on the part of government

I was moved by your attempt to help shed some light on this very sensitive and important subject of teenage pregnancy and every girls rights to a decent education.

The short commentary posted and signed by past Anglican High School students is a gross misrepresentation of general consensus by all past students on the issue. As a proud past student and one who unequivocally believes that everyone is entitled to an education,  I firmly believe that the attempt by the past students association to express their personal sentiments as that of all alumni is scandalous on its own.

The plight of young women in Grenada has always been one ruled under the system of patriarchy - a belief that men have the moral authority over women. The manifestation of this belief is visible and firmly rooted in Grenadas tradition and culture.

This belief system boldly contradicts the feminist theory that every woman should have the right to choose for herself and proposes that systems constructed to marginalize and to strip away a womans power must be challenged with reformation as the main goal.

The real scandal, I believe is that for as long as girls are being denied their rights to full and decent education and there continues to be the absence of proper infrastructure to provide them their basic human rights during pregnancy or after child birth, there is no other way to describe this debacle but as gross negligence on the part of the government of Grenada in general and the Ministry of Education in particular.

Blurred by the ineptness of the argument, I fail to see any real obstacles to the fact that the act of a girl in a classroom who happens to be pregnant can become such an endemic that it has become an international spectacle.  

I hope this girl serves as the driving force behind radical change in the education system in Grenada, where the issue of secondary school girls in the tri -island State being robbed of one of their basic human rights for decades is not one that should be decided by a few in a room but requires a call for national discussions on the role of girls and women within a Grenadian context.

Someone once commented that one persons hindsight should become anothers foresight and I pray that would happen within a national context. Why let the mistakes of our shortsighted forefathers guide us into the 21st century?   Its probably time for Grenadas economists to calculate the economic cost of our shortsightedness and for our social scientists to use this situation as a didactic tool in weighing the moral and social costs for the nation.  

Pregnant-teenage girls, without the proper social and economic constructs end up becoming a greater burden to the society. They have more babies than girls who were given an opportunity to obtain an education, they are less likely to obtain an education past the secondary level and they are in a position to break a vicious cycle of teenage pregnancy, since, children of teenage mothers are more likely to become teenage parents themselves.

Not to forget the issue of economic dependence on abusive men in their lives and families and there you have another cycle - that of spousal abuse and family violence because mothers without proper support tend to expend their frustrations on their innocent children.

Paradoxically, the past students saw it fit to talk about progress-progress for whom? The systemic marginalisation of girls is in no way progressive, as a matter of fact, throughout history it has been proven to be one of the most oppressive acts again women.  

As a feminist, a woman, a mother, a Grenadian citizen and most of all a proud past student of the Anglican High School - class of  93, I end with our schools motto facto non verba - Deeds not Words - let us give the girls of our country a real chance for survival, let us give them respectable and quality alternatives, not just scathing rhetoric.

Yolande A.Cadore
Bronx, New York.