Latest update May 10th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jun 30, 2013 Features / Columnists, My Column
There are so many lessons to be learned in life that one wonders if at any time people actually stop learning. It would seem that there is never enough time to learn some of the things that present themselves to people in their lifetime.
Forget that two people facing the same situation would walk away with two different learning experiences. For example, I happened to be driving when I saw a car undertake, of all things, a truck. Indeed the truck was a bit slow so the driver of the car spotted an opening on the inside and made a dash for it.
The driver of the truck must have been very alert because he slowed down a short while later. The car proceeded on its merry way. I was in the line and it was not long after that I realized that the car nearly cleaned up a motorcyclist who happened to be proceeding in the same direction.
I would have thought that the experience would have made other drivers who witnessed it a bit more cautious and appreciative of the fact that once they are going somewhere in the city they could not be delayed for more than ten or fifteen minutes. A delay would not hurt too much. Lo and behold it was not long after that another car undertook the same truck.
Sad to say, he was not so lucky. This time the object was not a moving motorcyclist but a rigid stone pile. I am sure that his delay was so much longer. He simply did not learn. But there are other experiences. I have met many young people who are drug addicts and I have stopped asking them why they got involved in the first place.
Indeed, one of them asked me why I took to smoking when there was so much being criticized about it. Well I don’t smoke anymore, but very few of those who got hooked on cocaine would be able to say that they are done. It is the same with those who get involved in the drug trade.
I saw many young people get killed because they did not pay for their drug shipment. From my naïve vantage point, I wondered how it is that a man would take people’s drug and don’t pay, having seen what happens to those who don’t. But such is the learning experience. Different strokes for different folks. But then again, it could be that some people do not learn.
The school system is another case of the leaders not learning about what works. Back when school made sense, children would write no more than seven or eight meaningful subjects at the external examinations. There were subjects that would see them through life.
All of a sudden these children are being asked to write fifteen and sixteen subjects, some of which are as useful as a bucket with holes being used to fetch water. The result is not that we are producing more brilliant students; we are producing students who believe that all they have to do is to remember issues. We therefore do not get children with the ability to think too much. Remove them from their comfort zone where their book knowledge reigns supreme and you have a bunch of children who are at sea.
Just this week I had a learning experience that was costly. First, a newspaper does not send any reporter to the High Court. Regardless of how that reporter appears to be aware of the situation, there are issues that unless understood, would land the editor in serious trouble.
But that and the other experiences pale into insignificance when one tries to learn to follow the paper trail for some of the enterprises that are gripping national attention. I wanted to understand the reason behind some of the constructions in the city.
When I was a boy I learnt that the coast was so unstable that it could not support buildings of a certain height. It was with surprise that I watched the construction of the Pegasus and the Bank of Guyana. Today there are so many buildings towering above the city that one is left to wonder about the belief or the learning that I had.
Someone said to me that technology has changed and that the buildings may be tall, but they are not heavy. Glass has replaced concrete. And when I checked this was indeed the case. Then someone said that the glass is more expensive than the concrete. This would mean that the building is really expensive.
My problem began when people started to ask me about the source of the money for the construction. I pointed to the commercial banks. Then one man directed me to the reports that the Bank of Guyana releases.
I am still learning to read those releases, to follow the loans made by the commercial banks. I don’t see many of the loans, so these tall structures are being funded otherwise. A friend asked me to look at the remittances –said to be about US$400 million a year—and I still can’t understand, because the money often comes to people who have little or nothing to shout about.
So even in my old age I have to expand my knowledge; there is so much to learn.
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