Catholic Education in Trinidad and Tobago: The Twentieth Century

J. Matthew Feheney, Catholic Education in Trinidad and Tobago: The Twentieth Century, Cork: Iverus Publications, 2010, viii + 217 pp.Although recent works have taken issue with the church for its promo- tion of English culture through the education system, that institution has played an integral role in the establishment, development and pro- motion of education in the English-speaking Caribbean and other parts of the region.1 The work under review, which addresses this integral role, is a follow up to an earlier work by the same author, published in 2001 and entitled, Catholic Education in Trinidad in the Nineteenth Century.In this six-chapter volume, Feheney continues the examination of the Catholic Church’s contribution to education in Trinidad and Tobago by focusing on the twentieth century. The author acknowledges that a work of this nature might be viewed by its readers as an apologia (p. vii). How- ever, he attempts to dismiss this view by arguing that no such intention motivated his engagement in this project. Rather, he claims that his main interest was to give his readers an accurate and up-to-date account of the Catholic Church’s activities in the field of education through the examination of primary sources from the Colonial Office, Laws of Trinidad and Tobago and other government documents, as well as not hitherto used correspondence from Catholic priests and teachers. Fur- ther newspaper and magazine articles relating to the Catholic Church and education provided important source materials. With these sources, Feheney claims that he has been able to provide important, and what he considers accurate, information on events and dates highlighting the links between the Catholic Church and education. Above all, he has been able to link these events to important developments, such as nationalism and anti-colonial struggles in Trinidad. Essentially, Feheney posits that through its effort in education the Catholic Church has played an integral role in the creation and development of a local intelligentsia which led Trinidad through its struggles for independence, which was eventually granted by Britain in 1962.The work has indeed highlighted some very important inputs of the church in education in the twin-island republic of Trinidad and Tobago, chief of which is its examination of the Catholic Education Board of Management formed in the 1920s. This board, the author argues, has played an integral part in establishing and maintaining stringent and rigid teaching standards in Catholic schools. In extolling this achievement, he proudly argues that, while standards in state-controlled schools were deteriorating during the early twentieth century, those in Catholic institutions were improving, a situation which enabled Catholic schools to attract a large number of non-Catholic students even to today. Non-Catholics currently account for 55 per cent of the student body in Catholic schools. Feheney argues that another significant contribution of the church was the “1998 Condorcet” which, according to him, was an attempt to improve standards in all schools in the country by formalizing relations between the Catholic Church and secular stakeholders in education, in order to maintain agreed standards (p. 21).The book places much emphasis on the issue of the separation of church and state during the 1950s and early 1960s, an era when anticolonial fervour was at its height. The state at this time was bent on playing a greater role in directing the path which education should take, a development which could be considered radical. Feheney points out that the church, in taking a more conservative position, resisted such intervention on the grounds (as Finbar Ryan, archbishop of Port of Spain from 1956 to 1961, enunciated) that the church had a “right” to fulfil “its own duty”, which the state “must respect”