Nobel Laureates Week

I can’t seem to move away from it; nope can’t do it. No matter how much I try, it’s there. I did it before I retired; I incorporated it into my marketing classes; I built it into my Teaming and Leadership Course. I’m doing it here. I travelled how many thousand miles . . . and here I am, currently involved in planning another event. While I’m busy helping the Village Librarian, Egbert, plan for Independence Day celebrations, I’m doing the clean-up work from our Nobel Laureate Day two weeks ago. Yes, event planning follows me wherever I go.

Saint Lucia has two Laureates which for a small island is an amazing accomplishment in recognition. Saint Lucians have a tremendous amount of pride for their Laureates. The community college was renamed Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and they dedicated a piece of land in Castries as “Derek Walcott Square”.

Each year the Laureates celebration is planned during the week of January 23, because they were born on the same day – January 23. The best part of these events is that it includes research. The Nobel Laureate Event had lots of research connected with it. The hardest part was to make it a learning event for children.

Sir Arthur Lewis won the Prize in Economics in 1979. He was the first Saint Lucian to win the prize, as well as the first black man to win the prize in other than Peace.

Lewis began developing Dual Economic Theory in the 1950s which led to the prize two decades later. His theory creates a circular pattern; a capitalist sector reinvests drawing upon over-populated subsistence sectors. Cheap labor enables low prices. Over-populated countries need jobs and will settle for low wages. Over-populated sectors become dependent. It’s supply and demand. Lewis legacy suggests the people interrupt the cycle by returning to agriculture. The government and people need to make rural life more attractive to ensure agriculture is nurtured.

Since children are Saint Lucia’s economic future, we decided to teach them a simple model of what Lewis was trying to teach and then ask them to draw a picture of what they want to be when the grow up. There were a variety of answers, some predictable, some entertaining, and others . . . well, odd. They wanted to be lawyers, pilots, teachers, farmers and fishermen, husbands and wives, kings and queens, singers and dancers and rock starts, monkeys and cats.

Walcott is a playwright and poet. He won the prize in 1992 for his lifetime work. We played a video of Walcott reciting his well-known poem, Sea Grapes.

Walcott was moved recently when he saw Barack Obama carrying a book of his poems. In honor of the first black U.S. President, Walcott wrote a new poem “Forty Acres”. It is one of my favorites. The poem is below, and if you want to hear Walcott recite it, you will find it at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5088429.ece Comparing and contrasting these two poems created a learning opportunity for the older children.

Forty Acres, by Derek Walcott

Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving

a young Negro at dawn in straw hat and overalls,

an emblem of impossible prophecy, a crowd

dividing like the furrow which a mule has ploughed,

parting for their president: a field of snow-flecked cotton

forty acres wide, of crows with predictable omens

that the young ploughman ignores for his unforgotten

cotton-haired ancestors, while lined on one branch, is a tense

court of bespectacled owls and, on the field's receding rim —

a gesticulating scarecrow stamping with rage at him.

The small plough continues on this lined page

beyond the moaning ground, the lynching tree, the tornado's black vengeance,

and the young ploughman feels the change in his veins, heart, muscles, tendons,

till the land lies open like a flag as dawn's sure

light streaks the field and furrows wait for the sower.

The children easily related to the poem he wrote for Barack Obama. Many children came back later in the afternoon with friends and family specifically to see this part of the exhibit. There were about 500 children who came with their teachers to see the exhibit. Neema is working toward her teaching certificate at Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and is currently doing her teaching internship. I was happy to see her come with her class and mentor. It was a lot of fun…but all those children! I was tired at the end of the day, but it was worth it. Aren't they adorable?.