or 242,000, since 1946.1 Compulsory attendance laws, such as exist in most of the areas, tend to be overlooked when school accommodations are inadequate. The "luxury" of some form of post-primary education, whether academic or vocational, has been precluded for most children by the lack of family and governmental income.

Many of the territories, including Jamaica, Trinidad, British Guiana, Barbados, and Surinam, have, in the period since World War II, instituted 5- or 10-Year Plans for economic and social development, which include education development programs designed to help both the individual and society achieve their potential. Improvement and development of educational facilities are thus being recognized as essential to economic development, and these Plans generally provide for attention to education of various types and levels, including facilities for vocational education.

There may be noted at this point a popular psychological impediment to agricultural and other types of vocational education and training which continues to exist in varying degrees in the several areas. Despite the basically agricultural nature of the economies of most Caribbean territories, agriculture has not found general popular favor as a way of life. This attitude is usually regarded as stemming in part from the historic fact of the slave system, in which agricultural labor was slave labor. In the post-slavery period this attitude has been reinforced by antipathy to the poor economic conditions and prospects of the small farmer and the lack of living conveniences in the rural areas. Accompanying these factors has been a widespread feeling that social position and status are not to be gained by tilling the soil with one's own hands. By extension, manual labor in other occupations has likewise not been well regarded, though this attitude is beginning to change with industrialization and the need for trained skills.

The implications for educational patterns of this attitude toward manual labor are obvious. It is frequently asserted that the almost exclusively academic and classical educational systems and curricula which the British, Dutch, and French transplanted to the area have little relationship today to its needs or those of its inhabitants. Historically, vocational education, including agricultural education, has held a minor role in educational systems and programs in the European Caribbean. One barrier to the extension of this type of education has been recognized by some of the strongest West Indian critics of academic and classical education to be the attitudes of West Indians themselves. Education has been popularly regarded as affording an opportunity for "escaping the degradation" and low social position associated with employment requiring the use of

1 British Information Services, The West Indies: A Nation in the Making (New York, 1957), p. 35.

the hands. Consequently education and training for this kind of life have faced an uphill battle.

In this connection, until recent decades there has been little economic incentive for training in agriculture and other vocations, as evidenced by the lack of substantial employment and income opportunities in these pursuits. Economic rewards went largely to those entering white collar and professional occupations following completion of academic education. The development of the economy in parts of the area, particularly since World War II, with the attendant increase in demand and pecuniary rewards for vocational skills, has resulted in an augmentation of popular interest in additional facilities and programs for vocational education, even though this type of education may still be regarded by many as "second best." Particularly among many governmental, educational, business, and agricultural leaders, there is general recognition of the need for additional vocational educational facilities, as reflected in the formulation of the aforementioned Development Plans and in other ways.

Accompanying the economic development of the area, there has been in all of the European affiliated Caribbean territories the growth of political self-consciousness, which has resulted since World War II in the modification or termination of colonial status, as well as in the triumph of representative government based on universal suffrage. This political movement may be regarded as an outward and practical manifestation of the whole social ferment in these territories. It has expressed itself in different and in some respects even seemingly opposite ways in the British, Dutch, and French territories, depending on political and constitutional traditions and the techniques developed by each of the European countries and its erstwhile colonies to meet the emerging demands for full political rights and self-expression. A brief survey of recent constitutional developments in each European group of territories is necessary to understand the general governmental and administrative framework within which current educational developments are taking place. The specific constitutional arrangements for the administration of education will be discussed in later chapters on educational trends in the territories of each national grouping.

In the British areas most of the territories had representative assemblies chosen by a restricted electorate and a limited degree of home rule in the period prior to the abolition of slavery in the mid19th century. After the emancipation of the slaves, who constituted the bulk of the population, these assemblies were abolished and most of the territories became crown colonies ruled by officials sent from London and by appointed councils which took the place of

elected assemblies. However, even before this process was completed in some of the territories, there began in Jamaica in 1884 the movement toward a reintroduction of an elected element in West Indian legislatures based on a more liberal franchise. After that date, the advance toward fully representative and ministerial government based on universal suffrage, as well as the granting of a considerable degree of home rule in local affairs, gradually took place in each British territory, with the pace accelerating after World War II.

The culmination of the movement toward full political self-expression in the British West Indies has been the coming into existence of the Federation of the West Indies. Serious discussion of the desirability of providing a union of the British Caribbean territories had begun shortly after World War II, but it was not until early 1958 that the Federation was officially born with the inauguration of its first Governor-General. This was followed by the first elections for the Federal Parliament, and is scheduled to lead to full independence within the British Commonwealth in 5 years. Within this period various governmental and economic arrangements with the mother country and the component territorial units are to be made.

The Federation consists of all the British island territories of the Caribbean except the British Virgin Islands, which preferred to remain outside the Federation, at least for the time being. The British affiliated Bahama Islands and Bermuda do not consider themselves Caribbean territories and do not belong to the Federation. Nor does the Federation include the mainland territories of British Guiana in South America and British Honduras in Central America, though both have close ties of cooperation with the Federation and its members, and may join if they wish. Despite the fact that not all British Caribbean territories have joined the Federation its birth symbolizes and dramatizes the movement toward nationhood and self-government in the British Caribbean. With respect to nonmembers British Guiana and British Honduras, they have likewise come to enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy, albeit not without certain political and constitutional difficulties particularly in the case of the former. It is somewhat of an anomaly, incidentally, that British Guiana has a common currency unit-the British West Indian dollar-with all Federation members save Jamaica, which continues to base its currency on the pound sterling.

In the Dutch related areas of the Netherlands Antilles and Surinam a similar movement toward territorial autonomy, representative government, ministerial responsibility to local legislative assemblies, and universal suffrage has taken place. Until World War II the relationship of these territories to the Netherlands was

essentially that of colonies ruled from the Hague. During the war they were the only Netherlands territories not occupied by the enemy, with the result that they exercised a large degree of de facto autonomy. After the war there was a steady movement, expressing itself in a series of meetings between representatives of the Netherlands, the Antilles, and Surinam, which resulted in successive constitutional changes, and the eventual achievement of complete self-rule in internal matters. The culmination was the promulgation of the new Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands in December 1954, by which the co-equality, or partnership, of the three political units making up the Kingdom-the Netherlands, Surinam, and the Netherlands Antilles-was recognized. Under this arrangement, the latter two areas share with the Netherlands on a co-equal basis, responsibility for matters of common concern described in the Charter as "Kingdom Affairs." The most important of these are Defense and Foreign Relations, and a method for the sharing of responsibility by representatives of the three countries in these and other "Kingdom Affairs" is provided in the Charter. Education is not included under "Kingdom Affairs," and Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles are responsible for their own educational systems.

In the Netherlands Antilles the movement toward self rule within the Kingdom of the Netherlands also manifested itself in the granting of autonomy to the various islands that compose it; and this had important effects on the administration of education. Before the first steps were taken toward the granting of autonomy of the Netherlands Antilles as a whole, the name of Curaçao, the largest island of the group, had been applied for administrative purposes to the whole region, which was governed as a unit, from The Hague. In 1951, with the preliminary steps taken looking to full autonomy for the Antilles and Surinam, the Netherlands Antilles Islands Ordinance, or Regulation, of that year was promulgated, dividing the islands of the Netherlands Antilles into so-called island-territories and granting a large degree of autonomy to each of them in local affairs.

The delineation of the island-territories followed in the main the lines of geography. They consist of (a) the island-territory of Aruba; (b) the island-territory of Bonaire and Little-Bonaire; (c) the island-territory of Curaçao formed by the islands of Curaçao and Little Curaçao; and (d) the island-territory of the Netherlands Windward Islands some 550 miles away in the northeast Caribbean, formed by the islands of Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Martin (Dutch part). This autonomy of the island-territories within the Netherlands Antilles was reaffirmed in the new Consti

tution of the Netherlands Antilles of 1955, promulgated pursuant to the necessity for adapting the internal Antillean constitutional system to the new partnership system of the Kingdom of the Netherlands of 1954.

In the case of the French Caribbean areas, political self-expression has taken a different, and in a sense an opposite, direction from that in the British and Dutch areas. On March 19, 1946, the colonial status of those areas-Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guiana-was terminated and they became overseas Departments of France. In this framework they stand on the same footing and have the same status as the administrative units of this name in continental France. This means that they are integral parts of France and are governed in the same way as French continental Departments under the unitary and centralized governmental and administrative system of France. The executive authority in each of the three French Caribbean Departments is exercised by a Prefect appointed, as for all French Departments, by the French Minister of the Interior.

The inhabitants of the Caribbean Departments have all the civil and political rights of French citizens. They are represented in the French national legislature and have their own Department Councils, or local legislative bodies, with representatives in both chosen by universal suffrage. The satisfaction of the French Caribbean Departments with this governmental and administrative status was attested to by the overwhelming majority vote they gave to the new French Constitution in September 1958, the provisions of which affirmed this status.

Whatever form or direction the movement for greater political self-expression has taken in the European affiliated Caribbean territories, the movement may be regarded as symbolizing their development and aspirations, not only in political but in economic and social matters as well. It is also normal that the beginnings of the movement toward political, economic, and social maturity should be accompanied by a great interest in and a demand for augmented educational facilities to meet the need and desire for national and individual development and self-government. This aspiration has been summed up in the statement that "education for nationhood * ** has become the watchword of the peoples of those countries of the Caribbean."2

Notwithstanding the differences in educational systems and patterns in the European Caribbean stemming from the different national and cultural patterns represented by the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France, there are, as already indicated, basic

2 Caribbean Commission. Increasing Purpose (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1957), p. 65.