similarities in their educational problems and needs. These similarities have been recognized by the representatives of the respective territories themselves. Among the channels for giving area wide recognition to such problems and needs in the period since World War II have been the meetings on education sponsored by the regional organization known as the Caribbean Commission. A survey of its deliberations thus affords an overview of the area's educational needs as seen by its own representatives. A summary of some of the Commission's educational activities, which have focused attention on these problems and have included certain undertakings designed to assist in meeting some of the area's common needs follows.

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CHAPTER II

The Caribbean Commission

THE CARIBBEAN COMMISSION was organized in 1946 as an intergovernmental consultative and advisory body by the Governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands-the so-called metropolitan member powers having at that time the primary responsibility for the social and economic wellbeing of the respective Caribbean territories associated with them. It was an outgrowth of the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission established in 1942 during World War II by the United States and the United Kingdom to study and advise those two governments on problems of their Caribbean territories. The purpose of the expanded Caribbean Commission was to foster in the same manner the economic and social well-being and development of the Caribbean territories affiliated with all the metropolitan powers of the area. Thus, in addition to the European connected areas with which we are concerned in this study, the United States affiliated areas of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands came within the purview of the Caribbean Commission.

In 1959 the Caribbean Commission was in process of being transformed from an organ of the four metropolitan governments into a body directly representative of the Caribbean areas themselves. The projected transformation reflected the changed political and constitutional realities in the European and United States affiliated Caribbean areas, and was designed to facilitate the continuation of social, economic, and cultural cooperation in the region. The name "Caribbean Organization" was proposed for the new body, with its headquarters to be located in Puerto Rico. The fall of 1960 was the target date for the formal launching of the Organization.

With its organization in 1946, the Caribbean Commission established a Central Secretariat at Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, to carry out its program and serve as a center of information and material on the Caribbean in various subject fields, including education. Also set up as part of the Caribbean Commission "system" were two auxiliary bodies-the Caribbean Research Council and the West Indian Conference. The Caribbean Research Council was established as the Commission's research arm to undertake studies as needed, in the various fields within the scope of the Commis

sion's activities. It was organized to operate through several standing committees of subject experts, one of which was its Committee on Sociology and Education. The other principal auxiliary body of the Commission-the West Indian Conference-was intended to provide a periodic and regular means of consultation among the representatives of the territories themselves. It also served to express the consensus of their views and recommendations to the metropolitan governments, their own Governments, and the Commission on matters of common interest, including education. The West Indian Conference has provided much of the stimulus for making the area aware of its education needs and possible means of meeting them.

Regional Consultation on Education

As early as 1942, education was among the subjects on which recommendations were made by the Commission's predecessor, the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, and these recommendations formed the basis of an exchange of notes between the United States and the United Kingdom on Caribbean problems. Point 6 of this exchange of notes, formulated at almost the birth stage of the Commission, dealt with educational problems in the area that have continued to draw attention in Commission-sponsored meetings and activities ever since. It stated that "while an adequate literary and cultural standard must be maintained, a greater vocational bias should be introduced into the educational system."1

Education also received some attention at early sessions of the West Indian Conference, beginning in 1944. The First Session of the Conference, meeting in that year, before the Commission's transformation into a four-nation body in 1946, included on its agenda the subject of public works planning for the improvement of physical facilities in various services, including education. In this way the territorial representatives took note of the area's inadequate and overcrowded educational facilities and the great need for additional space and improvements in school buildings. The Conference's first session also initiated the attention given at succeeding sessions to vocational education, by recommending that governments provide "vocational and technical training to increase the supply of skilled workers required for future development of industry."2

The Second Session of the West Indian Conference meeting early in 1946 shortly after the addition of the Netherlands and France

1 Quoted in Frances McReynolds Smith, "The Caribbean Commission: Prototype of Regional Cooperation," in The Caribbean: British, Dutch, French, United States, A. Curtis Wilgus, ed. (Gainesville, Fla., 1958, University of Florida Press), p. 281.

2 Caribbean Commission. Development of Vocational Education in the Caribbean (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1953), p. 66.

to the Caribbean Commission, while not dealing with education as a specific agenda item, noted that "education is an essential prerequisite to progress within the area. No matter what aspect of the area is being considered, the basic problem is how to bring greater knowledge to bear on it." The Conference emphasized that "the fundamental need is for better primary and secondary education, together with a development of adult education, designed to strengthen the qualities of good citizenship and thereby to increase standards of production and *** of living."

The interest of West Indian representatives in vocational and "practical" education, including home economics, continued to be manifested by their attention to these subjects at succeeding sessions of the West Indian Conference, as well as at several specialized conferences sponsored by the Caribbean Commission, during the period 1948-52. Vocational and industrial training in its relation to accelerating the industrial development and the economic productivity of the area was included on the agenda of the Third Session of the West Indian Conference in 1948, and General Rural and Agricultural Education was an agenda subject at the Fourth Session held in 1950. In view of the area interest in home economics education, a specialized conference sponsored jointly by the Caribbean Commission and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, on Home Economics and Education in Nutrition, was held at Trinidad in 1952. A major result of this conference was the assignment of a home economist to the Commission by the FAO from 1953 to 1957. This specialist organized and conducted training courses, seminars, and workshops in home economics and home economics education in the various areas served by the Commission, and through wide travel in the Caribbean stimulated emphasis on home economics education both for adults and for children in regular school programs of instruction.

The desire of the West Indian representatives to consider vocational educational problems of the area on a broader and more intensive basis was evidenced by a closing recommendation of the 1950 session of the West Indian Conference that one of the major agenda items of the Fifth Session, to be held in 1952, should be a study of "Vocational Education in the Caribbean Area" in its various aspects, and that documentation for the conference should be prepared in advance in the form of papers on each aspect of vocational education. The result was that the Fifth Session of the West Indian Conference gave detailed consideration to different aspects of vocational education. A series of useful papers was prepared as documentation for the Conference. Among the agenda

3 Caribbean Commission. Education in the Caribbean (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1956), Foreword, p. iii.

topics on which the Conference approved recommendations were the following: Guidance Services, Agricultural Training, Trade and Industrial Training, Apprenticeship and On-the-Job Training, and Teacher Training for Vocational Education.

A further significant development of this session of the Conference, which at previous sessions had devoted its attention in the educational field principally to vocational education, was the laying of the groundwork for subsequent consideration of other educational problems and needs in the area. The Fifth Session reiterated the views expressed by the Second Session in 1946 on the basic educational need of the area. It declared "that primary, secondary, and adult education form an essential basis of the economic and social development of the Caribbean area," and recommended "that Education generally and in relation to Communtiy Development be the theme of the Sixth Session of the West Indian Conference." The Fifth Session also recommended that in preparation for the Sixth Session a technical conference on small-scale farming, including the educational factors involved, be held, its report to be included in the documentation for the Sixth Session. With reference to adult education, the interest of the West Indian delegates at the Fifth Session in this aspect of education, including literacy training, was specifically evidenced by their recommendations that the Caribbean Commission (1) request UNESCO to assist area governments in these fields and (2) urge the latter to promote such education and to cooperate with UNESCO in efforts to this end. The concern of the delegates for this general field of education was further manifested by the recommendation of the Conference's Fifth Session that the Commission make a study of fundamental, literacy, adult, and community education in the Caribbean, and that the results of the study be made available to the Sixth Session of the West Indian Conference. The Commission was also requested to explore the possibility of the territories obtaining technical and financial assistance from the various bilateral and multilateral sources of such assistance, in establishing and organizing the educational programs recommended by the Conference.

The foregoing recommendations of the Fifth Session of the West Indian Conference initiated a period of intensified attention to education by the Caribbean Commission and its auxiliary bodies. In preparing for the Conference's Sixth Session, the Commission made certain of the widest possible scope of the theme for that session suggested by the Fifth Session, by specifying that the Sixth Session should deal with Education generally and in relation to Economic and Community Development (the underlined word being added to the recommendation of the Fifth Session). To the same