Caribbean publisher calls for CXC cannon to include critical literatures from each country and territory where CXC exams are administered
GREAT BAY, St. Martin (November 25, 2002) — The Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), headquartered in Barbados, has this year recommended Conversations II – Western Education and the Caribbean Intellectual by George Lamming for its study program.
Dr. Lucy Steward, the CXC registrar, stated to Lasana M. Sekou, House of Nehesi’s projects director, that Conversations II was “reviewed by the Social Studies panel and . . . recommended as a reference text for teachers only for Section A of the syllabus.” House of Nehesi Publishers published the book of scholarly essays on history, education and Caribbean social development in 1995 and reprinted it in 2000. The book has also been reference and required reading at UWI and other universities in the Caribbean and the USA.
Conversations II is the first book published in St. Martin to be recommended reading for the highly appraised CXC. High school seniors in most of the region’s countries and territories must meet the CXC regimen of tests as a graduation requirement. A number of high schools in St. Martin and Saba also follow the CXC testing regime. “Lasana Sekou has been lobbying the CXC for the more critical of House of Nehesi’s books for a few years and we are confident thatConversations II is only the first to receive this distinction.
“We thank the CXC organization and its social studies panel and will continue publishing books that are competitive in meeting a wide and varied use in the Caribbean and beyond,” said Jacqueline Sample, president of House of Nehesi.
Sekou added that, “The CXC cannon of reference and required texts should also include critical literatures from each country and territory where the tests are administered. This would help to avoid maintaining or repeating the old history of domination and discrimination between colonial metropole and colony and the absurdity of the ‘big island-small island’ mentality. More importantly, when students and teachers can experience the widest range of our literatures, it will be a conscious enhancement of Caribbean integration and progress through knowledge, based on how we voice and illustrate our individual and collective realities.”
Newspaper publisher and Caribbean literature expert Fabian A. Badejo said that the CXC recommendation of
Lamming’sConversation II is “an achievement for House of Nehesi in it 20th anniversary year; for St. Martin, for Dr. Lamming, for enhancing the services and possibilities that the small publishing outfit offers to new and seasoned authors, and for publishing in the Caribbean.” A significant number of the CXC reading list titles are thought to be still published outside of the region.
Conversations II,with an introduction by the Hon. Rex Nettleford, received much critical acclaim in St. Martin, Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica and from leading journals such as World Literature Today and The Caribbean Writer. The St. Martin publisher also translated and issued the Lamming monographs in French and Spanish.