Speeches

Mucurapo Girls RC School Assembly

Address by Dr. Roy L. Austin, U.S. Ambassador
Mucurapo Girls RC School Assembly
Tuesday, October 28, 2003, at 10:00am

Principal Thecla Bronte Tinkew
Teachers
Parents
Distinguished Guests
Students

Good morning!!

I am delighted and honored to be here with you. Students, almost all of you must have parents and/or grandparents who can tell you that in their youth the opportunity to obtain a secondary education was limited to the few who were brilliant enough to obtain a scholarship (exhibition), and that relatively small group who could afford to pay the fees to attend secondary school. I belonged to that second group, my parents making a tremendous sacrifice to pay $14.88 per term to help me obtain my secondary education. I owe my parents much more than I can ever repay, and thank them for their stellar contribution to my education.

Students, you are rather young. Yet you, too, I am certain, owe a considerable debt of gratitude to many people: parents and other relatives; teachers and administrators; classmates, other schoolmates, and generous neighbors. Please stand and show how much you appreciate their contribution, financial and otherwise, to your attainment of your current level of educational success. They deserve a lusty round of applause.

You probably have not noticed that I omitted an important entity from those I listed as deserving of applause. I did not ask you to say thanks to your nation. Already, I see the question why painted on your faces. You can readily understand why your parents and teachers and others previously mentioned should be thanked. But why your nation?

Do you remember that I spoke of the difficulty that earlier Caribbean generations experienced in obtaining a secondary education? Do you remember that my parents paid a fee for me to attend secondary school? Well, despite the difficulty so many of us encountered to obtain a secondary education, I owe a debt of gratitude to St. Vincent for my early education. The secondary school that I attended, the St. Vincent Grammar School, could not provide me with the education that I received without the financial support of the government. I must, therefore, thank St. Vincent for bearing some of the cost of educating me.

You do not need to think of whether your parents can pay a fee to send you to secondary school because your country has made attendance at secondary school free. When you remember that secondary education was not always free in Trinidad and Tobago, and how difficult it was for some earlier generations to attend secondary school in this country, you certainly should understand that you owe your country a debt of gratitude just for this gift.
So far, I have assumed that you realize how important a secondary education is to the kind of life you will have. If you have any doubt, let me borrow the words of some people whose statements seem mighty convincing. Here is what someone you should know says:

Children go to school and learn well
Otherwise later in life you go catch real hell!
Without an education in your head
Your whole life will be misery;
You’re better off dead
For there is simply no room
In this whole wide world
For an uneducated little boy or girl
Don’t allow idle companions to lead you astray
To earn tomorrow you got to learn today.

Who is the composer of these lyrics? Slinger Francisco, the man you also know as the Mighty Sparrow.

What your nation is doing for you may also be understood by paying attention to the words of former U.S. President from 1964 to 1968 Lyndon Johnson: “At the desk where I sit, I have learned one great truth. The answer for all our national problems, the answer for the problems of the world, comes down to a single word. The word is education.”

Now how can you thank your nation? Certainly President Johnson’s statement suggests that you can try to solve one of Trinidad’s major problems (can someone name me a major problem in Trinidad?); but you will probably agree that you first need to get more education than you presently have. How do you improve your education?

Mrs. Bronte Tinkew told me that you should all be taking the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) at the end of this school year. Some of you may not regard this exam as much of a challenge. You have already performed so well in school that you feel certain that you can do well enough to be accepted by a secondary school. However, most of you may have the goal of acceptance by a particular school. I applaud you on being selective, especially if you are aiming at attending the very best. But you must also be realistic. Everybody will not be accepted by the school he/she considers the best. Nevertheless, it does not hurt to aim at reaching the stars. If you fall short, you should still reach the top of a mountain. It is those who aim low who are likely to fall short of any worthwhile accomplishment.

Now if you are hoping to attend a better than average school, you know that to be accepted by the school of your choice you must turn in a good performance. Even if your success in school so far is not particularly good, you should still aim at the best and work to reach it. Of course, you may need to work harder than the student who has always done well; but you must have heard someone say “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” I hope that every student here this morning intends to give an excellent account of herself on this important exam. Your teachers, your parents, all those persons who care about you desire an outstanding performance from you. Most importantly, you must believe in yourself, expect the best of yourself, and make the effort to ensure that you accomplish your goal.

Many of you may have parents who are paying money they can scarcely afford for extra lessons to help you do well. Obviously, neither the money your parents expend nor your desire to do well will mean much if you do not exert great effort to learn in school and outside of school. My primary school principal, a deeply religious woman, always reminded us of the importance of exerting maximum effort if we wished to be successful. She would constantly recite this poem:

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight
But they while their companions slept
Were toiling upward in the night. (REPEAT)

Undoubtedly, the perseverance that this poem addresses helps to determine educational success. I hold the position that I do today because I worked hard; yet this poem always brings to mind one of my friends who apparently worked even harder. He was not ashamed to tell us that he often slept on the floor instead of on his bed so that he could arise earlier in the morning to put in some extra hours of studying. I am not advocating that you follow this practice, unless you find that it works for you. I will tell you that my friend who followed the practice was educationally and occupationally successful. Let me say again that you must do what works for you; and pay little attention to those who may tease you for working hard.

As hard as the friend I just mentioned worked at learning specific subjects, there is something else that he did that may have guaranteed his success in school. He was a voracious reader. I, too, did a lot of reading that was not directly related to any subject that I was taking in school. I happened to have an older brother by about 13 years who read a lot. So he brought many books into our home. He borrowed books from the library, he brought magazines of all kinds, and he brought comic books; and I read many of those books. Now when you are just reading in that manner, you are not usually aware of how much you are improving your ability to understand everything that you read, how much you are familiarizing yourself with the meanings of new words (building your vocabulary), or how much you are improving your ability to write well; but that is exactly what you are doing. And all of these skills that you are developing just by what you may see as casual reading will help you to do better in history, in mathematics, in English literature and in every other subject that you take in school.

And what of extracurricular activities? Must you forsake involvement in sports or the performing arts or whatever you like in order to do well in school. I certainly did not. I spent many hours playing cricket and football on a park near to my home. And I spent many hours in the sea. I became the captain of St.Vincent’s national team in football. However, I never neglected to devote a considerable amount of time to just reading and getting my homework done.

I planned to say a little bit about staying away from illegal behaviors and immoral behaviors and just behaviors that hurt others. But I have already said enough. So I shall just wish you the greatest success in achieving your educational goals and the greatest happiness in life. Thanks for honoring me with the opportunity to address you. May your guardian angels guide every step that you take.

Thank you!