they left the 
country to spend their gains elsewhere? (324). This may have been true, but despite the 
symbolic victory at St. George?s Caye, the Spanish government was stil outlawing 
permanent setlements in Belize at the beginning of the ninetenth century.  
Consequently, it was not until 1816 that Belize opened its first Fre School, which 
remained the only school in the setlement until 1828 when two mision schools ? one 
                                                
3
 The legislation of respectability can be further sen in the 1830 visit of the Bishop of Jamaica when 
several seamen were sentenced to ?five days in prison on bread and water, with an hour daily in the stocks? 
for ?bathing naked in the River as the Bishop of Jamaica and the Superintendent with their ladies were 
pasing by? (Caiger 123; Burdon 321). 
 139 
Baptist and the other Methodist ? were established. The Fre School was financed 
primarily by the local government, but it was connected to the Anglican Church (Easter 
4). Atendance was fre, but children needed a ticket from one of the governors in order 
to atend (Sanchez 1). There was a considerable population of fred blacks in Belize in 
the beginning of the ninetenth century, but the school tickets were likely given to the 
white and mixed race children of the wealthy slave owners.  
In 1820 Caleb and George Fife Angus, who were members of a firm named 
Angus & Co which shipped goods betwen Newcastle, England and Belize, sent a plea to 
English misionary societies requesting that a misionary be sent to Belize (Cleghorn 13). 
Their plea emphasized the selfish and sinful ways of the Baymen. The Baptist 
Misionary Society (BMS) responded by sending Joseph Bourne and his wife in March 
of 1822 (14). Bourne reported that the forestocracy
34
 disliked the Baptists because they 
were anti-slavery and that the Disenting Churches received no encouragement and litle 
cooperation from the authorities of the time who instead gave preferential treatment to 
the Anglican Church (15). However, Bourne started building a congregation, and 
beginning in 1828 Bourne?s second wife ran a smal school for about thirty girls, 
daughters of the forestocracy who ?not being of the poorer clas ? proved a source of 
considerable emolument? (Crowe 330).  
The Wesleyan Methodist Misionary Society (WMS) sent Thomas Wilkinson 
to Belize in 1825. Wilkinson died after a short time in Belize and in 1828 the WMS 
sent Thomas Johnston to replace him. Unlike Wilkinson, who had presented an optimistic 
outlook to the WMS, Johnston was deeply troubled by the state of the mision when he 
                                                
34
 The white slaveowners who made their money seling logwod and later mahogany and controled the 
local government. 
 140 
arived (Johnson 129-30). As with Anglican chaplain George Arthur, Johnston was 
distresed by the relationships among the setlers.  When Johnston arived he found that 
most of the members of the Methodist society were living out of wedlock (Johnson 130). 
Whereas Methodists maried slaves and fred blacks in other parts of the Anglophone 
Caribbean, in Belize only the Anglican chaplain was legaly alowed to mary couples. 
However, the high fes that the Anglicans charged, along with Arthur?s strong racism, 
discouraged fred blacks or ?coloreds? from marying (130). Furthermore, many slave 
owners did not alow their slaves to mary even though they encouraged cohabitation in 
order to encourage their slaves to reproduce (130).    
After the construction of St. John?s Church was finaly finished in 1826, the 
Anglicans began to take on an increasingly important role in the hierarchy of the British 
colonial government in Belize (Dobson 317). Until the mid 1800s the Anglican Church 
was the established church of Belize, meaning that it was supported in part by public 
funds. Based on its asociation with the colonial government the Anglican Church had a 
great deal more influence than any of the other denominations that were in Belize in the 
first half of the ninetenth century. The preferential treatment the government gave to the 
Anglicans created growing resentment among the other denominations. Acording to 
Johnson, the 1830s were characterized by an aggresive, and sometimes even 
antagonistic, competition for students among thre denominations: the Anglicans, the 
Baptists, and the Methodists
35
 (210-12). Crowe describes the strained relationship 
betwen the Baptists and the Anglicans: 
                                                
35
 The rivalry betwen the Baptists and Methodists, who had a friendly relationship in England during this 
time period, sems to have ben short lived. The Baptists were initialy upset by the Methodists? decision 
to establish their church in Belize City rather than somewhere else in the setlement, but once the Baptists 
realized that they could not convince the Methodists to move, the animosity lesened. (Johnson 12-4) 
 141 
The established clergyman and his supporters, jealous of the spread of Baptist 
principles, now made a strenuous efort to counteract their operation. The fre 
school, which is connected with the Establishment and the public treasury, was 
entirely remodeled [sic], and put upon the best possible footing, so that it might 
compete with [the Baptist school], which it had not yet been able to do?. The 
visits of [the Baptist misionary] to the public hospital and to the jail were 
objected to and interfered with by the [Anglican] chaplain, and it was made 
apparent in many ways that the Baptists and their minister were viewed with 
disafection by the magistrate as wel as by the clergyman, who were evidently 
leagued against them. (342-3) 
Despite the dificulties that Crowe recounts, the Baptists were gaining followers. The 
slave owners did not like the Baptists because of their anti-slavery beliefs, but the 
Belizean slaves, not surprisingly, were drawn to the Baptist mision.  
Following a four-year apprenticeship, Belizean slaves were fred in 1838. Crowe 
says, ?While the ungodly negroes were celebrating the day in riotous mirth, though 
without violence, and the late slave-holder was probably solacing himself with thoughts 
of compensation, the [Baptist] Mision Church had its method of noticing this important 
victory of right over might, and of principle over covetousnes? (340, emphasis original). 
In a leter to the BMS Home Commite that was published in an 1839 edition of the 
Baptist Magazine, Mr. Henderson, a Baptist minister, gives an acount of the first 
moments of fredom in Belize: 
A litle before twelve I went down and found the place filed with people, and the 
greater proportion slaves. I laid my watch on the table, siting down quietly til 
 142 
twelve, when I rose teling them that slavery was no more with them. Then we al 
fel on our knees and afterwards rose to sing. Oh, what hearty singing! A 
member, lately a slave, prayed. Another member prayed; again we sang, and [we 
continued until about 1 o?clock]. Al semed seriously cheerful, and gladnes 
dwelt on every countenance. (qtd. Crowe 340-1) 
Cleghorn says that in the first half of the ninetenth century ?Baptists were 
frequently unjustly dealt with, and on numerous occasions imprisoned? (28). 
Interestingly, while it is clear that many slave owners disliked the Baptists because of 
their stance against slavery, and that the Anglican Church regarded them as a threat to 
power, Cleghorn suggests that the biggest conflict was over the misionary?s refusal to be 
sworn in during legal procedings. He says, ?It was their conscientious conviction that 
the scriptural injunction to ?swear not at al? was binding upon them as a Divine precept, 
without any limitation? and he cites a leter writen to their home commite (28). 
For several years past we have been caled to testify to the truth of suffering, on 
acount of various points of duty; but chiefly for declining to be sworn in the 
Courts of this Setlement, we have yearly endured in a progresive measure, fines 
and imprisonment ? but at length the enemies of the Gospel have been 
emboldened to asail us openly in the liberty of the public worship of God, and 
have craftily framed and enacted a law by which it becomes criminal for us to 
asemble ourselves together ? our metings have become subject to visits of 
police agents. (29)  
Although the legislation imposing penalties on the misionaries for not swearing was 
eventualy overturned, the Baptists continued to lose followers and therefore power in 
 143 
Belize. Because of these and other problems, in1850 the Baptist Misionary Society 
relinquished their misionary eforts in Belize (Cleghorn 27). The Baptists in Belize 
continued their work, but as an independent mision.  
In the years after emancipation, the British government subsidized education in its 
Caribbean colonies through grants. However, due to its ambiguous status within the 
British Empire, Belize did not receive any of this money. There is some disagrement 
over the extent to which the Baymen made up for this lack through their own 
contributions to the education system. Dobson, Grant, and Bolland suggest that the 
Baymen did not encourage or support education, but acording to Johnson the donations 
made by the Baymen were generous in proportion to the size of the population. Johnson 
points out that British Guiana, a colony that was considered to have been generous by a 
British inspector in 1837, alocated approximately ?2,500 annualy, while Belize, a 
country with les than 5 percent of the population of British Guiana, was alocating ?850 
a year by 1839 (200). The disagrement over the generosity of the Baymen 
notwithstanding, the fact that Belize did not get money or support from the British 
government at this time had an important efect on the development of the education 
system. As in most places in the Anglophone Caribbean, schools that existed in Belize 
prior to emancipation were either Sunday Schools, focusing completely on religious 
teachings, or day schools for the sons and daughters of slave owners. After emancipation 
there was a significant increase in the number of children who wanted schooling. This 
period, therefore, was one of significant expansion and the decisions made during this 
time continue to have an efect on the Belizean education system in the present day.  
 144 
The fact that Belize did not receive grant money from the British government as 
the other colonies in the Anglophone Caribbean did had a significant efect in that 
misionary societies had almost complete control over schooling in Belize. There was 
litle or no debate in the colony over the isue of education, and there was litle or no 
oversight from the British government. Misionary groups saw the establishment and 
running of schools as an efective means of proselytizing. Education, as a primary means 
of socialization, alowed religious groups to encourage, require, and reward various 
degres of religious conversion. Further, schools became centers for the creation of 
community and parents who felt indebted to misionaries for educating their children 
were more open to converting themselves. 
 
The Rise of Catholic Power, 1850-1950 
Pased in 1850, the first Education Act was entitled ?Act to provide for additional 
schools for the benefit of every Denomination of Christians in the setlement of British 
Honduras, and to make certain regulations for the government of such schools and of the 
Honduras Gramar School (identical with the Honduras Fre School).? This act 
authorized a five-member Board of Education to overse a budget of ?1000 per year 
(Sanchez 1). By 1855 there were thre Honduras Fre Schools including one girls? 
school, al in Belize City.
36
 These schools were supported completely by government 
funds even though the schools were connected to the Church of England. The thre other 
primary schools, run by the Methodist and the Baptist churches, were eligible for twelve 
                                                
36
 The area around the mouth of the Belize River has gone by many names ? Belize Town, the setlements, 
etc. For consistency I wil always refer to this area as Belize City, which it is now caled.  
 145 
shilings per year for each student who atended regularly, in addition to supplies like 
books and maps, and some money towards the rent of the school building.  
By 1855 the first two schools outside of Belize City were established ? a Catholic 
school in Corozal and a Methodist school at Mullins River. The new schools were built 
to respond to the rapid increases in population outside of Belize City. The most 
important cause of the population increase was the mid-ninetenth-century Caste Wars in 
the Yuc?tan. Thousands of Roman Catholic Maya and Mestizos took refuge in Belize 
and many permanently setled there, creating a demand for more Catholic priests. In his 
esay, ?Religious Influences,? Bolland notes: 
 By 1857 the northern town of Corozal, which was only six-years-old, had 4,500 
inhabitants, predominantly Catholic Mestizos, and was second only to Belize 
Town, which had 7,000 inhabitants who were chiefly Creole and Protestant. The 
1861 census recorded over 25,000 people in Belize, 57 per cent of whom were 
born outside the colony ? In the 1880s and 1890s Mopan and Kekchi Maya fled 
forced labour in Guatemala and setled in the remote south of the colony (24).  
The changing population demographics created a major shift in the denominational 
competition. The Catholic Church, which was not even in the game in the early 
ninetenth century, instantly became an important force in Belize.  
American Jesuits first arived in Belize in 1851 and by 1856 the Roman Catholic 
Church was second in importance only to the Anglican Church (Dobson 319). The 
Baptists and Methodists became increasingly marginal as the Catholics gained more 
power. Unlike the Anglicans, who ministered primarily to those living in Belize City, the 
Catholics traveled to the outskirts of the country and to al ethnic communities (Dobson 
 146 
319-20). Because the recent Maya and Mestizo imigrants setled primarily in the 
sparsely populated areas outside of what is now Belize City, Catholic misionaries 
focused on these areas and used schools as a central tool in establishing themselves 
within the community. Acording to Dobson, ?By seting up vilage schools wherever 
they preached the Roman Catholic faith, they have created a lasting bastion of their 
religion which has enabled it to grow to its present position of dominance? (Dobson 320).  
In 1868 the Board of Education was disolved and their powers were transfered 
to the colony?s Executive Council. That year also marked the end of the government?s 
Fre Schools, which made the entire education system denominational. Ashcraft notes, 
?The government?s role remained pasive and its financial participation was restricted to 
grants-in-aid to denominational schools at the elementary level. At the secondary level, 
schools were wholly the responsibility of the churches? (Education 11). In 1877 the 
Executive Council isued regulations regarding the awarding of grants-in-aid to schools. 
The Council paid teachers with First Clas Certificates 50 cents a head for older children 
and 25 cents a head for younger students (Sanchez 3). Second Clas Teachers were paid 
25 cents per student (3). This method of alocating government funds exacerbated the 
denominational competition by, in esence, placing a monetary figure not only on 
students, but on converts. Teachers also received bonuses based on their students? exam 
results and the grants were dependant on the amount of money the school could collect 
from other sources. The schools had to raise a sum equal to 25 percent of the government 
grant (3). This was most dificult for the Baptists after they lost their afiliation with the 
English Baptist Misionary Society. 
 147 
The population of Belize continued to increase throughout the second half of the 
ninetenth century. New schools were created to acommodate the increasing number of 
students. In 1877 there were 14 schools, by 1891 there were thirty-five, and by 1899 
there were forty-two. Most of the new schools were created in the districts outside of 
Belize City where the new imigrants from the Yucatan setled. With the rapid increase 
in schools, native teachers were in demand. In 1894 the pupil-teacher system was 
established to met this need (Sanchez 6). Pupil-teachers were recruited from primary 
schools. In his article, ?Teacher Training in our Country,? Palacio explains how the 
pupil-teacher system worked: 
The pupil-teachers have one hour of each day for private study and must be given 
four hours instruction per wek by principal teachers or qualified asistants who 
must hold either First or Second Clas Teacher?s Certificates. The pupil-teachers 
are under prevailing circumstances trying to do thre full-time jobs at once: 
teaching, geting the equivalent of a secondary education and studying the theory 
and practice of their chosen profesion. (9) 
The pupil-teacher system has been continualy criticized as producing poorly-trained 
teachers. It was gradualy phased out in most places in the Anglophone Caribbean during 
the second half of the twentieth century. Belize maintained the pupil-teacher system 
longer than most countries, and began phasing it out in earnest only in the 1990s.   
In 1892 the church-state partnership was formalized with an Education Ordinance 
that was adhered to for most of the twentieth century. Although this legislation reinstated 
the Board of Education as a government body with oversight functions, the Board did not 
provide efective oversight because members and supporters of the various church 
 148 
managements sat on the Board. Indeed, the Board was ?dominated by church 
managements? who ?placed serious restraints on the local colonial government in making 
and carying out education policies and goals.? Although the denominations retained 
control over most aspects of education, the government did use its power to create a 
compulsory schooling statute. At the turn of the twentieth century only about 50 percent 
of Belizean children were atending school (Sanchez 6). The government addresed this 
problem in 1915 by making school compulsory for children aged six to fourten 
(although technicaly only in areas deemed necesary by the Governor) (7). The new 
legislation, which fined parents for absences, increased enrollment significantly. 
 Walter Gadsby, a Methodist misionary in Belize in the early years of the 
twentieth century, recorded his experiences in his book, On the Shores of the Caribbean 
Sea: Stories of Far-Of British Honduras. Gadsby?s memoir is useful inasmuch as it 
provides one of the only records of the interaction betwen the Methodist misionaries 
and Belizeans. Most of what is known about any misionary activity in the ninetenth 
and early twentieth centuries comes from leters betwen the misionaries and their home 
commites, or mision histories. Although these sources are obviously useful, they do 
not include many stories of their actual interaction with Belizeans, particularly children. 
Therefore, Gadsby?s narative provides a rare glimpse into the relationship betwen 
misionaries and Belizeans. However, owing to the biased perspective of Gadsby?s 
writing, it is dificult to ascertain the degre to which Belizeans acepted and internalized 
Methodist teachings. Nevertheles, his memoir suggests that misionaries were wel 
respected and that Christianity was a central element of the lives of many Belizeans. In 
 149 
the pasage below he recounts how children were used to collect money for the 
misionary fund of Belize: 
Cards are isued to the children, and also adults, in November, which alows them 
two months to collect, and the money is brought in, with the card each wek, and 
put to the collector?s acount. The wek before the cards are isued, the ministers 
visit the Sunday Schools and addres the children, explaining why the card has 
been given, and advising them as to the best methods of collecting succesfully. 
The children listen with interested atention, and I have known my suggestion to 
take its first practical form by the children stopping the Chairman of the District, 
in the stret, and asking him to head the list. I once told the children that if they 
could get someone wel known in the town to head the list in their books it would 
be a splendid start. (21) 
Gadsby notes the enthusiasm and commitment of the children with the folowing 
example:  
One day, a litle coloured girl, who is one of my best misionary collectors, 
brought her card in to be made up. Wanting someone to take a leter for me, I 
requested her to deliver it, and gave her a smal piece of silver for herself. She 
looked longingly at the silver coin, took a step towards the door, but came back 
again, and said, ?Please, Sar, put it down in my book for the misionary work.? 
(22) 
He mentions that another girl was able to collect BZ$125 (?25) in one year.   
The Methodists, Baptists, and Anglicans tried to thwart the increasing power of 
the Catholics. Indeed, Catholic and Protestant rivalry defined the 1930s. Because of 
 150 
their asociation with the colonial government, the Anglicans were the most powerful 
religious group in Belize City. The Methodists had support in some of the rural areas. 
However, none of the other denominations had as much funding as the Jesuit Mision. 
They controlled most of the rural areas in Belize. Thus, while the Anglicans were 
empowered by their asociation with the colonial and British governments, the Catholics 
had more folowers and more money. The high percentage of Catholic schools was a 
result of the large-scale imigration of Catholics from the surrounding area ? who made 
up about thre-fifths of the population in 1934 ? as wel as the Catholics? growing 
reputation for being good educators.  
In his article, ?State and Church in British Honduran Education, 1931-39: A 
British Colonial Perspective,? Peter Hitchen argues that this rivalry had positive 
consequences:  
The conflict betwen the Irish American Jesuits (wealthy but lacking political 
power) and the British Protestants (politicaly powerful but lacking funds) 
neutralized the colonial government?s ability to divide groups along ethnic or 
religious lines, as in British Guyana and other parts of the British Caribbean. This 
power balance reduced the efectivenes of either denomination to dominate?. 
this was not the case in other British teritories such as Jamaica, where al 
denominations were culturaly British based and more readily controlled by the 
colonial government. (195) 
Contemporary scholars like Nigel Bolland and Asad Shoman disagre with Hitchen and 
argue that the denominational rivalry, then and now, stratifies the society in ways that are 
against nationalist interests. 
 151 
If the 1930s were characterized by denominational rivalry, the 1940s sems to 
have marked the winner. The Catholics gained power during the anti-colonial struggles 
of the 1940s due to their asociation with the marginalized groups within Belize. 
Belizean Creoles were overwhelmingly Anglican, seing the religion as complementary 
to the reproduction of British colonial values that were necesary for upward mobility. 
The Maya, Mestizo and Garifuna people, groups far more marginalized in terms of clas, 
race, and culture, were predominantly Catholic. Furthermore, Catholic ?priests and 
laymen ? were under represented and often entirely excluded from positions of 
influence and authority on pubic boards and in the colonial power structure? (Bolland, 
?Religious Influences,? 27). The Catholic Church?s asociation with the poor and those 
most disempowered by the colonial system, as wel as ?the growing resentment? 
Catholics experienced due to their exclusion from government positions, ?is an important 
aspect of their involvement in and leadership of the anti-colonial movement? (27). 
However, acording to Bolland, this progresive impetus was short-lived and the Catholic 
Church soon adopted a more conservative politics.  
 
Reports and Repercusions: 1930-1980  
The history of education in Belize betwen 1930-1980 can be pieced together by 
reading a series of British evaluations and reports on file at the Belize Archive. The first 
dates to 1933 when B.H. Easter, appointed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 
traveled to Belize to make a formal report on the state of the education system. Easter?s 
focus was, first, an economic one: the education fund had been drasticaly cut in the 
1933-34 budget. Belize was in bad shape after the 1931 hurricane and Easter was to 
 152 
provide advice on how to make the system ore eficient in order to deal with these 
budget cuts. Ariving in December of 1933, he stayed four and a half weks in the 
colony during which time he interviewed members of the Board of Education, heads of 
denominations, teachers and other school officials. He visited elementary schools, 
including those in Corozal, Orange Walk, San Jose and a mahogany camp in the north, 
and Stann Crek and Toldeo in the south; and four secondary schools in Belize City. 
At the time of Easter?s visit, more than a fifth of the population was iliterate and 
both primary and secondary education were almost completely denominational. Primary 
schools were subsidized with grants-in-aid from the government, but the government 
provided no funds for secondary schools, nor did they provide any scholarships for 
secondary school or university. Local managers of schools were the religious leaders of 
the local parish or district. The Board of Education had only oversight powers at this 
time. However, as I noted above, the idea that the government had oversight was realy a 
farce because leaders from the religious denominations sat on the Board of Education and 
acted ?as an intermediary betwen the Board of Education and the local managers in al 
school maters including the payment of grants? (Easter 5). Approximately 55 percent of 
schools in 1932 were Catholic, with Anglican and Methodist denominations in charge of 
20 percent each. The remaining 5 percent was divided betwen the Baptists, the 
Salvation Army, and non-denominational schools (Easter 5).  
There was no standardized curriculum or textbook in the 1930s, although many 
schools used the Royal Reader. Easter contends, ?It would be dificult to find a more 
unsuitable book, though admitedly no realy suitable reader exists which would 
adequately met the needs of the mixed population? (8). There was a West Indian Reader 
 153 
in use at the time of Easter?s report, but he notes that, although it was probably the best 
available, it was only occasionaly found. Other textbooks in use included the Granvile 
Reader, favored by the Catholics, an American Reader and a Canadian Reader. There 
was no government asistance for providing textbooks, so, frequently poor families could 
not aford them (8). 
The Easter report stimulated a number of reforms. However, as Hitchens argues 
the enactment of these reforms was limited by the power of the religious groups. 
Hitchens says that ?while Easter?s report itself did not generate conflict, Governor 
Burns?s use of its recommendations within his overal scheme for social and economic 
reform created a source of acrimony betwen church and state? (196).   
Evidence reveals the church?s ability to be selective with reforms, modifying 
those appearing to threaten church authority but not impeding those of financial 
benefit to the schools, so that by the end of the Burns?s tenure in 1939 the changes 
made, though instigated by the government, were only those given de facto 
approval by the church. (Hitchens 196) 
One important reform that was acepted by both church and state was beter teacher 
training.  
In 1941 the government made scholarships available to send teachers to Jamaica 
for training, which was an important first step in the early reform of the education 
system. The scholarship program continued for fiften years, training fifty-thre 
teachers; but more importantly it established the importance of teacher training and began 
a proces of reforms that eventualy led to the establishment of the Belize Teachers? 
College in 1965. The significance of this cannot be overstated because in 1965 only 
 154 
about 14 percent of Belizean teachers had been trained and the school system stil relied 
on the pupil-teacher system. 
The second major report on the Belizean education system was done by G.S.V. 
Peter, Education Advisor to the Comptroller, in 1955. Unlike Easter, who had focused 
primarily on primary schools, Peter?s report looked exclusively at secondary education 
in Belize. Secondary education has never been compulsory in Belize and the limited 
spots available have always been alocated based on test results. In the 1950s, when 
questions of independence were a primary political isue, secondary schooling became 
more important as a training ground for the future leaders of an independent Belize. In 
his report, Peter emphasizes the role of elites in both independence movements and self-
government. He says: 
The achievement of independence, both economic and political, depends in the 
last analysis not on material factors but upon men and women. In any self-
supporting community an esential ingredient is the nucleus of highly inteligent 
and responsible people from whose ranks must be drawn the administrators, the 
lawyers, the doctors and the leaders of political and religious thought. Such a 
nucleus is the product of sound education, by which I mean a long and continuous 
proces during which mind, body and spirit mature under the influence of 
wisdom, scholarship and good teaching. A sound education also implies, in my 
mind, a system in which religious influences are alowed to play their full part. 
(1) 
Interestingly, Catholic secondary schools sem beyond reproach for Peter, and so he 
confines his report to the four non-Catholic secondary schools, al of which were located 
 155 
in Belize City. His report thus focuses on the educational prospects for the population of 
non-Catholic students ? approximately 5,000 at the time of the report, acording to Peter. 
The four non-Catholic schools Peter focuses on include: Wesley College, a Methodist 
school; St. Michael?s, an Anglican school for boys; St. Hilda?s, an Anglican school for 
girls; and the Government Technical High School. At the time of the report, there were 
1,650 non-Catholic children of secondary school age (betwen ages ten and fiften) in 
Belize City, but the total population of the four schools was only 440.  
 Peter?s criticisms focuses on the under-qualification of teachers. Out of the four 
non-Catholic secondary schools, only eight of the twenty-thre full-time teachers had a 
university degre, although Peter notes that some without degres had pased a public 
exam or earned a teaching certificate (2). The financial recommendations of the report 
hinged on teacher training. Peter advises that without increased government spending on 
teacher salaries and education in general, it would be impossible to improve the system. 
Further, he makes clear that, without greater government spending, he would not make 
recommendations to the Comptroler of the West Indies Development and Welfare 
Organisation for any United Kingdom grants: ?It would not be justifiable to recommend 
grants from Colonial Development and Welfare unles the money were going to be wel 
spent; and any money spent in the educational service is wasted if teachers are under-
paid? (7). Peter?s ultimatum had the intended efect. The government stopped sending a 
limited number of teachers to Jamaica and created a system for a larger number to be 
trained at home. 
Peter believed that only about half of the non-Catholic secondary students were 
profiting from their academic courses. In his estimation only two of every thre 
 156 
Technical High School students, 45 percent of Wesley College students, one in thre St. 
Michael?s students, and one in four St. Hilda?s were benefiting from the courses they 
took (2-3). Fewer than half, then, were suited for the work they were given. In his 
opinion, part of the problem was that because four schools were catering to a smal 
population (divided into Methodist, Anglican, girls?, boys?) most clases were too smal 
to be divided in terms of ability. Peters notes, ?The range of ability is very considerable; 
what in fact happens in any clas is that the teaching tends to be directed towards the 
average pupil so that neither the best nor the weakest receive the atention which they 
need? (3). Therefore, he concluded that the four non-Catholic secondary schools should 
be consolidated into one government school, the Belize High School and Technical 
Institute. This school would admit eighty to ninety students a year, two-thirds of whom 
would follow an academic program leading to an examination, the remaining following a 
shorter skils-based practical program. In al-but eliminating Wesley, St. Michael?s, and 
St. Hilda?s (he suggests that they preserve St. Hilda?s as a non-academic school providing 
girls ?valuable social and moral training?), Peters did expres concern about losing the 
important role the schools had in the social and moral character of the area (5). However, 
even though the Belize High School and Technical Institute was to be a government 
school, Peters emphasized that it should be administered in part by a Governing Body in 
?which the Government, the Anglicans, and the non-conformists, should be equaly 
represented? and who ?must be made to fel that the major responsibility for the welfare 
of the school lies on the shoulders of its members? (6). He continued, ?Both Anglicans 
and Methodists should be able to enjoy the confident knowledge that they have a stake in 
the policy of the new school. If arangements are made for Ministers of religion to 
 157 
superintend the teaching of religious instruction to members of their own denomination, 
they wil be enabled to maintain the influence of the boys and girls in their spiritual care? 
(6). Although Peter?s criticisms helped spur important reforms, it also had the efect of 
reducing the power of the Anglican and Methodist churches, and thereby giving more 
power to the Catholics. 
 Perhaps the most important reform that came about because of Peter?s 
recommendations was the creation of a Ministry of Education (MOE). In the 1960s the 
Board of Education was disolved and the MOE was given control over the formulation 
of educational policy, which provided, at least theoreticaly, an important check on 
church control (Bennet 21). However, as was the case after the Easter report, mas 
support for the church-state partnership continued to make it dificult for the MOE to take 
power away from the church managements.  
Nine years after Peter?s visit, a UNESCO Educational Planning Mision was sent 
to Belize and it recommended two major reforms. First, this report suggested 
improvements in the content and range of the education system, proposing reforms in the 
curriculum to beter reflect the social, cultural, and economic context of Belize.  Second, 
it advocated a more rational use of public and private funds to avoid what they saw as the 
costly overlapping of services and the poor use of teachers and materials. With the 
church-state system, a smal town might have several schools representing the competing 
denominations when the student population might only warant one school. UNESCO 
was not the first, or the last, to point to the church-state system as ineficient or to suggest 
consolidating schools, but beyond the consolidation of secondary schools in Belize City, 
the religious groups resisted these changes because losing schools meant losing power.   
 158 
In the 1960s, the Belizean government worked to implement many components of 
UNESCO?s reforms, although it might be argued that what Hitchens said about the post-
Easter reforms was also true of this period: the reforms implemented were only the ones 
given de facto approval by the churches. However, in 1964 Belize was granted self-
governance and the spirit of the country was changing.  The nationalist movement kept 
education reform in the forefront of people?s minds and this provided the political wil to 
make important changes.  One product of this time was the education advocacy NGO, 
the Society for the Propagation of Education and Research (SPEAR), which was 
established in 1969. Initialy SPEAR was a voluntary organization whose activities were 
limited to community discussions and the operation of an alternative community 
bookstore, but their role expanded in the last decades of the twentieth century to include 
research, and SPEAR has remained a powerful force in advocating progresive reforms in 
the education system. The fact that one of the founding members of SPEAR was Said 
Musa, the current Belizean prime minister, helps to explain the last decade?s more far-
reaching education reforms which I discuss below.  
In addition to the British colonial reports mentioned above, this period also saw 
an increase in interest by academics. Writing in 1969, Norman Ashcraft echoes many of 
the Easter?s and Peter?s criticisms by pointing to the church-run system as problematic, 
inefectual, and divisive. But his critique was markedly les reserved. Although Easter 
and Peters had criticized the church-state system, Ashcraft?s esay evidences more of a 
wholesale rejection of the system: 
 In absence of direct government supervision, the various denominations have 
planned  
 159 
and implemented their own programs with litle atention to the country?s 
economic problems or the government?s goals. Individual programs rarely are 
coordinated with other schools as there has been litle interdenominational 
cooperation. Religious schisms were steadily widening at the time of field 
research with each secondary school pursuing its independent policy. (Education 
12) 
Ashcraft argues that the Protestant and Catholic schools were divisive because they were 
both oriented to diferent foreign influences. Protestant schools taught British values, 
with British texts, stories and norms. Although Catholic schools stil had to prepare their 
students for British exams, they reflected an American bias through their choice of 
textbooks and their overal curriculum (Ashcraft 12). Therefore, acording to Ashcraft, 
?The country has not only a ?duel system? of control of education ? i.e., State and Church 
? but also two diferent and invariably conflicting systems of education at the secondary 
level ? one British and the other American? (13). Looking at Peace Corps involvement in 
rural primary schools, he says, ?Most eforts by the volunters have been directed toward 
group activities such as songs and games on the one hand and the exercises of the 
American type on the other? (16).  
 Ashcraft also points to the ways in which the current system aintains clas 
hierarchies (13). In 1969, sixten of the country?s seventen secondary schools were 
denominational (the one government school was a technical school). Al of the 
denominational secondary schools charged fes, which made secondary school 
financialy out of reach for many students. Although the government offered some 
secondary-school scholarships, in 1965 these monies went to only about 12 percent of 
 160 
secondary school students. The financial burden was exacerbated for families living in 
rural areas ?since it [was] both a financial and logistic burden to send children to 
secondary schools located in the town and cities? (14). It is important to note that while 
Ashcraft provided what was perhaps the most scathing criticism of the church-state 
partnership up until that time, he did not ask questions about the role of Christian 
ideology in creating mindsets of dependency, or social hierarchies.  
In 1975 a UNESCO representative came back to Belize to ases the extent to 
which the government had implemented the UNESCO recommendations.  In his report, 
Belize, A View of Educational Growth and Change, the regional advisor for Central 
America and Panama, Sylvain Louri?, analyzed the progres made in the ten-year 
interim. Louri? applauded the consolidation of two teacher?s colleges, the 
standardization of the Common Entrance Exam for advancement into secondary school, 
and the creation of a Curriculum Development Unit in the Ministry of Education. 
However, he noted that other key recommendations had not been implemented: ?Until 
1975, when the Curriculum Unit was established, litle was done to ?retool? the content, 
spirit and method of primary and secondary school teaching which remains foreign-
inspired, elitist and remotely linked to the lives of Belizeans today? (i-ii). Further, he 
criticized the continued fragmentation of the system, with an ?unproductive use of 
resources as denominational schools manage ?their? education? (i-ii). Louri? bemoaned 
the inefectivenes of government supervision over the denominations and suggested that 
the MOE give ?serious consideration? to the ?historical role of the denominations in 
education? (5).  
 161 
Two important reforms were implemented after the UNESCO follow-up report. 
First, in 1978 the government created the Belize College of Arts, Science, and 
Technology (BELCAST), which provided the first opportunity for teachers to get an 
asociate degre in secondary education.
37
 Second, the MOE focused more on 
curriculum reform by producing new history and social studies texts meant to reflect the 
lives of Belizeans. These texts included a frank portrayal of slavery and colonialism 
which made them very controversial among the Belizean public. The 1983 publishing of 
the primary school textbook, A History of Belize: Nation in the Making, provides a good 
example. Asad Shoman describes the book as ?a text that for the first time exposed the 
barbarity, racism and oppresion of the imperial order? (77). The following is a quote 
from the textbook: 
Slavery was built upon the unjustifiable theory that black people were inferior to 
white people. Because of this, several generations remained in bondage. Racism 
was used even after slavery to continue the abuse and discrimination of people, 
simply because of the colour of their skin?. The Colonial administration and the 
British setlers succeded in dividing slaves from each other, African-born from 
Creole, blacks from brown, skiled and favoured from unskiled and unfavoured, 
converted Christians from "heathen," and so on. They also managed to divide the 
slaves from the "fred blacks and coloured" by giving the fremen just enough 
privileges and favours to make them identify with the whites. 
Shoman points to the anger that this book created as a sign that Belizean society has not 
efectively dealt with its past. As I discuss in the previous chapter, there are a number of 
                                                
37
 BELCAST was disolved in 1986 under the United Democratic Party and replaced with the University 
Colege of Belize.  
 162 
myths that represent Belizean slavery as benign and in name only. In a leter to the MOE 
protesting the use of A History of Belize in schools, Emory King, an important political 
figure in Belize, wrote, ?Slavery was bad, yes, but not bad as al that. It can be painted 
up to look beter? and ?No Government puts out a book saying bad things about their 
past? (qtd. in Shoman 77). In spite of the controversy, the new textbooks were an 
important step in decolonizing the curiculum, but significantly, because the church 
managements stil retained power over the day-to-day operations of the schools 
(including which textbooks they used), the MOE could not mandate that non-government 
schools use these texts. 
 
The Post-Independence Period: 1981-2007 
Since independence the MOE has made considerable progres in its eforts to 
reform the education system. The MOE has increased teacher?s salaries. A national 
curriculum is in place that guides teachers in schools across the country. To further 
standardize education, the MOE created a list of recommended textbooks for each 
subject. In 2007 they took this a step further and selected a set of textbooks that al 
primary schools must use, and they provided them fre of charge to students. Although 
this has not been without problem, as I discuss in the last chapter, the new textbook 
program demonstrates the MOE?s commitment to centralizing the education system and 
to creating a more equitable system by recognizing the financial constraints of poor 
families. Furthermore, the MOE, in conjunction with the Women?s Bureau, has created 
several programs to combat gender discrimination in education. 
 163 
Perhaps some of the most important reforms have related to teacher training. One 
of the first steps was moving away from the pupil-teacher system and encouraging 
teachers to get certified. In the 1994-95 school year there were 76,212 pupil-teachers and 
only 3,316 teachers (Belize: A National Report). Throughout the 1990s the MOE made 
significant eforts to train more teachers including pre-service and in-service programs, 
and in 1997 the University College of Belize began to offer a bachelor?s degre in 
primary education. However, while commendable, the renewed focus on teacher training 
is only slowly afecting the education system as a whole. In the 2004-2005 school year 
only 52.4 percent of primary school teachers and 37.6 percent of secondary school 
teachers were trained
38
 (Pineda 7). The lack of teacher training obviously afects the 
content and quality of school instruction. In October and November of 2006, 355 
Belizean teachers took the Primary School Exam (PSE), an exam that structures the 
curriculum that they teach. The results were not impresive. In math problem solving, 
the average score was 34.2 out of 50 and only 12 teachers got a perfect score (Ramos). 
While there is certainly more work to be done around teacher training, it is 
important to note that many of the problems with the church-state partnership identified 
by Easter, Peter, and Ashcraft have stil not been addresed. As I se it, the two biggest 
problems with the church-state partnership are the role of religious schools in maintaining 
colonial hierarchies of race, clas, gender and nation; and the extend of foreign influence. 
In the next chapter I look at the first problem, focusing on the constructions of women?s 
sexuality and their use in marking race and clas, here I wil only discuss the isue of 
foreign influence. To do this, I want to return to Lundgren?s disertation, which I 
mentioned in the introduction. This disertation is particularly useful in that it provides 
                                                
38
 The label ?trained? means having at least a level-one certificate. 
 164 
one of the most frank discussions of the church-state partnership. She expreses concern 
that Caribbean churches have uncriticaly acepted the models of religion used in the 
North Atlantic communities, despite the fact that North Atlantic countries have a political 
and economic interest in the Caribbean. One pastor of a smal independent church, 
Pastor Jones, with whom she discussed this question, was adamant in his views that 
foreign influence, exercised through the churches, undermined Belizean democracy.  
He says that the church controls Belize because it controls the schools and the 
church is 
controlled from outside. People, he says, cannot talk about being independent or 
being fre while the churches and schools are controlled by foreign capital. 
?Whoever pays the piper, cals the tune,? he reminds me. The people, though, he 
says, wil not let go of that external control because they do not want the 
responsibility. They are afraid and they believe that White and North American 
and British is superior. Pastor Jones goes on to tel me that in his opinion the 
misionaries have done the most to underdevelop underdeveloped countries 
because they have raped the people. It has left them gredy and needy, with no 
faith in each other and more loyalty toward foreigners than toward each other 
which has made it dificult for them to unite to throw off this common oppresive 
force. (184) 
Lundgren does point out, though, that Pastor Jones?s comments did not reflect the 
opinion of many Belizeans. She says, ?These people did not expres to me concerns 
about foreign control of the churches ?. They want their children to grow up obeying the 
 165 
rules of obedience, humility and good conduct which they fel legitimately emanate from 
religious life? (185-6).  
Charles Rutheiser, another researcher, also looks at the relationship betwen 
religious groups and foreign influence. In his 1990 disertation, "Culture, Schooling, and 
Neocolonialism in Belize,? he expreses a view not unlike Pastor Jones: ?Atempts at ?de-
colonizing? the school system? have been restricted ?by a continuing reliance on outside 
sources for stafing, curriculum, capital expansion, and planning expertise? (2). He 
argues that ?the educational system provides a model of?and for?the redirection of 
Belize?s primary metropolitan relationships from Britain to the United States and the 
cultivation of renewed political, economic, and cultural dependency? (2).  
Certainly it is true that as the Catholic Church became more powerful, the 
influence of the U.S. increased. There are a lot of factors that contribute to the influence 
of the U.S. in Belize, not least of which is the trade betwen the countries. However, I 
think Rutheiser?s question is important to consider. If Christianity was instrumental in 
colonialism, is it also working to further neocolonialism? 
 
Conclusion 
In 1989, after they conducted a self-evaluation, the MOE isued a confidential 
report that said 
[I]n quantitative terms the education system of Belize has been performing 
comparatively satisfactorily. An outstanding feature of the education system is 
the high participation rate of pupils within the six to fourten compulsory age 
range. This is undoubtedly due to the strong commitment of Government to the 
 166 
Church-State partnership.? [I]t is largely because of [the churches?] commitment 
that the literacy rate of Belize is so high today. (qtd. in Shoman 35) 
Asad Shoman, speaking as a representative for SPEAR, chalenged this asesment by 
pointing to another set of statistics. He said that for every twenty children, only nine wil 
finish primary school, only four wil move on to secondary school, and only two wil 
graduate (35-6). For Shoman, one of the most significant problems is the church-state 
partnership. He asks, 
How can a church that requires blind faith for its theology nurture enquiring 
minds? When an important aspect of a people?s culture is put beyond question, 
where do you draw the line? How, for example, does a church whose hierarchy is 
closed to women inculcate the concept of gender equality in the child? And what 
becomes of nationalism and self-determination when a church responds to a 
foreign command structure? (39) 
I think Shoman?s question is an important one. Schools teach values as wel as subjects, 
and so inasmuch as Belize has needed to reform its formal curriculum, they also need to 
analyze the hidden curriculum.  
 Unfortunately, the sources that I have relied on for this chapter ? misionary 
records, government histories, and British colonial reports ? have not been able to 
provide any window into what actualy happens inside the clasroom. Rutheiser notes 
this absence and points to literature as a resource. He says, ?[F]ew social scientists of 
either foreign or local birth have efectively described the complexity of just what exactly 
goes on in schools in postcolonial societies. Generaly, the most richly-textured acounts 
of life in schools, and by extension the societies in which they are embedded, are found in 
 167 
works of fiction, like ? Ze Edgel?s Beka Lamb? (30). It is with this quote in mind that 
I turn to Beka Lamb in the next chapter. I think that Edgel?s novel is particularly useful 
in helping us to understand how religious ideology afects school culture and the 
consequences of this for girls in particular.  
 
 168 
Chapter 6: Beka Lamb: A Fictional ?Memory? of Gender, Colonialism, and 
Education in Belize 
 
I wanted to record my point of view ? from this writer?s 
 perspective ? what I thought I had sen. Not necesarily 
what was, but what I thought I had sen. It was there. We don?t 
 have a history writen by the Belizeans yet, so that I wasn?t in  
any position to write a history, but I felt that history was 
 sufficient to write a novel. 
-Ze Edgel 
 
 
Beka Lamb tels the story of two girls growing up in 1950s Belize, then a British 
colony named British Honduras. Beka?s story is a bildungsroman that chronicles a few 
months that mark a defining change in her life, but the story of Toycie, Beka?s best 
friend, is what might be caled an anti-bildungsroman. That is, Toycie?s story is not one 
of growing maturity, or emerging identity, but rather a descent into madnes and the loss 
of her identity. Indeed, the development of Beka and Toycie are inversely related: as 
Beka comes of age ? marked by her ability to stop lying and to succed in school, Toycie 
fals apart. The novel uses the characters as more than just foils, however. Beka?s 
suces comes about in part because of Toycie?s failure. Beka learns from Toycie?s 
mistakes. The bildungsroman genre is intimately related to nation-building. Thus, when 
Beka and Toycie?s journeys are looked at symbolicaly, the meanings of these two 
interelated stories make an important statement about nation-building in Belize as it 
declares its independence from Britain.  
 169 
 As most critics of the novel have noted, the coming-of-age of Beka can be 
interpreted as the coming-of-age of Belize. If Beka?s story is about Belize, and Beka?s 
succes depends on Toycie?s demise, then Toycie?s story is also a mesage about nation-
building in Belize. If, as I argue below, Toycie?s story is a critique of the Catholic 
Church and the use of women?s sexuality to create and establish hierarchies of race, clas, 
gender, and nation, then it follows that the novel positions the succes of Beka/Belize as 
dependent on an understanding of this influence, specificaly of the Church?s influence 
on the education system.  As Newson explains, ?Two central problems dominate the 
novel: Beka?s failure at school and Toycie?s involvement with Emilio Sanchez 
Vilanueva? and ?[b]oth problems are firmly situated in the socio-political and socio-
economic realities of the country? (192).  
Inasmuch as the novel tels us the stories of two girls, the novel also records a 
history of two periods: the 1950s which was the beginning of the nationalist movement in 
Belize; and the late 1970s-early 1980s, the years surrounding Belize?s independence from 
Britain. Beka Lamb was published in 1982, one year after Belizean independence. In his 
article, ?Reaching a Clearing: Gender Politics in Beka Lamb,? Roger Bromley says that 
like the flashback structure of the story, 
[t]he writing of the novel itself is also retrospective, but it is not simply a fictional 
record of a few months in 1950. It is a complex cultural production deeply 
influenced in its construction by discourses and experiences at the time of writing, 
and of the time being writen about, as wel by the experiences of the intervening 
period from narated instance (1950) to the narating and reading instance. (12) 
 170 
Bromley emphasizes the importance of the novel as history by noting that ?like so many 
people in colonized cultures, Ze Edgel and her contemporaries did not learn their own 
history at school and had litle awarenes of their own society. The writing of Beka Lamb 
was, in part, an atempt to offer a fictional ?memory?, to supply some of the clues and 
explanations mising from the Belize story? (12).  
As both fiction, and fictional ?memory,? the stories of Beka and Toycie critique 
the education system and the social roles and expectations for girls, two areas where there 
has been litle research. It is my argument that while the narative takes place in the 
1950s it also speaks to the isues of gender and education on the eve of independence and 
the present day. McClaurin notes the importance of the novel in this regard: 
There are few descriptions of the proces of gender enculturation in any of the 
definitive histories of, or studies about, Belize. Rich data are contained in various 
disertations, but for the most part what litle is known comes from literature. The 
Belizean writer Ze Edgel, for example, gives us glimpses of what is expected of 
girls in her autobiographical coming-of-age novel, Beka Lamb. (62)  
Anne Macpherson makes a similar argument, noting that ?anthropologist Karen Judd and 
Belizean novelist Ze Edgel have more efectively rendered the historical formation and 
dynamics of gender, particularly among the key urban Creole population? (3).  
 As I have explained above, despite the fact that Belizean females are doing beter 
in school than their male counterparts, they are not geting beter jobs than men once they 
graduate. Women continue to make les money, have double the unemployment rate, and 
have litle aces to decision-making positions (CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). Although the 
various governmental and non-governmental women?s groups in Belize have pointed to 
 171 
some of the problems girls face in the predominantly religious schools ? pregnant girls 
being forced to leave school, for example ? it is my argument that Beka Lamb is possibly 
the only published source that can help to explain the more nuanced and subtle forces in 
the school system that may work to stymie girls? achievement. To understand why girls? 
education is not translating to more power in society, we must look at the hidden 
curriculum of the religious schools and how it afects the self-estem and self-
understanding of girls and women in Belize.  
 
Virgin/Whore: Women as Markers of Race/Class/Nation 
 
 When we are first introduced to Toycie, she is already dead. The flashback 
structure of the novel defines Toycie by her mistake, and so Toycie?s story unfolds like a 
cautionary tale. We the readers already know she has been punished; we are just waiting 
to se why. Toycie is thus constantly under our surveilance as her relationship with 
Emilio develops.  
Toycie is presented as a kind, respectful, and responsible 17-year-old senior at St. 
Cecilia?s Academy. Despite the fact that she is one of the smartest girls at St. Cecilia?s, 
she develops no conceit, but rather a wilingnes to tutor other students. Toycie has been 
abandoned by her mother and father, but she is obedient and loyal to her Aunt Eila, to 
whom her mother has ?loaned? her. Indeed, it is because Beka?s parents like Toycie so 
much and se her as a help in taking care of Beka?s younger brothers that they invite her 
to the beach with them for their family vacation at St. George?s Caye. It is at St. 
George?s Caye that Toycie is intimate with her boyfriend, Emilio ? a tryst that results in 
 172 
Toycie?s pregnancy and later, her expulsion from school and a descent into madnes that 
ultimately brings about her death.  
In her disertation, Reconfiguring the Body Politic: The Politics of History and 
Gender in Ze Edgel?s Novels, Julie Moody-Freman says, ?Colonialism flourished 
because of its insidious ability to divide the ethnic groups in Belize leaving deeply 
entrenched views about the superiority and inferiority of one?s race? (122). If, as Anne 
Macpherson argues, ?The most important proces of colonial identity-shaping was the 
introduction of Victorian gender norms, designed to produce respectable and represed 
West Indian sexualities,? then Toycie?s story may provide insight into the development 
of girls? identity in Belize (11). The story of Toycie?s sexuality as public spectacle 
demonstrates the use of female sexuality as a marker of race, clas, gender, and nation, 
which I discuss in the introduction. As such, Toycie?s story is also important to the 
development of Beka/Belize.  
Toycie?s story functions on both literal and metaphoric levels. On the literal 
level, Toycie?s story makes clear the race/clas divides within the society and how 
connected they are to imported norms and values ? particularly those around gender. 
Newson says, ?The esence of the multi-ethnic conflict in Belize is engendered in the 
personal relationship betwen Toycie (the Creole girl) and Emilio (the pania boy)?. 
Given the social, clas and ethnic structure of Belize, she could never be satisfactory as a 
wife. Ethnicity and social clas are powerful agents working against the young lovers? 
(192). The interactions betwen characters in the novel demonstrate the perceived 
connections betwen sexuality and hierarchies of race and clas. Beka tels Toycie, 
 173 
?Panias
39
 scarcely ever mary creole like we? (47) and  ?Granny Ivy said that Toycie was 
trying to raise her colour, and would wind up with a baby instead of a diploma, if she 
wasn?t careful? (47). We can se the internalization of these norms in the character of 
Toycie?s aunt, Mis Eila, who 
readily acquiesces in the low valuation of herself as unmaried, sexualy 
undesirable, deformed (therefore, unmariageable) and inadequate ?. She is 
disfigured physicaly, and therefore invalid as an object of exchange among men, 
but also mentaly in the terms of patriarchal definitions of a woman?s worth. Her 
self-image is conceived in the forms of an alien orientation, like those Belizeans 
who looked outwards to foreign sources for their political role models. (Bromley 
14)  
Toycie?s story also has symbolic value. Toycie is destroyed not only by Emilio, 
an individual of another clas, but also by what he represents: colonialism and 
patriarchy, and their vehicle, Christianity. Emilio, a boy of fairer skin, and thus of a 
beter social clas, represents the legacy of (Spanish) colonialism. Because of his skin 
color, Emilio?s family is linked to Spain, and not to the waves of Mestizos who flooded 
Belize during the violent Central American wars. However, he is also linked to England 
who used their long rule to entrench the racial hierarchies that positioned Emilio?s family 
over Toycie?s. ?There is a strong correlation betwen Toycie?s demise and the rigid and 
contradictory control the state, the Roman Catholic church, and the Belizean community 
of men and women have over gender politics; these atitudes toward gender, sex, and 
sexual relationships result in the destruction of some women like Toycie? (Moody-
Freman 84).   
                                                
39
 Panias is another name for Mestizos (of mixed Spanish and Indian descent).  
 174 
In her work, Perceptions of Caribbean Women: Towards a Documentation of 
Stereotypes, Erna Brodber describes the ideal for West Indian femininity as ?delicate, 
difident, tender, pleasing, tactful, suffering and at home? (qtd. in O?Calaghan 41). 
Therefore, as O?Calaghan argues, ?Good behaviour for girls, by such standards ? the 
standards of those wishing upward mobility for their charges ? meant being compliant, 
obedient, self-efacing and submisive? (41). For Toycie, ?a model child, a model 
student, a model young lady,? the presure to conform ?is reinforced by her precarious 
economic situation as a woman in her society ? and her desire to become ?somebody?? 
(O?Calaghan 41).  
Further, social mobility via education entails internalization of ideal stereotypes 
of womanhood, pased on by foreign-trained school authorities. So in Beka 
Lamb, the convent school offers an alternative future for girls to ?the washing 
bowl underneath the house bottom? (2), but to graduate they must ?leap through 
the hoops of quality purposely held high by the nuns? (112). And for many, these 
?hoops of quality? represent norms that clash with those of their indigenous 
working-clas society (which they are expected to deny once inside the convent 
gates). (O?Calaghan 42; the page numbers within the quote refer to page 
numbers in Beka Lamb) 
O?Calaghan notes that one important site of conflict betwen the ?hoops of quality? and 
local norms is female sexuality. For Toycie ?to rise up the social ladder (via schooling)? 
she must emulate the Virgin Mary (O?Calaghan 42). Beka tels Toycie, ?If Sister Virgil 
only hears you have a boyfriend she?l suspend you? (Edgel 50). ?Her ilegitimate 
 175 
pregnancy thus brands her, in the eyes of the school authorities, as yet another black 
woman who can?t say no? (O?Calaghan 42).  
As Lorna Down points out in her thesis, Singing One?s Own Song: Women and 
Selfhood in Recent West Indian Fiction, the code of morality of the school and church are 
at odds with that of the community. Beka grows up in a ?traditional? family that was 
anything but traditional in her community. Moody-Freman argues, 
Beka Lamb reveals that [the mariage of Beka?s parents] was an uncommon event 
in Belize; after al, Bil Lamb himself is the product of a single parent home 
because Granny Ivy became pregnant and had to raise him without help. Mis Flo 
reveals that she is about to become a great-grandmother, for her granddaughter is 
having another child by her third boyfriend ? Toycie?s own mother was left 
pregnant by Toycie?s father? (91).  
Single parent households and unmaried mothers are not a question of morality, but rather 
a diferent form of family and sometimes a response to the economic conditions of 
colonization. Thus, ?The community can acept Toycie?s pregnancy which they view as 
a natural event, even though they are aware of the dificulties of the situation. Toycie 
herself hopes to salvage something of her dreams by concentrating on her studies.?  
The conflicting understandings of Toycie?s situation are emphasized in the 
confrontation betwen Beka?s father and Sister Virgil. Down notes that Bil Lamb, 
functioning as the voice of the community, wants to discuss Toycie?s pregnancy openly 
with Sister Virgil (21). Sister Virgil, on the other hand, wants to shroud the pregnancy in 
secrecy both in word and act: in discussing Toycie?s expulsion she uses euphemisms to 
 176 
refer to the ?delicate mater? and Toycie is expeled to prevent the spectacle of her 
pregnancy from ruining the reputation of the school, or tainting the other girls (Down 21). 
 In the world of Sister Virgil, women fal into one of two categories: virgin or 
whore. And this primary categorization afects how they are viewed in terms of race and 
clas, which in turn afects their aces to power in society. If Sister Virgil is the virgin, 
Toycie is the whore. The fact that Father Nunez mirors this ideology in his clas 
lectures demonstrates its basis in Christian belief and its centrality to the hidden 
curriculum. Father Nunez tels his clas: 
Of course, dear hearts, we al want to go to heaven when we die. This is why we 
must mortify the flesh, do penance always so that we wil not burn in purgatory, 
or worse, be damned to everlasting helfire. Remember the story of Eve. As 
young ladies you must walk always with an invisible veil about you so as not to 
unleash chaos upon the world. God, in His infinite goodnes, gave us the Blesed 
Virgin to erase the memory of Eve, and to serve as an example to the women of 
the world. 
As O?Calaghan notes, ?Choice of social role is thus inevitably bound up with a binary 
choice betwen virgin/whore stereotypes, as made clear by Father Nunez (90) in his 
lectures to the school girls? (42; page number within quote refers to Beka Lamb). 
Furthermore, in a country with 58 percent of children born out of wedlock, the 
virgin/whore categorization implicitly damns most of Belizean society 
(CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). 
As a fictional ?memory,? the novel describes the hidden curriculum of the school, 
but it also works to destabilize this curriculum in its manipulation of the Virgin Mary as a 
 177 
symbol. Roydon Salick points to the significance of Mary in her article, ?The Martyred 
Virgin: A Political Reading of Ze Edgel?s ?Beka Lamb.? Acording to Salick, the 
novel consciously links Toycie with the Virgin Mary. She says, ?the details of [Toycie?s] 
conception, betrayal, and death contain deliberate overtones of sacrifice, of the death of 
an innocent? (110). Her ?undoing? is blamed chiefly on ignorance. Beka asks Toycie, 
?Didn?t Mis Eila tel you when you having your period first time that sometimes if the 
sperm from a man touches your vagina, sometimes it can go into you and become a 
baby? (Edgel 109). Toycie responds, ?No, Beka, no. I didn?t know and maybe Aunt 
Eila doesn?t know either. And Milio said nothing would happen ?? (Edgel 109). 
Toycie?s ignorance is emphasized by the fact that Beka, thre years her junior, is already 
beter informed. Although Beka ataches Toycie?s lack of knowledge to Mis Eila?s 
parenting, the novel suggests that there is more at play. Moody-Freman says, ?One 
must understand the sociology of sexual education in Belize and how the state and church 
contribute to a lack of knowledge about sex? (109). Beka tels Toycie, ?[I]f it?s a girl 
we?l explain everything carefully about everything so that her life doesn?t break down 
that way. And if it?s a boy, we?l do the same? (Edgel 109, my emphasis).   
 Salick argues that the fact that Emilio?s ?body didn?t go into [Toycie],? marks 
her pregnancy as an imaculate conception (110). Further, like Mary, after Emilio 
betrays Toycie, ?she becomes the virgin who is despised because of the putative paternity 
of the fetus and the atendant public disgrace? (110). However, unlike Mary, Toycie wil 
not be saved by the sanctity of mariage, and thus, Salick argues, her story becomes the 
counter-narative to the story of Mary (110). ?When the pregnant Toycie vomits on the 
chapel floor, she is established in the eyes of authority (religious and educational) as a 
 178 
source of contamination, to be removed before her sins, like Eve?s, infect other girls? 
(O?Calaghan 43). Toycie is ?the virgin despised, betrayed, and vilified? (Salick 110). 
The seting of Toycie?s expulsion emphasizes the stark contrast betwen Toycie and 
Mary: Sister Virgil shames Toycie against the backdrop of ?a two-foot statue of the 
Virgin, her arms outstretched, her stone eyes expresionles? (Salick 110; Edgel ).  
Toycie?s sexuality becomes the most important marker of her identity and the 
novel shows us the consequences of questioning this ideology. When Father Nunez 
lectures the clas on the sins of Eve, Beka objects: ?Excuse me Father, but it?s nature 
that produces the chaos, Father, and women and men are part of nature, and my Gran 
says that no mater how hard we try, sometimes, like bad luck, things break down. She 
says to do the best I can and not worry too much about living in heaven and hel for the 
guilt might frighten me crazy? (Edgel 91). Father Nunez asks Beka if she believes in 
heaven and hel and Beka says, ?I don?t know what to tel you, Father? (91). So, Father 
Nunez asks al Beka?s clasmates to raise their hands if they believe in heaven and hel. 
?Every girl in the room raised her hand and Beka sat down? (91). Beka is then asked to 
leave the clasroom and the school. Sister Virgil wanted to expel Beka because she was 
?a heretic at worst, and a rough diamond at best? (91), but with her father?s intervention, 
Beka is alowed to come back to school after a few days. Beka?s questioning of 
Christianity cannot be tolerated. She is alowed to stay at school because her father?s 
visit restablished the patriarchal order, moving Beka back to her ?appropriate? role, but 
Beka stil fails religion that term. When Toycie asks Beka how she managed to fail 
religion, Beka tels her it was because of her trouble with Father Nunez. Toycie, who 
was a succesful student prior to her pregnancy, understands the culture of the school. 
 179 
She tels Beka, ?The first thing you beter learn, Beka Lamb, is to keep your tongue 
betwen your teth!? (35). When Beka returns to school the next year intent on pasing, 
we se that she has taken Toycie?s advice. ?So far, so good,? Beka thought at the end of 
her first religion clas, ?I didn?t concentrate, but at least I didn?t say anything? (92). 
Beka has learned that succes hinges on unquestioned aceptance of religious doctrine 
and her own silence. 
Beka also ses the consequences Toycie faces for stepping outside of the bounds 
of ?respectability.? When Beka and Toycie go looking for Emilio, Beka admonishes 
Toycie, ?Emilio and his mother are coming now, Toycie. Don?t act so poorthingfied. 
People wil wonder and begin to watch? (Edgel 102). Toycie replies, ?Let them wonder 
? I am fed up worrying about what people think!? (102). At this moment, when Toycie 
stops trying to be respectable and earn the approval of the society, she fals from grace. 
When Emilio?s mother grets her, she ?forgot to cal Toycie ?reina?, looking her up and 
down with open hostility? (102). For the first time in the novel, Toycie?s physical 
description marks her as poor. Once Toycie is pregnant, it afects her race and clas 
status and the novel demonstrates this by comparing Toycie?s appearance to Emilio?s 
mother, Senora Vilanueva. Emilio?s ?petite Mama [was] dresed exquisitely in a sheath 
fashioned of sharkskin material. Her tan patent leather shoes matched her dres, and the 
glas beads of her rosary sparkled like crystal? (102). Earlier in the story Granny Ivy 
connected patent leather shoes to gender and clas by saying, ?Only families with young 
ladies that step dainty can aford patent leather shoes from Wincham?s on Albert Stret? 
(82).  
 180 
Mrs. Vilaneuava is described as having a face that ?had the exalted look of a 
recent communicant? (Edgel 102). ?Beside Senora Vilanueva, Toycie appeared a trifle 
scruffy in her lavender, waterwave tafeta dres with its overskirt of bilowing lavender 
bobbinet. Unraveled to one side, her frock tail drooped around her calves. Shoe 
whitening smeared Toycie?s brown ankles, and her worn flat-heeled shoes keeled over, 
on the outer sides, like sailing dorys on a rough sea? (102-3). Toycie?s scarlet leter is 
poverty. Once she is pregnant, she is marked as poor and black. Thus, in this second 
moment of expulsion ? Toycie was first expeled from school and now she is cast out of 
the Vilanueva family ? Senora Vilanueva becomes a substitute for the statue of Mary 
and the virgin/whore categories become imbued with race and clas.   
Inasmuch as Senora Vilanueva doubles for Mary, the novel begins to asociate 
Toycie with the local prostitute, National Velor: ?Velor?s face melted into Toycie?s, 
Toycie?s face merged into Velor?s and then Velor became Toycie? (Edgel 128). As 
O?Calaghan claims, ?To emulate the opposite of respectable is to incur the wrath of 
society and the Church, to become, in efect, no beter than the prostitute National Velor 
? a scorned and feared outcast? (44). Demonstrating the limited options for women and 
the importance of education in social mobility, National Velor explains her prostitution 
to Beka, ?You se?. No mother, no father, no school. What can I do?? (Edgel 128). 
At particular moments in the story Beka reveals her felings about mariage and 
having children. Beka?s ?talk? with her dead Granny Straker shows that she has adopted 
some of Sister Virgil?s ideology. After hearing about Mis Florence?s daughter, who has 
thre children by thre diferent men, Beka tels Granny Straker, ?I don?t want to turn out 
like Mis Flo?s Granddaughter!? (77). After Toycie?s tryst with Emilio, Beka?s mother 
 181 
Lila buys Beka a notebook to write stories in. Lila suggests that Beka can write stories 
for her children to read. Beka?s response demonstrates the pervasivenes of Sister 
Virgil?s gender ideology. When Lila brings up children, Beka says, ?I?m never going to 
get maried? (71). This might be sen as Beka?s resistance to traditional gender roles, but 
her statement also reveals that she ses mariage and having children as interchangeable, 
that one is inherently connected to the other, despite the fact that most of the families she 
is connected with in the story have children but are not maried. 
Beka Lamb gives us aces to the culture of St. Cecilia?s and to the ways in which 
a school culture and a hidden curriculum can afect the way a girl thinks about herself 
and her community. Students had to either shed ?the lives they led at home the minute 
they reached the convent gates? or suffer the consequences: 
There were others, many times of the highest intelectual capacity, who could not, 
did not, would not, for a variety of reasons, learn to switch roles with the required 
rapidity. Their upbringing, set against such relative conformity, was exaggerated 
into what was perceived to be vulgarity, defiance, ingratitude, lack of discipline or 
moral degradation. They were the ones who stumbled and fel, often in uter 
confusion, and sometimes were expeled from school. (Edgel 112)  
These words were writen in 1982, about 1951, but I suggest that they can help us to 
understand how present-day aspects of schooling ? invisible in statistics and test scores ? 
can nevertheles have an important impact on the way a girl ses herself, and her role in 
society.  In atempting to understand why girls? education is not translating into greater 
power in the workplace, the question then becomes: Has the hidden curriculum remained 
the same? 
 182 
 
The Past as Present? 
Ze Edgel, the author of Beka Lamb, atended St. Catherine Academy (the basis 
for St. Cecilia?s in the novel) from 1954 to 1959. She later returned to the Catholic high 
school as a teacher in the late 1960s. In an email interview, I asked Edgel if she felt the 
culture of the school ? particularly involving the pregnancy of students ? had changed in 
the interim period. She responded, ?The policy towards pregnant students was already 
beginning to change [when she wrote the novel], and it has changed now.? In this section 
I look at the policies regarding sexuality in denominational schools in Belize. 
 Prior to 1973, pregnant students were automaticaly expeled as we se in the case 
of Toycie in Beka Lamb. In 1973, St. Catherine changed its policy to alow pregnant 
students to finish secondary school if they abided by several regulations. This decision 
produced a heated debate amongs parents of children at St. Catherine and the larger 
community. Those who were against the new policy argued that alowing pregnant 
students to return to school would encourage students to se sex before mariage as 
aceptable. Shoman argued that the community?s objections were rooted in clas 
prejudice, specificaly middle-clas constructions of respectability. In a ?Check it Out? 
column in a local paper he wrote, ?Some parents who are or aspire to be ?middle clas? or 
bourgeois like to regard the prevalence of ilegitimacy as a ?lower clas? problem. So 
they fel it shouldn?t even be considered in the context of the school where they send 
their daughters? (Backtalking 17). Although many objected to the new policy, there were 
also many who championed the change. Women?s groups supported St. Catherine and 
encouraged other schools to institute the same policy. In 2007, pregnant students can, 
depending on the school, finish their education. Although many schools have followed 
 183 
St. Catherine?s lead to alow 3
rd
 and 4
th
 form girls to return to school, some have not 
(?Children and Adolescents? 6). At Ecumenical High School in Dangriga, pregnancy 
tests are administered for fourth form students about two months before graduation (25). 
If the test is positive, the girl is expeled (25). At Belize City Palotti High School the 
principal has the right to require any girl to take a pregnancy test if there is the least 
suspicion that she is pregnant. Furthermore, al denominational schools expel pregnant 
girls in 1
st
 and 2
nd
 form (6). Based on the rules of the church-state partnership the 
government cannot prevent students from being expeled or mandate schools to let 
pregnant students return.  
Returning to Edgel?s statement, it is true that many schools have changed their 
policies. However, I think that Edgel?s novel proves that the isue is more complicated 
than whether or not pregnant students are alowed to return to school. ?Ilegitimate? 
children are stil used as a marker of clas. The change in some school?s policies has not 
changed the ideology of respectability. Ironicaly, even though St. Catherine has been 
praised for its policy, the language of their regulations reinforces the ideology of 
respectability and makes clear that the hidden curriculum of Beka?s school is stil in place 
a half-century later.  
 St. Catherine?s ?Policy on Parenthood? is as follows: 
? Any student who becomes pregnant while registered as a student may be 
excluded or expeled from school programes. This exclusion or 
expulsion, however, must be applied only after the entire case has been 
investigated. 
 184 
? Any student who becomes pregnant while atending Saint Catherine 
Academy may be alowed to finish her education at Saint Catherine 
Academy, but the permision is not automatic. The consideration to 
readmit a student after she has given birth to a child from a pregnancy wil 
be at the discretion of the Principal in consultation with the Saint 
Catherine Academy Board of Governors. 
? A student who discovers she is pregnant should report the mater to the 
principal. A consultation wil then be held with the parents/guardians to 
explain and determine the course of action. If the student and 
parents/guardians fail to comply with this rule and purposely atempt to 
mislead the principal, the student wil be asked to withdraw from school. 
? A student who becomes pregnant must withdraw from school during the 
period of the pregnancy. The return date, if permision is granted for her 
to continue her education at the institution, wil be determined by the 
Principal. The return date must coincide with the start of a semester. 
? A student who has had a child and is granted permision to return to 
school wil atend several scheduled counseling sesions at least two 
weks prior to the beginning of formal clases. Her name wil be added to 
the counseling list and she wil be required to atend counseling sesions 
periodicaly during the academic year. 
? Individual consideration wil be given to each student who becomes 
pregnant. 
 185 
? A student who becomes pregnant for the second time wil not be alowed 
to return to Saint Catherine Academy. 
? Any student who becomes pregnant wil not be alowed to participate in 
the formal graduation exercises. Upon succesful completion of her 
studies, however, she wil receive a Saint Catherine Academy diploma. 
The underlying beliefs about respectability are stil present. Women?s bodies are stil 
under surveilance (the cases are ?investigated? and girls are expected to leave once they 
start to ?show?). Furthermore, the girl has ?sinned? and she is stil punished (she is not 
alowed to participate in graduation, which is an event of great significance in Belize). 
Although St. Catherine?s policy regarding pregnant students has changed, I think 
that the language of their policy indicates that there has not been a change in the hidden 
curriculum. Indeed, their school song suggests that St. Catherine girls are stil marked by 
their sexuality: ?Mercians on we strive to honour your name; / A heritage from Our 
Blesed Mother?s fame ? symbols of purity ? Here we come every convent girl / 
Emblems of honour true.? This ideology can also be sen in the treatment of unwed 
teachers in the Catholic school system, which I discuss in the next chapter. Up until 2004 
it was routine for schools to fire unwed teachers if they became pregnant. In 2004, a 
teacher who had been fired because of her pregnancy sued the Catholic Management for 
discrimination. Based on the Education Rules, the National Gender Policy, and the 
Convention on the Elimination of al Forms of Discrimination against Women 
(CEDAW)
40
 the court decided in favor of the teacher and the verdict was upheld on 
appeal (CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). Although the legal case is sen as a precedent that wil 
                                                
40
 Belize ratified the Convention on the Elimination of Al Forms of Discrimination against Women 
(CEDAW) in 190.  
 186 
help end the practice of firing unwed pregnant teachers, the fact that the maried status of 
a teacher is an isue at al suggests that things have not changed very much since the 
1950s.  
The consequences of this ideology of respectability are strongest for the students 
and teachers in the religious schools ? particularly Catholic schools ? but this ideology 
also afects elements of Belizean society outside the education system. In June 1999, a 
delegation of Belizean officials presented its progres in implementing the reforms of 
CEDAW to a United Nations commite. Joan Musa, Belize?s First Lady and the 
President of the National Women?s Commision, said that the curent policy of restricting 
information and contraception to young people in hopes of preventing sexual activity was 
?obviously not working? (WOM/1140). Musa explained that 60 percent of births to 
young mothers were unplanned. Belize also has the highest rate of HIV transmision in 
Central America. In a presentation to The Commite on the Rights of the Child, the 
Belize delegation reported that the rate of adolescent pregnancy in Belize was one of the 
highest in the Caribbean and Central America (?Commite on Rights?). Women?s 
groups continualy asert that the Catholic Church, with its power over much of the 
education system, stymies atempts to addres these statistics. In a 2005 report to 
CEDAW, the Belizean government expresed this frustration: ?AIDS prevention and 
pregnancy control [has] been dificult because of the Catholic Church?s opposition to the 
use of condoms. The curent policy of urging abstention and providing no information 
on contraception [is], however not working, and it [is] hurting the poorest, who [have] the 
most children? (CEDAW/C/SR.438 3). The Catholic Church?s opposition can be sen in 
an article printed in the Stann Crek Star (Dangriga?s newspaper) in 2003. The article, 
 187 
writen by a Catholic Bishop, acused the Belize Family Life Asociation (BFLA) of 
trying to destroy the black race by providing birth control in an area populated mostly by 
Garifuna (?Children and Adolescents? 19). The consequences of the Church?s opposition 
can be sen in a recent survey that found that ?56.9 percent of respondents had not 
received a clas or course on family life or sex education, and 30.3 percent of the women 
did not know where to go for information on sex and contraception; 30.8 percent did not 
know where to go for information on STD?s and 32.4 percent did not know where to 
obtain information on HIV/AIDS? (CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). This ignorance is dangerous. 
The 1999 Family Health Survey found that 61.9 percent of women felt that they had no 
risk of contracting HIV/AIDS while only 45 percent had ever used a condom 
(CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). 
The Commite on the Rights of the Child emphasized the connections betwen 
school policies regarding pregnant students and larger isues of gender equality: 
Action must be taken to cease the continued practice in government and non-
government schools alike of expeling pregnant students. This is of particular 
concern when it is considered that the education of young women is a significant 
factor in improving the quality of child-rearing, in reducing unwanted pregnancies 
and tenage fertility rates, and in addresing isues of the economic independence 
of women. It is considered unaceptable that such practices should be at the 
discretion of individual school administrations, and the Government needs to 
implement regulations to ensure that pregnancy is not a ground for denying a 
child an education. Furthermore, the Ministry should take steps to develop and 
 188 
implement policies and procedures to encourage and facilitate the resumption of 
formal education by young mothers. (?Consideration of Reports?) 
Despite almost 20 years of recommendations from CEDAW, the Commite on 
the Rights of the Child, and other groups, and despite the eforts of many women?s 
groups in Belize, changes in the education system have been dificult. This is in part due 
the power the Catholic Church wields in Belizean society, and the church?s long 
connection with political leaders. The party leaders 
during the 1950s had atended St. John?s College, a high school run by American 
Jesuit priests. During Belize?s nationalistic period betwen the late 1950s and 
1960s, George Price, the Premier of Belize, himself an ex-Catholic priest, 
established religion as the basis for his ?patriotic theme? declaring a ?church state 
concordat.? 
Beka Lamb provides insight into this situation with the description of the Hartley boys. 
The Hartley boys were ?light brown? elite Creoles who ?lived lives that had much in 
common with civil servants from England who headed many of the departments of the 
colony?s Civil Service? (Edgel 53). Beka says that whenever they walked past her with 
their ?shirts neatly tucked into trousers with creases as sharp as razor blades? they stared 
?straight ahead,? ?looking neither to the left nor the right? (53).  The implication is clear. 
Because the Hartley boys were made elite by the current system, it was in their best 
interest to not notice what was going on around them. People who have gained middle-
clas status through the ideology of respectability depend on the ?ilegitimate? births of 
the ?lower? clas to mark their own middle-clas status. They can ignore the isue. 
 189 
People like Beka and Toycie, who have been hurt by the current policies, do not have that 
luxury: ?The ability to look straight ahead was a thing of wonder to Beka? (53).  
 190 
Chapter 7: Church v. State 
 
Toycie?s expulsion in Beka Lamb is an important moment for Beka in that she 
begins to recognize the dynamics of her Catholic education. I addres this particular isue 
in the previous chapter, where I contextualize and analyze Ze Edgel?s work set in 
Belize. In this chapter I addres the related isue surrounding unwed pregnant teachers, 
looking specificaly at the precedent-seting 2004 court case, Maria Roches v. Clement 
Wade. Roches was a primary school teacher at a Catholic school in Belize, until she was 
fired for geting pregnant out of wedlock. Her dismisal was the result of an ?unofficial 
policy? by the denominational schools to fire unwed pregnant teachers. Governmental 
and non-governmental Belizean women?s groups had been protesting this practice for 
years, but not until Roches sued the Managing Authority of the Roman Catholic Church 
in Belize (hereafter refered to as the Catholic Management) was this unofficial policy 
brought before the courts for review. Roches? dismisal launched a fierce public debate 
over the relationship betwen the church and state in the administration of education in 
Belize. Therefore, a discussion of this case provides a fiting conclusion for my 
disertation. First, I explain the context for this case.  That is, I describe the role of 
Christian morality around mariage and sex in the employment of teachers. Second, I 
explain the evidence presented at Roches? trial and the Supreme Court?s ruling on the 
case. Third, I analyze the case by looking specificaly at problems with the church-state 
partnership and possible solutions. 
Belizean schools follow a Christian ?Code of Ethics.? Teachers are expected to 
model the ?Code of Ethics,? which is only sometimes codified, and for most schools this 
 191 
standard of behavior is viewed as a condition of employment (Jones 10). Schools within 
the Catholic Management usualy require teachers to sign a contract that expreses ?the 
need for teachers to live by the Christian values of the Church, especialy Christian 
values as they pertain to mariage and sex? (10). Based on the belief that pre-marital sex 
is imoral, al denominational schools (excepting Anglican-run institutions) deem 
cohabitation or the pregnancy of an unwed teacher disreputable, and thus cause for 
disciplinary action. Writen policies rarely specificaly declare that cohabitating or 
unwed pregnancy wil result in dismisal, but teachers are always made to understand that 
their decisions about sex and mariage ? in contravention of Christian doctrine - wil 
place their jobs in jeopardy.  
The practice of firing unwed pregnant teachers in religious schools is not unique 
to Belize. In September 2005, Michele McCusker was fired from the St. Rose of Lima 
School, a Catholic school in New York, once she informed the school that she was 
pregnant. Frank DeRosa, a spokesman for the Brooklyn Diocese, said that McCusker 
was fired because by having non-marital sex she violated school ethics, which are laid 
out in the personnel handbook (Brown). However, the situation in Belize is diferent 
from McCusker?s case because of the nature of the church-state partnership in Belize.  In 
Belize two-thirds of primary schools are denominational. Consequently, because the pool 
of non-denominational schools is so smal, this regulation of personal behavior inflicts 
greater hardship on Belizean teachers than it would on teachers in most other countries. 
Despite the fact that primary school teachers are paid completely by the 
government and secondary school teachers are paid 70 percent of their salary from the 
government, the religious managements are entitled to make al personnel decisions, 
 192 
including hiring and firing. On this basis, the religious managements punish unwed 
mothers and those in common-law unions, both of which are deemed imoral, with 
?disciplinary action? (Jones 10). ?Disciplinary action? can range from a forced and 
unpaid leave of absence (usualy while the teacher is pregnant) to firing. Maried 
women, on the other hand, are given up to 3 months paid maternity leave (11). Prior to 
?disciplinary action? teachers are strongly encouraged by school officials to get maried. 
Even the Anglican Management, under which female teachers fare the best, advises 
women to have no more than thre children (11). Although the religious managements 
maintain that their policies pertain equaly to men, they concede that it is dificult to 
prove if a male teacher has in fact fathered a child. Prior to the Roches suit there were no 
known cases in which a male teacher had received ?disciplinary action? (11). Acording 
to Jones, this policy has the efect of miroring the acepted belief in Belizean society 
that ?it is OK for a man to indulge in permisivenes and an imoral lifestyle, but it is 
not so for a woman. The society wil treat her with scorn? (25).  
It is important to note that government-run schools provide maternity leave to 
both maried and unmaried teachers. This clearly indicates the position of the Ministry 
of Education (MOE) with regard to pregnant teachers. Nevertheles, the religious 
managements, in charge of the majority of schools in Belize, control personnel isues in 
their schools, and so the MOE has been unable to extend maternity leave to unwed 
pregnant teachers in denominational schools. Furthermore, the policy to fire unwed 
pregnant teachers does not reflect the reality of Belizean life and the cultural perspectives 
of parenting in Belize. Jones states: 
 193 
Single parenting is common and is a conscious choice most women make; it is 
also a part of the cultural reality we live in today. While this isue was taboo 
years ago, it is now aceptable providing mature adults can provide for 
themselves financialy. Over the past years there has also been an increase in 
common-law relationships. More and more the younger population in the society 
is engaging in common-law unions before embarking on mariage. (13) 
In 2001, 58 percent of births were to unmaried women (CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). In 2000, 
the rate of female-headed households was 24 percent and in the Belize district, where the 
population is mostly Creole, the rate was 36 percent (CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). School 
managements are also alowed to give hiring preference to teachers who practice their 
faith. ?Acording to management, from this perspective, the chance of teachers or other 
employees starting a family before mariage is les likely to happen? (Jones 13). 
 The MOE took an important step towards ending the firing of unwed pregnant 
teachers in August 2000 with the publication of the Handbook of Policies and 
Procedures for School Services. The handbook states that ?al female teachers are 
entitled to receive maternity benefits from social security? (Jones 10). However, the 
handbook does not state that teachers must remain employed during this period so school 
managements could stil ?take action they deem appropriate and in the proces deny a 
teacher benefits she is entitled to? (10). The facts of the Roches case ilustrate the tension 
betwen church and state over this isue.  
 
Maria Roches v. Clement Wade 
 194 
 Maria Roches began teaching in 1999 at the Silver Crek Roman Catholic School. 
Within four years she moved to the San Pedro Columbia Roman Catholic School and 
then to the Santa Cruz Roman Catholic School, but throughout the duration of her 
teaching she worked for the Catholic Management in Belize.  
 Acording to the Catholic Management, on September 28, 2000, when Roches 
was hired to teach at the Santa Cruz Roman Catholic School in the Toledo district, she 
signed a contract agreing to live her life in acordance with Catholic beliefs around sex 
and mariage.
41
 The relevant section of the contract reads: 
As a Catholic Christian witnes, I wil take pride in my profesion by 
wilingly observing the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, such as, 
atendance at mas and other church services, being exemplary in conduct and 
language, and living Jesus? teaching on mariage and sex. 
I acept that if I fail to live up to these terms, I may be released from this 
Management.
42
  
Roches denies ever signing this contract and the justice hearing the case, the Honourable 
Abdulai Conteh, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Belize, found in her favor on this 
point. The contract that the Catholic Management provided at the trial had spaces for 
thre signatures: that of Roches; Benjamin Juarez, asistant local manager of Toledo 
Catholic Schools; and a witnes. Roches? name was printed above the signature line and 
the witnes line was left blank. Both of these facts were important for Conteh in his 
decision to believe Roches on this point. Furthermore, Roches supplied the court with a 
                                                
41
 My sumary of the facts in this case is based on Supreme Court records from April 30, 204 and Court 
of Apeal records from March 9, 205, including transcripts of the justice?s judgments and pre-trial 
afidavits submited by both the plaintif and the defendant.   
42
 The contract was submited as exhibit BAJ 4 with Juarez?s afidavit dated 31 March 204.  
 195 
copy of her University of Belize identification card, which had her signature on it. 
Conteh noted that the signatures on the card and the contract did not match, and that 
furthermore, the signature on the contract was not even a signature. Because of that, and 
because there was no witnes signature, Conteh found that Roches had not signed the 
contract. Although he did not pres the point, Conteh?s finding on this mater suggests 
that the Catholic Management forged the contract.  
Notwithstanding the court?s finding that the contract was fraudulent, the phrase 
?living Jesus? teaching on mariage and sex,? which was used in the contract, was 
repeatedly invoked by the Catholic Management in defense of their action to fire Roches. 
They used biblical pasages to explain Jesus? teaching on mariage and sex and to 
ilustrate the importance of this teaching. In particular, they invoked the following 
pasage from St. Paul?s Leters to the Corinthians: ?Know ye not that the unrighteous 
shal not inherit the Kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators nor idolaters, 
nor adulterers, not efeminate nor abusers of themselves? (1 Cor. 6:9).
 43
  
 In April of 2003, Roches informed Juarez that she was pregnant. Roches claims 
that the reason she told him at that time was to inquire about maternity leave. On June 
26, 2003, Roches went to se Juarez again. This time she was handed a leter, the text of 
which reads as follows: 
In view of the fact that you are not complying with the contract you made with the 
Toledo Catholic Schools Management to live acording to Jesus? teaching on 
mariage and sex, this management is hereby informing you that you wil be 
                                                
43
 This pasage is from the King James? Version of The Holy Bible. Conteh asked for a the pasage to be 
translated into contemporary English, so the Catholic Management also read into evidence the same 
pasage from the New American Bible: ?Do you not know that the unjust wil not inherit the Kingdom of 
God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor practicing 
homosexuals.? 
 196 
released from your duties as a teacher in this management efective August 31
st
, 
2003. Thank you for the services you rendered over the past years. 
Section 16 of the Education Act details the recourse a teachers has if fired. The first 
stage of appeal is the Chief Education Oficer (CEO). If he supports the dismisal, the 
teacher may then appeal his decision to an arbitration panel. Roches appealed her 
dismisal to the CEO of Belize, who agred that she had been unfairly treated. In a leter 
dated November 18, 2003, the CEO directed the Catholic Management to reinstate her 
because ?the reasons stated for release are not supported by the Education Rules.? The 
Catholic Management did not obey the CEO?s injunction. Several non-governmental 
organizations, including the Women?s Isue Network, the National Trade Union 
Congres of Belize, and the Belize National Teachers? Union, entreated the Catholic 
Management to reinstate Roches, but their pleas had no afect and so Roches filed suit in 
the Belize court system.  
 The lawsuit names Clement Wade as the defendant, but only as a representative of 
the Managing Authority of Catholic Public Schools. Roches? lawsuit aleges that the 
Catholic Management violated section 16(2) of the Belize Constitution by discriminating 
against her based on sex. Roches aleged that even though many female teachers had 
been fired for geting pregnant out of wedlock, male teachers were not fired for 
impregnating women out of wedlock. Roches further claimed that Catholic 
Management?s refusal to reinstate her after being told to do so by the CEO violated her 
right to work, as stated in section 15(1) of the Constitution.  
 The Catholic Management?s defense hinged on thre key isues. First, they 
argued that the Roman Catholic Church in Belize was not a public authority, but a private 
 197 
corporation. They contended that as a private corporation, they entered into a contract 
with Roches as a private employer and consequently could not be sued for a violation of 
the constitutional right of no discrimination. Second, they maintained that Roches was 
dismised because of a breach of contract. Although Conteh found that Roches had never 
signed a contract, he did consider this argument. That is, he considered whether the 
contract would have been enforceable if Roches had signed it. And third, the Catholic 
Management claimed that they had not administered their policy in a discriminatory 
manner. They maintained that the policy of dismising unwed teachers with children was 
applicable to both male and female teachers. In evidence of this they submited the 
dismisal leters for thre male teachers, two of which were handed out on the same day 
that Roches received her notification.  
 Conteh disagred with the Catholic Management?s argument that they were not a 
public entity. Basing his finding on the nature of the church-state partnership, he said: 
I find that it does not take a leap of faith to hold that in the field of education 
today in Belize, the respondent caries out important functions of enormous public 
ramifications and impact that it can reasonably and properly be regarded as the 
alter ego of the government, or its emanation, such as to make it a person or 
authority for the purposes of the Constitution?s prohibition against discrimination, 
and therefore amenable to redres for any aleged violation of the constitutionaly 
guaranted fundamental rights and fredoms. (19) 
 Conteh addresed the second and third elements of the Catholic Management?s 
defense together. His decision was based on the biological diferences betwen men and 
women. He did not question whether or not men had ever been fired by the Catholic 
 198 
Management for fathering a child outside of wedlock, but whether or not it was as likely 
for a man to be dismised for this breach of contract. Conteh maintained that men could 
easily avoid detection, while women never could. Because of the biological diferences 
betwen men and women ? the fact that women get pregnant, thus carying the proof of 
their parenthood on their body ? Conteh said that ?the unmaried female teacher [is] more 
directly open and vulnerable to the policy of [the Catholic Management] of releasing 
unmaried teachers because of pregnancy? (26). He concludes: ?I therefore find that the 
respondent?s policy is inherently and in fact, capable of afording diferent treatment to 
diferent persons, in this case male and female teachers, atributable wholly to their 
respective sex or gender: unmaried female teachers are the prime if not the exclusive 
targets of such a policy? (27). 
 In terms of Roches? alegation that the Catholic Management was remis in not 
following the orders of the CEO to reinstate her, Conteh found that the Catholic 
Management had, in fact, broken with the Education Act.
4
 He said that as a grant-in-aid 
school, the Santa Cruz Roman Catholic School and its management were under statutory 
obligation to adhere to the rules of the Education Act. Therefore, the Catholic 
Management was legaly required to follow an order from the MOE, in this case the 
CEO?s direction to reinstate Roches.  
 Furthermore, Conteh found that the Catholic Management did discriminate 
against Roches and that this discrimination was a violation of her constitutional rights 
under section 16(2) of the Belize Constitution. The verdict stated that the Catholic 
Management failed to follow its statutory obligations by not adhering to the CEO?s order 
to reinstate Roches. However, the verdict did not order the Catholic Management to 
                                                
4
 Se Rule 104(3) and Rule 108(g) of the Education Act. 
 199 
reinstate Roches. Conteh said, ?I am unable, given the facts of this case and the 
undoubted spiritual and moral position of the [Catholic Management], for which I have 
every sensitivity and respect, and coupled with the fact that Ms. Roches? contract is one 
of personal service as a teacher, to order her reinstatement in the [Catholic 
Management?s] employ? (36). The sum awarded to Roches for the violation of her 
constitutional rights was BZ$300,000 (US$150,000).  
 The Catholic Management appealed the Supreme Court?s decision to the Court of 
Appeal of Belize. Justices Mottley, Sosa, and Morrison heard the appeal and supported 
the Supreme Court?s verdict in favor of Roches. However, they determined that the 
amount awarded to Roches was excesive and reduced the sum to BZ$120,000 
(US$60,000). Despite the fact that the appelate court reduced the damages amount, their 
support for the Supreme Court?s decision was sen as an important succes by 
governmental and non-governmental women?s groups in Belize. 
 
Analysis 
 I end my disertation with an analysis of the Roches case because I think it is 
ilustrative of the conflict betwen the church and state in their joint efort to administer 
education. I think the Roches case points to thre principle problems with the church-
state partnership: First, the churches are resistant to oversight by the MOE; Second, some 
of the church policies run counter to the espoused goals of the government; Third, the 
church helps maintain Victorian gender norms and continues the practice of using 
women?s sexuality to stratify the society.  
 200 
The church openly questioned the authority of the MOE in the Roches case by not 
adhering to the order of the CEO. Although the court maintained that the Catholic 
Management was in eror, Conteh did not impose any punishment on the Catholic 
Management for that finding of fault. The damages awarded to Roches were exclusively 
for the violation of her constitutional rights, and although the Catholic Management?s 
refusal to reinstate Roches at the request of the CEO is clearly related to the violation of 
her constitutional rights, I think it is important to identify the Catholic Management?s 
flouting of the MOE's authority as a separate isue. The reforms of the last 15 years have 
centralized the education system, intending to take power away from the religious 
managements, and the churches are fighting to maintain their influence and control.   
 The churches in Belize are continualy praised for their work in the education 
system, but there is never an acknowledgement of the harm that they have caused. Part 
of the problem is that the history of the churches? complicity in colonialism is absent 
from the public consciousnes. Indeed, a history of education in Belize has never been 
published, and the paucity of historical analysis on the education system is fragmented 
and scatered throughout a few theses and disertations. My work aims to addres this 
problem by providing the first comprehensive history of education in Belize that focuses 
on the role of misionaries.  
 The second major problem that the Roches case ilustrates is the disconnect 
betwen the beliefs of the church and the goals of the government. The policies towards 
unwed pregnant teachers in religious and government-run schools are diferent. The 
policy of firing unwed pregnant teachers violates the government?s commitments to 
international treaties, including the Convention on the Elimination of Al Forms of 
 201 
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which I discuss below. Such firings are also 
an isue of human capital, as described by Jones: 
The isue of school policy and its implications for unwed female employees is an 
education and labour problem. Instead, it is viewed solely as a religious and 
moral isue?. If teachers are expected to produce students that are inteligent and 
can adequately function in today?s society, then the implications of [firing unwed 
pregnant teachers] on the system, mainly the children, should be examined 
criticaly. There is a loss of productivity when these teachers are forced out of the 
clasroom, and a loss of human resource capacity when children are not being 
taught by teachers who are the most qualified or who have developed a 
relationship with the clas. This adverse efect is critical regardles at what stage 
in the school year a teacher has to leave. (28-9) 
The third problem exemplified by the Roches case is the role churches play 
legitimating and naturalizing Victorian gender ideology and constructions of 
respectability that disempower women economicaly, politicaly, and socialy. Despite 
the significant changes that have come about as a result of governmental and non-
governmental action, ?gender stereotypes continue to dictate the economic, social, 
political and cultural lives of a majority of men and women in Belize? 
(CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). The socialization of traditional gender roles has had an important 
economic impact on Belizean women. Female participation in the labor force is 40 
percent, compared with 78 percent for males (WOM/1134). Although women are beter 
educated, they stil make les than their male counterparts, and women have twice the 
unemployment rate of men (WOM/1134). The 2000 Labor Force Survey found that 25 
 202 
percent of unemployed females had at least a secondary education compared to 16 
percent of unemployed males, indicating that employers may impose higher qualification 
requirements for women (CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). Gayla Fuller, coordinator of the 
Women?s Isues Network of Belize (WIN-Belize) says that even though women are 
beter educated than men, they are stil concentrated in ?pink collar? jobs (WOM/1134). 
This has been of particular importance given Belize?s two-tier minimum wage system.  
Up until 2002, domestic workers and shop asistants, who were mostly female, 
earned a lower minimum wage than manual laborers, who were mostly male. The 
diferent minimum wages were defended based on the value of the skils in the diferent 
sets of jobs, and not gender. Advocates for a change to the two-tiered system argued that 
the value of certain skils over others was about gender and in 2002 their arguments 
resulted in the government creating one minimum wage for al workers. Increases in the 
minimum wage for domestic jobs were achieved gradualy over the past five years, 
leveling out at BZ$3.00/hour. Joan Musa, president of the National Women?s 
Commision and First Lady of Belize, says that women also have a harder time geting 
loans, not because of outright discrimination, but because they do not posses collateral 
like land titles (WOM/1134).  
 Victorian gender roles also afect women?s aces to power. Belizean women are 
underepresented in high-level decision-making positions in public administration, the 
civil service, and private enterprise (WOM/1134). ?Traditional gender role practices and 
the seclusion of women in the domestic sphere discourage and inhibit women from 
engaging in activities that would alow them to reach decision-making structures. 
 203 
Political parties do not provide opportunities for women to advance political carers, and 
there are no stimuli for running in elections? (WOM/1134). 
 In her ethnographic research of Belize, Irma McClaurin found that a ?significant 
aspect of women?s personhood is a sexual identity shaped by secrecy, anxiety, distrust, 
and ambivalence? (69). She notes a number of ways that women?s sexuality is controlled 
in Belize. As in many other societies, women in Belize are controlled through 
expectations about appearance. Men may require that their wives wear conservative 
clothing and ?making one?s self atractive and desirable is a generaly suspect activity for 
a maried woman? (qtd. in McClaurin 69). McClaurin says men perpetuate a myth that 
women are les sexualy atractive after having children or while they are pregnant (69). 
Men may then use the woman?s diminishing atractivenes as an excuse for their own 
afairs. Certainly, encouraging someone to se herself as les sexualy atractive is a 
means of discouraging them from having other relationships by afecting their self 
estem. The efect on self estem ay also result in the woman feling like she cannot 
find another partner, with the consequence that she might stay in a les-than-satisfactory 
or even abusive relationship. In fact, the Women?s Department of Belize has stated that 
?one of the main obstacles to the advancement of women in society has been the manner 
in which young girls are socialized. Many women in Belize continue to suffer from a lack 
of self-estem, making them unwiling and unable to chalenge traditional gender 
stereotypes or to take on leadership roles? (CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4). McClaurin provides a 
quote from a Belizean woman to ilustrate the way patriarchal gender norms afect 
women?s fredom and mobility: ?I was mostly to myself before because my husband 
didn?t want me to be in any social gathering. Even in school I use not to go to the 
 204 
entertainment. So I felt like I was penned up, couldn?t talk to friends, couldn?t go out or 
go to any dance parties. Not like you fre, like confined, penned up? (69). 
 Religious constructions of respectability, another part of Victorian gender norms, 
have harmful efects for women and girls in Belize. In their 1999 testimony to the 
Women?s Anti-Discrimination Commite as part of their commitment to CEDAW, the 
Belize contingent emphasized the role churches play in preventing aces to sex 
education. They state that one of the biggest problems in fighting HIV/AIDS in Belize, 
which has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in Central America, is ?the Church?s reluctance 
to alow the Government and non-governmental organizations to teach HIV/AIDS 
prevention techniques in schools? (WOM/1134). Programs that focus exclusively on 
abstinence asociate sex with imorality, furthering colonial constructions of 
respectability. Moreover, these programs contribute to a climate of secrecy and 
ignorance. Elen, one of the women McClaurin interviewed explained her experience: 
I can remember at the age of thirten I started having my menstrual period. I 
didn?t know anything. I didn?t even hear about it, not even from one of my 
friends. I didn?t hear about this thing or I didn?t know about it. They didn?t leave 
anything around in the bathroom or anything. When I started having it, then I 
know what my sisters used to get a good whipping for in the kitchen or al over 
the place because if they slip and they leave one thing hanging around in the 
bathroom somewhere, my mom would beat them up. I didn?t know what she was 
whispering to them and whipping them for. Then when I got a dose of it, then I 
knew hat it was. (71-2) 
 205 
Discussing Elen?s story, McClaurin argues that ?lack of knowledge becomes a powerful 
tool of enculturation designed to limit women?s control over and understanding of their 
own bodies? and she points to the influence of Catholicism, particularly in schools, to 
explain the continuing ignorance and high rates of tenage pregnancy. 
 The Roches case ilustrates problems with the church-state partnership including 
isues around government oversight, the development of human capital, and gender 
equality, but the lawsuit also points to one important strategy for change. I think the 
lawsuit makes clear that international presure can be an important tool in standing up to 
the churches. In his judgment, Conteh directly references CEDAW, which Belize ratified 
on March 7
th
 of 1990. Conteh quotes Article 11, paragraph (2), subparagraph (a) of 
CEDAW: 
In order to prevent discrimination against women on the grounds of mariage or 
maternity and to ensure their efective right to work, State Parties shal take 
appropriate measures: 
(a) To prohibit, subject to the imposition of sanctions, dismisal on 
grounds of pregnancy or of maternity leave and discrimination in 
dismisals on the basis of marital status.  
Conteh reasons that finding in favor of the Catholic Management in the Roches case 
would violate Belize?s obligation under CEDAW. Belize?s ratification of CEDAW was 
an aset in this case and I think CEDAW, as wel as other international treaties, can 
provide the legal power to chalenge church policies that are detrimental to state or 
individual wel-being.  
 
 206 
Chapter 8: Conclusion 
 
At the start of this disertation, I asked one basic question: Why are girls? 
educational achievements not translating into greater economic, political, or social 
power? Despite the fact that girls are out-achieving their male counterparts in education 
the female unemployment rate is double the male rate, women remain in traditionaly 
female jobs, and women remain excluded from decision-making positions throughout the 
Anglophone Caribbean. In this disertation I suggested that in order to beter understand 
this disconnect betwen education and power, we need to analyze school culture. In the 
post-independence period ? particularly since the 1970s ? there has been a concerted 
efort to recognize and eliminate gender bias in schooling. These eforts have been 
tremendously succesful in terms of changes in textbooks and curricula. A look at 
primary school textbooks throughout the region wil demonstrate this with their use of 
both male and female protagonists doing activities outside of traditional gender norms. 
However, scholars like Olive Senior, Barbara Bailey, Elsa Leo-Rhynie, and V. Eudine 
Bariteau argue that despite these reforms much of school culture has remained 
unchanged. In the introduction I emphasized the importance of their arguments and 
situated the work of my disertation within this body of Caribbean feminist scholarship. 
As I discussed in the introduction, schools teach more than reading, writing, and 
arithmetic. They socialize a society?s basic belief structure ? including the expected 
behaviors for men and women ? and these beliefs create and maintain social hierarchies. 
Indeed, sociologists like Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis argue that education 
 207 
reproduces social clas while providing the ilusion of a meritocracy.
45
  To investigate 
the role of school culture in girls? achievements and the translation of these achievements 
into economic, political, and social power, I invoked the term ?hidden curriculum,? 
coined by Benson Snyder in 1971. The hidden curriculum is the set of beliefs, values, 
and mores that are extracurricular or paracurricular, implied, or tacitly conveyed. 
Because schools in the Anglophone Caribbean were initialy administered by misionary 
groups, and because the premier schools in the region are stil run by Christian 
organizations, in this disertation I focused on the influence of Christian beliefs on the 
hidden curriculum. Specificaly, I centered my analysis on two themes: Victorian gender 
roles and respectability, both of which I defined in the introduction. My project is 
informed by postcolonial theory and made use of multiple disciplinary methods 
In order to balance general understandings of the Anglo-Caribbean region with 
the specific knowledge of one country, my disertation is divided into two parts. In the 
first part, I looked at the Anglophone Caribbean as a whole, while in the second I focused 
on one country within the region, Belize. 
 
The Anglophone Caribean as a Region 
In order to justify my focus on the influence of Christianity, and in order to 
provide a context for the later chapters, in Chapter 2 I provided a history of Christian 
misionaries in the region. While writers like Eric Wiliams
46
 have writen histories of 
education in the Anglophone Caribbean, scholars like J.A. Mangan have focused on 
                                                
45
 Se their 1976 bok, Scholing in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of 
Economic Life. 
46
 Se Education in the British West Indies, 194. 
 208 
British imperial education, and Norman Etherington
47
 and Susan Thorne
48
 have looked at 
the symbiotic relationship betwen misionary proselytizing and imperial expansion, 
there is a paucity of work that makes connections betwen education, evangelism, and 
imperialism. Indeed, within the body of scholarship on the Anglophone Caribbean, my 
work in Chapter 2 is the first efort to look at these connections with a focus on gender.  
In Chapter 2 I began with Arthur Dayfoot?s argument in The Shaping of the West 
Indian Church: 1492-1962 that the use of religion as a unifying force in the Reconquista 
established a strategy that England later folowed in its eforts to colonize the New 
World. Then looking at the pre-emancipation period of British colonialism in the 
Anglophone Caribbean, I traced the role of proselytizing from the Papal Bulls, to Biblical 
justifications for and against slavery, to religious instruction for slaves. In the second 
part of the chapter, I looked at the formalizing of education after emancipation in 1838. 
The British colonial government determined that misionary groups were best equipped 
to administer education to the newly fred slaves and so provided grants to finance the 
efort while leaving the management to the churches. During the second half of the 19
th
 
and into the 20
th
 century the British government slowly centralized the education system 
throughout the empire, taking back some of the power misionary groups had over the 
administration of the education system. I argued that the early misionary management 
of schools has left a legacy on the hidden curriculum. 
I used Chapter 2 to make clear the symbiotic relationship betwen evangelism and 
empire, and based on this argument I asked whether the same elements of Christianity 
that encouraged pasivity and helped maintain social stratification during colonial rule 
                                                
47
 Se Misions and Empire, 205. 
48
 Se Congregational Misions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in 19
th
-Century England, 199. 
 209 
stil function today to encourage the underdevelopment of human resources, and rigid 
social hierarchies around gender, clas, and race. Schooling has become increasingly 
secular throughout the Anglophone Caribbean, particularly in the second half of the 
twentieth century as post-independence governments have worked to reform the 
education system. However, as Nathanial Samuel Murrel argues in his article, 
?Dangerous Memories, Underdevelopment, and the Bible in Colonial Caribbean 
Experience,? Christian beliefs are stil an important force in the collective culture of the 
region. Therefore, I argued in Chapter 2 that the preminence of Christian beliefs ? 
particularly, in reference to this disertation, the beliefs around women?s sexuality ? that 
were anchored in the society in large part through misionary administration of 
schooling, remain a powerful force even in the increasingly secular schools of the present 
day. This chapter functions as an important part of the overarching question of the 
disertation because if Christian beliefs stil influence the hidden curriculum of even 
secular schools, than it is clear that we need to investigate the role that these beliefs have 
in the disconnect betwen girls? achievements and women?s power in society. 
While Chapter 2 is useful in establishing the interconnected histories of 
misionary groups and the education systems throughout the region, my sources ? 
primarily mision histories and British colonial reports ? cannot provide an actual picture 
of the hidden curriculum. They do not record the smal-scale interactions betwen 
student and teacher, or student and student relations that contribute to the school culture. 
Indeed, there are litle if any records of this kind prior to independence. Therefore, in 
Chapter 3 I proposed an interdisciplinary method to help provide insight into the hidden 
curriculum ? the use of autobiographical literature. My use of literature in this chapter is 
 210 
untraditional in that I am not atempting to contribute to the body of Caribbean literary 
criticism. Rather, I se my audience as historians and educators. Therefore, I suggested 
that a look at the similarities in autobiographical literature that is set in the pre-
independence era and that focus on the schooling of the protagonist can help sketch out 
the hidden curriculum. I discussed George Lamings?s In the Castle of my Skin, Austin 
Clarke?s Growing Up Stupid under the Union Jack, Merle Hodge?s Crick Crack, Monkey, 
Merle Collins?s Angel, and Jamaica Kincaid?s Annie John and Lucy. In particular, I 
focused on the insight that these novels can provide in terms of how gender is presented 
in the hidden curiculum. I used these novels as a source of memory and in a way 
suggested by Barbara Omolade in her article ?The Silence and the Song: Toward a Black 
Woman?s History through a Language of Her Own,? which I discussed in the 
introduction. Omolade proposes that scholars break fre of the intelectual and 
disciplinary boundaries imposed by a Western-oriented academia. Building on her image 
of the ?griot historian? I suggested that an interdisciplinary understanding of literature 
from the Anglophone Caribbean can create a new source of knowledge.   
I did not claim that this literature can be directly interpreted in terms of present-
day schools. Of course, there are significant diferences betwen the time period of the 
novels and today. However, I did suggest that the images of the hidden curriculum in 
these novels can help provide a set of questions for understanding the hidden curriculum 
of present-day schools. They can tel us what to look for, and why it maters. Indeed, 
what might be most useful about these works is that they chronicle the efect of the 
hidden curriculum on the psyche of their protagonists. In this section I wanted to 
emphasize the incredible resource that these novels can be for educators and educational 
 211 
scholars, and to argue that disciplinary boundaries should not block the use of this 
resource.  
 
Belize 
In the second part of the disertation, I focused on one country within the 
Anglophone Caribbean, Belize, and in Chapters 4 and 5 I provided historical evidence 
that marked the ways in which Belize is both similar to, and diferent from, other 
countries in the region. Chapter 4 chronicled the unique history of Belize within the 
British Empire. I recorded Belize?s history as a ?forgotten? colony and the efects this 
had on the development of social services like education. Furthermore, because the focus 
of this disertation is gender, I demonstrated the way that women have been writen out 
of Belizean history. National stories about the establishment of the colony, slavery, and 
independence, contribute to both the formal and hidden curricula of schools. I argued 
that the absence of women in these historicaly important periods supports patriarchal 
expectations about men?s right to power in Belize. 
One of the most important diferences betwen the present-day education systems 
of Belize and those of the rest of the region
49
 is that the Belizean education system is run 
by a church-state partnership. While schools throughout the region have become 
increasingly secularized, this has not been true of Belize. Indeed, as I discussed in the 
introduction, this is one of the reasons I decided to focus on Belize. I wanted to know 
why Belize was diferent. In Chapter 4 I explained how Belize?s ?forgotten?-colony 
status afected the development of social institutions, and in Chapter 5 I traced the history 
                                                
49
 With the exception of St. Lucia. 
 212 
of misionary groups and how British colonial neglect created the opportunity for them to 
maintain a powerful role in the education system. 
In Chapter 6, I built on the methodology I developed in Chapter 3. In Chapter 3 I 
compared literature across the region in order to demonstrate related themes and how the 
novels can be useful in understanding the hidden curriculum. In Chapter 6, I use the 
literature in the same way, but I narowed my focus to one novel, Ze Edgel?s Beka 
Lamb, and how it can help us understand the hidden curriculum in one country, Belize. 
The story of Beka Lamb is particularly important in that it represents a topic that is stil a 
significant political isue. It is stil a site of conflict within the joint church/state 
administration of education. Set in the 1950s, Beka Lamb tels the tale of Toycie Qualo 
and her expulsion from school for becoming pregnant. While most schools wil now 
alow pregnant students to return to school after the birth of their child, and under certain 
conditions, the premise that a girl?s sexuality is the defining element of her character 
remains a strong component of the hidden curriculum. It is on this point that I argued for 
the usefulnes of Edgel?s novel. By chronicling the mental anguish of both Toycie and 
her best friend, Beka, Beka Lamb demonstrates the efect of this hidden curriculum on 
how girls se their value in society. As Beka Lamb demonstrates, traditional gender roles 
hurt more than just the individuals expeled or dismised. They hurt the psychological 
health of Belizean women generaly.  
As with Chapter 3, I did not claim that Beka Lamb acurately characterizes the 
present period. I acknowledge that there have been significant changes that have 
benefited many girls in the continuation of their schooling. However, I did argue that the 
novel can provide a set of questions to ask about the current system. To further 
 213 
demonstrate the relevance of Beka Lamb, I included reports from governmental and non-
governmental women?s groups which indicate that Victorian gender roles and religious 
constructions of respectability stil afect women and girls in Belize a half century after 
the time period of the novel 
To take this point further, and look at the relationship betwen Beka Lamb and the 
present-day education system, in Chapter 7 I analyzed a related isue: the firing of unwed 
pregnant teachers. I focused on the 2004 court case of Maria Roches v. Clement Wade, 
which brings into light the hidden curriculum around female sexuality. While the case 
focuses on how the hidden curiculum afects teachers, it is clear that the set of implied 
and overt mesages around female sexuality is part of the entire school culture, and thus 
afects students as wel.  
Religious groups benefit from a veil of righteousnes that alows their interests in 
present-day Belize to go largely unnoticed and unchecked. It is true that misionary 
activity in Belize has acomplished a lot of good for the Belizean people, but at what 
cost? And which groups in Belize have disproportionately borne this cost? It is important 
to note that intention is irelevant here. We must not fal into a postcolonial blindnes 
that forgets that the discourse of British imperialism also positioned British rule as a 
benefit to the people they colonized. There can be no doubt that many colonial officials 
believed that they were helping the people under their purview, too.  
I am not suggesting a wholesale rejection of religious influence in Belize, or even 
the adoption of the U.S. model of separation of church and state, but what I am 
suggesting is that the financial benefits of church interest in Belizean education should 
not absolve denominational institutions of critique. I think the lesons of this disertation 
 214 
can be applied to the Anglophone Caribbean as a region, where Christian schools stil 
retain power, and even for countries in the developing world generaly, because the 
finances of those governments often require them to acept help from religious groups.  
 
Suggestions for Further Research 
The questions of this disertation are of the utmost significance because 
postcolonial development is predicated on the connection betwen education and 
empowerment. As I discuss in the introduction, the United Nations has positioned 
education as necesary for the spread of democracy and the increased equality of men and 
women. In this disertation I prove that while education may be necesary, it is not 
sufficient. There needs to be a larger change in the way a society values women. There 
needs to be further research on the role of the hidden curriculum in the Anglophone 
Caribbean, and in postcolonial societies more generaly. Furthermore, the influence of 
donor organizations, which postcolonial countries are often dependent on, needs to be 
beter understood. 
In the last chapter I pointed to the positive role CEDAW played in the outcome of 
the Roches case. Unfortunately, CEDAW has not been as useful in al the countries that 
have ratified it. There is no obligation for member countries to implement the reforms 
suggested by CEDAW and so it can function as an empty political tool providing the 
ilusion of gender reform while not producing any real changes. Therefore, while the 
case of Belize demonstrates the possible benefits of CEDAW, it is also clear that 
CEDAW was only useful because the Belizean government did commit to CEDAW 
recommendations, and did submit regular reports to the commite. While CEDAW has 
 215 
been an empty declaration in many countries, I believe the Belize case demonstrates that 
we should not give up on it as a possible tool of gender reform. There needs to be further 
research into ways of making member countries more acountable to CEDAW. Belize 
has shown that international agrements do make a diference and can become a beacon 
of hope for women in their struggle for equal rights and justice.  
 
 
 
 216 
Works Cited 
 
Apple, Michael W. Ideology and Curriculum. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. 
Anderson, A.H. Brief Sketch of British Honduras. British Honduras Printing Department, 
1958. 
Ashcraft, Norman. Colonialism and Underdevelopment: Proces of Political Economic 
Change in British Honduras. New York: Teachers College Pres, 1973. 
--. ?Education and Economic Development in British Honduras.? Research paper. New 
York: Library Research Institute for the Study of Man, 1969. 
Ashcraft, Norman and Cedric Grant. ?The Patern of Education in a Developing Society: 
British Honduras as a Case Study.? Belmopan: Belize Archives Dept, 1990. 
Ashdown, Peter. ?The Growth of Black Consciousnes in Belize 1914-1919: The 
Background to the Ex-Servicemen?s Riot of 1919,? Belcast Journal of Belizean  
Afairs 2:2 (December 1985), 1-5.  
Bachus, M.K. Utilization, Misuse, and Development of human Resources in the Early 
West Indian Colonies. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Pres, 1990. 
Bailey, Barbara. Introduction, Part Thre. Gender: A Caribbean Multi-Disciplinary 
Perspective. Ed. Elsa Leo-Rhynie, Bailey, and Christine Barow. Kingston: Ian  
Randle, 1997. 130-32. 
--. ?Sexist Paterns of Formal and Non-Formal Education Programes: The Case of 
Jamaica.? Gender: A Caribbean Multi-Disciplinary Perspective. Ed. Elsa Leo-
Rhynie, Bailey, and Christine Barow. Kingston: Ian Randle, 1997. 144-58. 
Bariteau, V. Eudine. Confronting Power, Theorizing Gender: Interdisciplinary 
 217 
Perspectives in the Caribbean. Jamaica: U of the West Indies P, 2003.  
Beals, Paul W. ?A Study of Educational and Ocupational Perceptions in Belize (British  
Honduras), Central America.? George Peabody College for Teachers, 1973. 
Bederman, Gail. Manlines and Civilization. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. 
Bennet, Joseph A. ?Goals, Priorities and the Decolonization of Education in Belize.? 
Belizean Studies 7.5 (1979): 18-23. 
Beson, Jean. ?Reputation & Respectability Reconsidered: A New Perspective on Afro- 
Caribbean Peasant Women.? Women & Change in the Caribbean: A Pan-
Caribbean Perspective. Ed. Janet H. Momsen. Kingston: Ian Randle, 1993. 15-37. 
Bolland, O. Nigel. ?African Continuities and Creole Culture in Belize Town in the 
Ninetenth Century.? ACIJ Research Review 2 (1987): 63-82. 
--. Belize: a New Nation in Central America. Boulder: Westview Pres, 1986. 
--. Colonialism and Resistance in Belize: Esays in Historical Sociology. Benque Viejo 
del Carmen, Belize: Cubola Productions, 2003. 
--. The Formation of Colonial Society: Belize, from Conquest to Crown Colony. 
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1977. 
--. ?Religious Influences on Education and Politics in Colonial Belize.? Before and After 
1865: Education, Politics and Regionalism in the Caribbean. Eds. Brian Moore 
and Swithin Wilmot. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1998. 
--. ?The Social Structure and Social Relations of the Setlement in the Bay of Honduras 
(Belize) in the 18
th
 Century.? Journal of Caribbean History 6 (1973): 1-42. 
--. ?Systems of Domination after Slavery: The Control of Land and Labor in the British 
 218 
West Indies after 1838.? Comparative Studies in Society and History 23.4 (1981): 
591-619. 
Bolland, O. Nigel and Asad Shoman. ?Clas, Ethnicity and Politics in Belize.? 21
st
 
Annual Caribbean Studies Asociation Conference. 27-31 May 1996. San Juan, 
Puerto Rico: San Juan Mariott Hotel. 
Bolles, Lynn. Sexuality, and the Political Economy of Tourism in Latin America and the 
Caribbean. Paper presented at the Society for Applied Anthropology Metings, 
April 9, 2005.  
Booker, Keith and Dubraka Juraga. The Caribbean Novel in English: An Introduction. 
Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2001.  
Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational 
Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. New York: Basic Books, 1976. 
Brereton, Bridget. ?General Problems and Isues in Studying the History of Women.? 
Gender in Caribbean Development. Eds. Patricia Mohamed and Catherine 
Shepard. Mona, JA: University of West Indies Pres, 1988.  
?British Honduras.? The Honduras Almanack for 1826. 
Brizan, George. Grenada: Island of Conflict. London: Macmilan Education Ltd., 1998. 
Bromley, Roger. ?Reaching a Clearing: Gender and Politics in Beka Lamb.? Wasafiri 1.2 
(Spring 1985): 10-14. 
Brown, Monica, Yasmen Yusuf-Khalil, and Barbara Bailey. Gender Isues in  
Caribbean Education: A Manual for Teacher Education. Ed. Bailey. Prepared for 
the Caribbean Community Secretariat CARICOM by The Centre for Gender and 
 219 
Development Studies, Regional Coordinating Unit. Mona: The University of the 
West Indies, 2000.  
Burdon, Sir John Alder. Archives of British Honduras. 3 vols. London: Sifton Praed and 
Co., 1931-1935.  
Burton, Antoinete. Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial 
Culture, 1865-1915. Chapel Hil: U of North Carolina P, 1994. 
Bury, Herbert. A Bishop Amongst Bananas. London: Wels Gardner, Darton & Co., Ltd., 
1911. 
Caiger, Stephen Langrish. British Honduras, Past and Present. London: George Alen & 
Unwin, Ltd., 1951. 
CEDAW/C/BLZ/3-4 (Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against 
Women). Consideration of Reports Submited by States Parties Under Article 18 
of the CEDAW: Combined Third and Fourth Periodic Reports of States Parties. 
26 September 2005. <http:/ww.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/39ses.htm>. 
CEDAW/C/BLZ/A/54/38,paras.31-69. Concluding Observations of the CEDAW: Belize. 
25 June 1999. CEDAW Twenty-First Sesion. 25 June 1999. 
<http:/ww.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw-/21ses.htm>. 
CEDAW/C/BLZ/Q/4/Add.1. Response to the List of Isues and Questions with Regard to  
the Consideration of the Combined Third and Fourth Periodic Report: Belize. 
CEDAW Pre-Sesion Working Group Thirty-Ninth Sesion. 24 April 2007. 
<http:/ww.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/39ses.htm>. 
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. ?Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History.? The Postcolonial 
 220 
Studies Reader. Eds. Bil Ashcroft, Gareth Grifiths, and Helen Tifin. New 
York: Routledge, 1995. 
Christian, Barbara. ?The Race for Theory.? The Postcolonial Studies Reader. Eds. Bil 
Ashcroft, Gareth Grifiths, and Helen Tifin. New York: Routledge, 1995. 
-. ??Somebody Forgot to Tel Somebody Something?: African-American Women?s 
Historical Novels.? Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afra-American Culture and the 
Contemporary Literary Renaisance. Eds. Joanne M. Braxton and Andr?e Nicola 
McLaughlin. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990. 326-41. 
Clarke, Austin. Growing Up Stupid under the Union Jack. Kingston: Ian Randle 
Publishers, 2003. 
Clegern, Wayne M. British Honduras: Colonial Dead End, 1859-1900. Baton Rouge: 
Louisiana State University Pres, 1967.  
Cleghorn, Robert. A Short History of Baptist Misionary Work in British Honduras: 
1822-1939. London: The Kingsgate Pres, 1939. 
Clif, Michele. Abeng. New York: Plume Books, 1995. 
Coates, Martha J. ?Indigenous and Imported Primary School Textbooks in Belize: A 
Comparative Study. Dis. University of Otawa (Canada), 1997. 
Collins, Merle. Angel. Seatle: Seal Pres, 1988. 
--. "The Leson."  In Words Unchained: Language and Revolution in Grenada. Ed. 
Chris Searle. London: Zed Books, 1984. 138-40. 
Cooper, Gilian. ?Freire and Theology.? Studies in the Education of Adults 27.1 (1995): 
66-79. 
Crowe, Frederick. The Gospel in Central America; Containing a Sketch of the Country, 
 221 
Physical and Geographical ? Historical and Political ? Moral and Religious: A 
History of the Baptist Mision in British Honduras and of the? London: Charles 
Gilpin, 1850. 
Dayfoot, Arthur Charles. The Shaping of the West Indian Church, 1492-1962. 
Gainesvile: University Pres of Florida, 1999. 
Dobson, Narda. A History of Belize. Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago: Longman  
Group, 1973. 
Down, Lorna. ?Singing One?s Own Song: Women and Selfhood in Recent West Indian  
Fiction.? Dis. University of the West Indies, 1985. 
Eagleton, Tery. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis: The U of Minnesota P, 
1996.  
Easter, B.H. Report of an Inquiry into the Educational System of British Honduras 1933- 
1934. Belize: Government Printer, 1935. 
Edgel, Alvin. ?Development is a State, or Spate, of Minds.? SPEAReports 9 (1993): 
121-142. 
Edgel, Ze. Beka Lamb. Caribbean Writers Series: Caribbean Writers Series. London: 
Heinemann, 1982. 
Edmonson, Belinda. Making of Men: Gender Literary Authority, and Women?s Writing in  
Caribbean Narrative. Durham: Duke UP, 1999. 
Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International 
Politics. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989. 
Etherington, Norman. Introduction. Misions and Empire. Ed. Etherington. Oxford 
History of the British Empire Companion Ser. Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 
 222 
2005. 1-18. 
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markman. New York:  
Grove Pres, 1967. 
--. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Pres, 2004. 
Fernandez, Fernandez, J., Belize: A Case Study for Democracy in Central America. 
Athenaeum Pres Limited, 1989.  
Freman, Carla. High Tech and High Hels in the Global Economy: Women, Work, and 
Pink-Collar Identities in the Caribbean. Durham: Duke University Pres, 2000. 
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppresed. 20
th
 ed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New 
York: Continuum, 1997. 
Findlay, Eilen Suarez. Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto  
Rico, 1870-1920. Durham: Duke UP, 1999. 
Gadsby, Walter. On the Shores of the Caribbean Sea: Stories of Far-Of British  
Honduras. J.W. Butcher, London. 1910. 
Gordon, Shirley. A Century of West Indian Education. London: Longmans, 1963. 
--. Reports and Repercussions in West Indian Education 1835-1933. England: Ginn and 
Company Limited, 1968. 
Grant, Cedric Hilburn, The Making of Modern Belize: Politics, Society & British  
Colonialism in Central America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1976. 
Gren, Andy. Education and the Nation State. New York: St. Martin?s Pres, 1997. 
Hamilton, Marlene. ?The Availability and Suitability of Educational Opportunities for 
Jamaican Female Students: An Historical Overview.? Gender: A Caribbean  
Multi-Disciplinary Perspective. Ed. Elsa Leo-Rhynie, Barbara Bailey, and  
 223 
Christine Barow. Kingston: Ian Randle, 1997. 133-43. 
Hansen, Holger Bernt, and Michael Twaddle, eds. Christian Misionaries & the State in 
the Third World. Oxford: James Currey, 2002. 
Hargreave, David. ?Power and the Paracurriculum.? 
Hart, Richard. From Ocupation to Independence: A Short History of the Peoples of the 
English-Speaking Caribbean Region. London: Pluto Pres, 1998.  
Henderson, George. An Acount of the British Setlement of Honduras; Being a Brief 
View of its Commercial and Agricultural Resources, Soil, Climate, Natural 
History, Etc. To Which Are Added, Sketches of the Manners and Customs of the 
Mosquito Indians, Preceded by the? London: C. and R. Baldwin, 1809.  
Hitchen, Peter. ?State and Church in British Honduran Eduction, 1931-1939.? History of 
 Education 29.3 (2000): 195-211. 
Hodge, Merle. ?Chalenges of the Struggle for Sovereignty: Changing the World versus 
Writing Stories.? Caribbean Women Writers: Esays from the First International 
Conference. Ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Welesley: Calaloux Publications, 1990. 
202-8.  
--. Crick Crack, Monkey. Caribbean Writers Ser. London, Heinemann, 1981. 
Holmes, Brian. ?British Imperial Policy and the Mision Schools.? Educational Policy 
and the Mision School. New York: Routledge, 1967.  
Huxley, Aldous. Beyond the Mexique Bay.  
Johnson, Walace R. A History of Christianity in Belize: 1776-1838. Lanham: University 
Pres of America, 1985. 
Jaramilo, Ruth. National Composite Policy Index ? 2006. Belize City: National (Belize) 
 224 
AIDS Commite, 31 December 2005. 
Jones, Sandra. ?Examination of Discriminatory Behaviors and Practices Within the 
Education System.? Research paper. Women?s Department, Ministry of Human 
Development. Belize City: Belize, 2001.  
Kincaid, Jamaica. Annie John. New York: Farar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. 
--. Lucy. New York: Plume-Penguin Group, 1991. 
Knight, Franklin W. The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism. 2
nd
 ed. 
New York: Oxford University Pres, 1990. 
Laming, George. In the Castle of My Skin. Ann Arbor Paperbacks-University of 
Michigan Pres, 1991. 
--. The Pleasures of Exile. Ann Arbor Paperbacks-University of Michigan Pres, 1992. 
Lange, Elizabeth. ?Fragmented Ethics of Justice: Freire, Liberation Theology and  
Pedagogies for the Non-Poor.? Convergence 31.1-2 (1998): 81-94. 
Lauwerys, J.A. ?Preface.? Educational Policy and the Mision School: Case Studies from 
the British Empire. New York: Routledge, 1967. 
Lazarus-Black, Mindie. Legitimate Acts and Ilegal Encounters: Law and Society in  
Antigua and Barbuda. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Pres, 1994.  
Louri?, Sylvain. Belize, A View of Educational Growth and Change. UNESCO Report. 
1975. 
Lundgren, Nancy. ?Socialization of Children in Belize: Identity, Race and Power Within  
 the World Political Economy.? Dis. University of Masachusets Amherst, 1987. 
Macpherson, Anne. ?Those Men Were So Coward: The Gender Politics of Social 
 225 
Movements and State Formation in Belize, 1912-1982.? Dis. University of 
Wisconsin-Madison, 1998. 
Macpherson, Anne S. ?Women's Activism in the Nationalist Movement and the 
Gendered Creation of State Hegemony in Belize, 1950-1960.? Thesis (M.A.)-
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1992. 
Mangan, J.A., ed. ?Benefits Bestowed?? Education and British Imperialism. Studies in  
Imperialism Ser. Manchester: Manchester University Pres, 1988. 
Mayhew, Arthur. Education in the Colonial Empire. London: Gren and Co., 1938. 
McClaurin, Irma. Women of Belize: Gender and Change in Central America. New York: 
Rutgers, 1996.  
McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial 
Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995.  
Miler, Erol L. Educational Research: The English-Speaking Caribbean. Otawa, 
International Development Research Centre, 1984. 
--. ?Teacher Development in the Caribbean.? Economic Development Institute (EDI) 
Conference 21-23 April 1999. Trinidad & Tobago. 
--. ?Teacher Education and Training Policies in the Commonwealth Caribbean.? 
PRELAC Journal 0 (August 2004): 65-83. 
Ministry of Education (Belize). Abstract of Education Statistics 1999-2000. Belize City: 
Ministry of Education. 
--. Ministry of Education Action Plan 2005-2010. Belmopan: Ministry of Education, 
2004. 
Ministry of Human Development (Belize). Belize: Country Report on Progres Since 
 226 
Mexico Consensus 2004. Belize: Women?s Department, August 2007. 
--. Belize?s Report in Preparation for the XXVII Meting of the Presiding Oficers of 
the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean. Belize: 
Women?s Department, 11 July 2005.  
--. On the Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (1995) and the Outcome of 
the Twenty-third Special Sesion of the General Asembly (2000). Belize: 
Women?s Department, April 2004. 
Moberg, Mark. ?Crown Colony as Banana Republic: The United Fruit Company in 
British Honduras, 1900-1920.? Journal of Latin American Studies 28.2 (1996): 
357-82. 
Moody-Freman, Julie. ?Reconfiguring the Body Politic: the Politics of history and 
Gender in Ze Edgel?s Novels.? Dis. University of Ilinois, 2000. 
Mosse, George. Nationalism and Sexuality. 
Moyne Commision. Moyne Report. 1940. 
Murrel, Nathaniel Samuel. "Dangerous Memories, Underdevelopment, and the Bible in  
Colonial Caribbean Experience." Religion, Culture, and Tradition in the 
Caribbean. New York: St. Martin's Pres, 2000. 9-35. 
Nain, Gema Tang, and Barbara Bailey, eds. Gender Equality in the Caribbean: Reality 
of Ilusion. Prepared by the Caribbean Community Secretariat CARICOM with  
the UNIFEM Caribbean ofice. Kingston: Ian Randle, 2003. 
Newson, Adele S. Winds of Change: The Transforming Voices of Caribbean Writers and  
Scholars. Peter Lang, 1998 
O?Calaghan, Evelyn. Woman Version: Theoretical Approaches to West Indian Fiction  
 227 
by Women. St. Martin?s Pres, New York: 1993.  
Omolade, Barbara. ?The Silence and the Song: Toward a Black Woman?s History  
through a Language of Her Own. Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afra-American  
Culture and the Contemporary Literary Renaisance. Eds. Joanne M. Braxton 
and Andr?e Nicola McLaughlin. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990. 282-295. 
Palacio, A. ?Teacher Training in Our Country.? Belmopan: Belize Archives Dept, 1965. 
Paquet, Sandra. The Novels of George Lamming. London: Heinemann, 1982. 
Paravisini, Lizabeth and Barbara Webb. Caribbean Women Writers. Ed. Harold Bloom. 
Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1997. 
Pary, Odete. Male Underachievement in High School Education in Jamaica, Barbados 
and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Kingston: Canoe Pres, 2000. 
Paterson, Richard. Caribbean Passages: A Critical Perspective on New Fiction from the 
West Indies. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998. 
Pery, Donna. "Jamaica Kincaid." Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out. Ed. Donna Pery. 
New Brunswick: Rutgers University Pres, 1993. 127-41. 
Peter, G.S.V. ?Report on Secondary Education in British Honduras.? Barbados: Hastings 
House, 1955. 
Porter, Andrew. Religion Versus Empire?: British Protestant Misionaries and Overseas 
Expansion, 1700-1914. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2004  
Reddock, Rhoda E., ed. Interogating Caribbean Masculinities: Theoretical and  
Empirical Analysis. Mona, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Pres, 2004. 
Renk, Kathlen. Caribbean Shadows and Victorian Ghosts: Women?s Writing and  
Decolonization. Charlottsvile: UP of Virginia, 1999. 
 228 
Roches, Maria v. Clement Wade. No. 132, 2004. Supreme Court of Belize. 12 October 
2004. 
--. for related appelate case, se ?Wade, Clement.? 
Rogozinksi, Jan. A Brief History of the Caribbean: From the Arawak and the Carib to the 
 Present. New York: Meridian-Penguin Books, 1992. 
Rooke, Patricia. ?Slavery, Social Death and Imperialism: The Formation of a Christian  
Black Elite in the West Indies.? Making Imperial Mentalities. Ed. J.A. Mangan. 
Manchester: Manchester UP, 1990.  
Rutheiser, Charles. ?Culture, Schooling, and Neocolonialism in Belize.? Dis. Johns 
Hopkins University, 1990. 
Sadker, David. ?An Educator?s Primer on the Gender War.? Women: Images and Reality, 
a Multicultural Anthology. Ed. Amy Keselman, Lily D. McNair, and Nancy 
Schniedewind, and Suzanne Keley. 4
th
 ed. Boston: McGraw-Hil, 2008. 75-83. 
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1979. 
Saint Catherine Academy School Policies. St. Catherine Academy. 1 October 2007. 
<http:/ww.sca.edu.bz/index.php?section=33>. 
Salick, Roydon. ?The Martyred Virgin: A Political Reading of Ze Edgel's Beka  
Lamb.? ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature. 32.4 (2001): 107-
18. 
Sanchez, I.C. ?Historical Development of Education, 1816-1962.? Extract of report. 
London: Institute of Education London University, 1963. 
Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the Oppresed. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2000.  
Senior, Olive. Working Miracles: Women?s Lives in the English-Speaking Caribbean. 
 229 
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.  
Setzekorn, Wiliam David. Formerly British Honduras: A Profile of the New Nation of 
 Belize. Chicago: Ohio University Pres, 1975. 
Shepherd, Verene, ed. Women in Caribbean History: The British-Colonised Teritories. 
Oxford: James Currey Ltd., 1999.  
Shepherd, Verene, Bridget Brerton, and Barbara Bailey, eds. Engendering History: 
Caribbean Women in the Historical Perspective. Kingston: Ian Randle, 1995. 
Shoman, Asad. 13 Chapters of a History of Belize. Ed. Anne S. Macpherson. Belize 
City, The Angelus Pres Ltd., 1994. 
--. Backtalking Belize. Belize City: The Angelus Pres Ltd., 1995. 
Simons, Diane. Jamaica Kincaid. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994.  
Soyinka, Wole. Ake: The Years of Childhood. New York: Vintage, 1983. 
SPEAR (Society for the Promotion of Education and Research: Advocating for Change in 
Beilze) Web site. 1 October 2007 <http:/ww.spear.org.bz/history.htm>. 
Sterling, John. Report. 1835. 
Stoler, Ann. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial 
Rule. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002.  
Sutherland, Anne. The Making of Belize: Globalization in the Margins. Westport: Bergin  
and Garvey, 1998.  
Thomas, Ena. ?Crick Crack Monkey: A Picaresque Perspective.? Ed. Selwyn Cudjoe. 
Caribbean Women Writers: Esays from the First International Conference. 
Welesley, Masachusets: Calaloux Publications, 1990.  
Thorne, Susan. Congregational Misions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in 19
th
? 
 230 
Century England. Stanford: Stanford University Pres, 1999.  
Torres, Carlos Alberto. The Church, Society, and Hegemony: A Critical Sociology of 
Religion in Latin America. Trans. Richard A. Young. Westport: Praeger, 1992. 
Twaddle, Michael. ?Christian Misions and the State in the Third World.? Oxford: James 
Currey, 2002.  
UN CRC (Commite on the Rights of the Child). Children and Adolescents in Belize, 
2004. 
--. Commite on Rights of Child Concludes Consideration of Belize Report on  
Compliance with Convention. Pres release. 1999. 
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Report of 
the UNESCO Educational Planning Mision to British Honduras: June 22
nd
 ? 
August 14
th
, 1964. Ed. C.L. Germanacos, M. Gaskin, and S. Syrimis. Paris: 
UNESCO, 1964. 
US Department of State. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices ? 2004: Belize. 
Washington: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 28 February 2005.  
Vega, Jos? Antonio. ?A Qualitative Analysis on the Efectivenes of Jesuit Education in  
Belize.? Dis. St. Louis University, 1998. 
Waddel, D.A.G. British Honduras: A Historical and Contemporary Survey. London: 
Oxford University Pres, 1961.  
Wade, Clement v. Maria Roches. No. 5, 2004. Court of Appeal of Belize. 9 March 2005. 
Welter, Barbara. ?The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.? American Quarterly. 18:2  
(1966): 151-174. 
Wilentz?s, G. ??One Life is not Enough?: An Interview ith Ze Edgel.? 
 231 
Wiliams, Eric. Capitalism & Slavery. New York: Capricorn Books, 1966. 
--. Education in the British West Indies. Brooklyn: A & B ooks Publishers, 1994. 
--. From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492-1969. New York: 
Vintage Books, 1984. 
Wilinsky, John. Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire?s End. Minneapolis: 
University of Minnesota Pres, 1998. 
WOM/1134. Customs Impede Women?s Opportunities in Belize, Despite Legal 
Protection, Women?s Anti-Discrimination Commite Told. 14 June 1999. UN 
pres release. <http:/ww.un.org/News/Pres/docs/1999/19990614.wom-
1134.html>. 
WOM/1135. Government of Belize Must Addres Lack of Legal Rights for Informal 
Relationships, Women?s Anti-Discrimination Commite Told. 14 June 1999. UN 
pres release. <http:/ww.un.org/News/Pres/docs/1999/19990614.wom-
1135.html>. 
WOM/1140. Lacking Contraceptive Advice, Belize?s Current Health Policy ?Obviously 
Not Working?, First Lady of Belize Tels Anti-Discrimination. 18 June 1999. UN 
pres release. <http:/ww.un.org/News/Pres/docs/1999/19990618.wom-
1140.html>. 
Wright, Wilma. ?Education Reform in Belize: The Relationship Betwen Teacher 
Characteristics and Stages of Concern.? Dis. University of Louisvile, 2005. 
Yuval-Davis, Nira. Gender and Nation. London: Sage Publications, 1997.