Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture hosted by me, alexandria Miller. Strictly Facts teaches the history, politics and activism of the Caribbean and connects these themes to contemporary music and popular culture. Wagwan people, or should I say bonjour. I'm Alexandria, your host of Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture, and, as you may have remembered from an episode I introduced a few weeks ago, I am always thinking about education and learning, as a scholar, as a writer, as a lover of Caribbean history, but it's especially upon us with the new school year in mind, and that started me thinking about our education systems and the nuances between and across the Caribbean and the diaspora.

Speaker 1: 0:54

Of course, we had such great feedback on the episodes from a few months back where we discussed education in parts of the Anglophone Caribbean as well as in the Dominican Republic, and so I thought why not spin the block a little bit and come back to that conversation, this time with a focus on the French Caribbean? And so I am so grateful to have Nora Aguilanta joining us to share her budding research across the ocean a little bit on this topic. I always love having fellow doctoral students on the show, and so Nora joins us as a PhD student at the Institutions and Historical Dynamics of Economics and Society all the way in Paris. So, nora, thank you again so much for joining us, and why don't you kick us off with telling our listeners a little bit more about yourself, where, of course, you call home in the Caribbean, and what led to your passion for studying education in the French Caribbean?

Speaker 2: 1:54

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Alexandria, for having me. So, as you say, my name is Nora. I am a third year PhD student at the University of Paris 8 in Saint-Denis. It's in the suburb of Paris, and I'm working on the woman teaching in primary school in Martinique from 1920 to 1960 at the end of 1960. And so, yeah, I am from Martinique. I was born there, I grew up there and then I left.

Speaker 2: 2:30

After high school, I went to Paris and I've been in Paris since 2015. I graduate from Sciences Po, which is a university of science politics in Paris. I went to Howard University for one year and when I was there I discovered Black history, history of the Caribbean, caribbean literature. So I came back to Paris after this year with the idea of studying more about the diaspora. So first I prepare a master thesis about a woman from Martinique who arrived in France during the Bumidome, which was a migration-led policy by the government in the 1960s, and I look at how these women were integrated in labor unions and cultural association. But after this, I saw that a lot of studies have been done about this policy, the Bumidom in general, and and so I wanted to do something else, but still about the Caribbean, about the French West Indies and especially about women working on women history. So I found my subject for my PhD.

Speaker 2: 4:04

Looking at other subjects, I read an article about Clara Palmiste. She's a Guadeloupean historian. She worked on many subjects on gender history and she wrote an article about the way secular schools have been created in Guadeloupe. And this sparked something in my mind, because where I come from, schools are big things Like.

Speaker 2: 4:38

I remember my grandparents always talking about their stories when they went to school, how the teacher, whether it was a woman or man, was someone really admire, I can say, in the town, and how education was something really important for them. And when they knew someone who became a teacher after all, they saw this person as someone who succeed, you know. So I wonder why was it so important? Why is it still important to um to teach, to work in education? And when I look at the literature, despite this article of clara palm, I didn't find a lot of literature about schooling in the French Caribbean. I found things in other French colonies, like Senegal and other French colonies. Actually, one of my advisors is a specialist about education in French Africa, but I didn't find much about French West Indians. So this is how I arrived in this subject and I especially wanted to know how women, especially our, teaching, how are they arriving in this career and how this position sorry impact their social and political behavior.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Certainly, I always think it is a part of, I think, our nature in a sense, when we decide to enter the field and, you know, pursue our studies and realize the gaps in the research.

Speaker 1: 6:21

Right, who hasn't been written about? And oftentimes it is Black people. It can oftentimes, especially for the region, be women, but certainly trying to locate and find those stories and feed them back into the world as much as we've enjoyed and you know, doing the research, sharing them with others as well. So I'm really excited to have you and to, of course, share with our listeners a little bit about the education system in Martinique and women's involvement as well. And so I guess, just to kick us off, could you give us like a brief overview or context about what the system was like in the French Caribbean. That could be, of course, you know, focusing on a few of the different islands, but just so we have a little bit of a landscape, of understanding about what occurred, especially in this 20th century moment that you're focusing on, and maybe how that differs from other places within the region.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Yeah, sure. So it's actually quite easy to talk about the French Caribbean as a whole because the system is kind of the same between Martinique, waterloo and French Guiana. During my period of study, I actually don't know much about the educational system in other Caribbean, but I can do some comparison with other French colonies. So basically, martinique has the same statute from 1848, when the abolition of slavery happens, until 1946, when Martinique became a French overseas department, and during this period people were granted citizenship and schools started to be structured in the island, but mostly around the end of the 19th century, from 1870. So this is where the Third Republic was implemented in France, metropolitan France and in Martinique. And you have this shift where local policies, but also combined with metropolitan French policies, created secular schools. So schools were no longer depending on religious groups and religious congregations to function. So the state and the local territories were providing money to open schools, to fund the teachers, and this has been the case until now actually.

Speaker 2: 9:17

So you have two systems a primary school system which is free. You have a primary school for boys and others for girls, and children go there up until 14. And then they finish school with a certificate saying that they went to primary school. Usually you can follow with higher education of one or two additional year. It's still primary education. You learn to read, to write, to calculate and have basic knowledge and usually after this you can enter a basic job like postal services or. Some of Martin's children, especially in a rural area, they unfortunately end up working in the fields, like their parents, in sugarcane fields, or have a job at a shop, a small shop and stuff like this. So this is a main path for primary schools, for children going to primary schools during the 20th century.

Speaker 2: 10:30

And you have next to this system the secondary schools, which is more elite path, if I can say, because it can start from primary education, from kindergarten. But it's a school in a different establishment. It's not free, it's still secular, it's still public, but you have to pay and it's more accessible for the people living in the main town, the main capital for the France, living in the main town, the main capital for the france. And you go there to prepare at the end the baccalaureate, which is what we call nowadays a high school degree, and after this you can access, with financial aids and fellowship, you can access higher education. So you have those two separate paths for public schools in Martinique at the time, and you also have. You still have also religious schools, but I'm not really working on this subject. You have a PhD student in Paris who is working on this subject.

Speaker 2: 11:44

So this is the context in Martinique, guadeloupe and French Guiana at the time and about 1946, when those three territories become French Overseas Department. What changed is that the system is unified to the french metropolitan system. So you have this the same, uh, different schools. But now what's really changed is about the status of their teachers. Before you had teachers coming from the French metropolitan lands, so you have different status, different salary. But by 1946, everyone working in a school in Martinique is considered as a French civil servant and whether you are from Martinique or not, you have the same status. So this is mostly what is changing.

Speaker 1: 12:46

That's really an interesting perspective, I think, just knowing what I know about the sort of British or Anglophone Caribbean model and sort of, you know, comparing and contrasting in my own head, the influence of religion, perhaps right, that you know factors into a lot of the origins of some of our schools.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Um, also, I think very similarly right, this push to make people, um, especially in the 20th century, civil servants is another thing that I think it sort of mirrors across the region and other parts that are in other islands as well. I think, to sort of like situate us a little bit further, this moment of, of course, moving to become a French department for Martinique and a few of the other islands in the French West Indies, this is obviously like a part of an overarching social movement activism within the region right, that education is a part of right activism within the region, right, that education is a part of right, but, you know, is sort of stemming from our histories of colonialism and enslavement and things to that nature. How do you see some of the social issues in the evolution of the education system, demonstrating the larger political context of what's going on at the time, the larger?

Speaker 2: 14:03

political context of what's going on at the time. So it's a very interesting question. So I actually started my research with this question, especially regarding the differences with other French colonies. I wonder why was education such a big deal in the Martinique, education such a big deal in the martinique? And so, for example, I saw that in french west africa you had during colonial times, indigenous schools. You have different schools depending on your origin and religious origin, ethnic origins, but in Martinique you don't have this. You have mainly a distinction based on social distinction, whether you can pay the school or not. And among teachers the distinction is more about whether you are a metropolitan French civil servant or whether you were born in Martinique. But if you look closer to the cases, the files they have been working on I'm working on the career files of those different teachers you can see that what they are asking for is mainly equality. So way before 1946 you have civil servants and teachers from Martin asking for the same salary, the same aids, social aids, because you can have aids for your housing, for example. It is especially true for women, who usually are really mobile in their career. One year they are in one town, the other year they are putting in the other town, really far away. So they have to have a housing and they are asking for financial aid for housing. And so by the first part of the 20th century the teacher labor union is really about having the same status, same pay and same treatment by 1946, when Martinique became a French overseas department. You can see it's more positive, or I can say they are accepting this change of status and pushing for the same law as a way to show that now we are fully French. We have the same classes, we teach especially civic and moral education like the French, and history also in the same classes. So at this time it's more about accepting the French identity.

Speaker 2: 16:58

By the end of the 1950s, the beginning of the 1960s in Martinique, society in general, you have this wave of contestation, this wave of protestation about what actually the department has changed or not for the population.

Speaker 2: 17:19

Whether he has brought more equality or not's a general wonder among the teacher population you have this fraction of labor union who is more vocal about criticizing the change brought or not brought actually by department status. So you have, for example, a strike in the 1950s, two strikes still about having the same status, having the same wage, and by 1959 you have um riots in forFrance, the capital of Martinique, riot by young people. But because in the teacher population, especially in high school, some of teachers are supporting the protest, in 1963, you have the government decrating and calling back three teachers back to France because, as the decree is saying that they are disturbing social peace and are supporting the protests, so has the year base you starting with a labor union and teachers, nothing really supporting the French education system because they are longing for this equal status. But then you have more radical part, if I can say by like 10 years after the 1946 change of status, to really asking question criticize what has been brought or not and whether changes were made or not.

Speaker 1: 19:47

I find that really interesting, just because it's, I think, it tracks with sort of other parts of the region, right where there were tremendous labor movements going on throughout the Caribbean 30s, 40s, 50s as well but also the fact that teachers are playing such an instrumental role in this right, and so, as you sort of alluded with us a little bit earlier, gender of course plays a tremendous fact in your research. How do you see some of the teachers you know impacting the overall social movements you know, not just within the field of education at the time, but in terms of, you know, activism around what it means to be a French department and how this sort of intertwines with other politics of neocolonialization?

Speaker 2: 20:41

So it's really a complex situation when you look at genders, because you can say the first, this field, the teaching field, it's a field with a lot of women teaching. I'm working on two lists of teachers established, one in 1925 and another one in 1956, and in in 1925, I count 349 women teaching and on the other hand you have 181 men and by 1956, these numbers have almost doubled. We've always more women than men. But despite this, in the report, when you look at the archives, the report of inspectors and directors of the teaching services in the administration, they are writing sometimes that there are too many women. It's necessary to make this job attractive for men, men. The explanation, the justification is not always clear, but it's a fact that they are aware that they have many women, more women than men, and sometimes it's a kind of issue. And what is also paradoxical is that when you look at the hierarchy, you have very few almost known women as inspectors until the very late 1960s, the beginning of 1970s, and even this I found in the archive the first inspector woman is for kindergarten. So you have also this discrepancy between which areas that are accessible for women or not, but you have women, for example, director of principal of schools, mainly of girls' schools. And then, when you look at other fields regarding teaching, you have, for example, labor unions. You have women present in the labor unions. But I also find it paradoxical that when you look at the surveillance documents, especially during World War II and the Vichy regime, I think that more men are under surveillance, under inspection, more men than women, although the government knows that women are part of the union. But I found more papers, more letters about men in this union than women. So it's one of the thing I can say it's very paradoxical when you are looking at gender dynamics in the field. And also another thing interesting is that I also have a lot of files for spouses, both men and women, having the same career in elementary school. But I wonder whether they go up the ladder in their career at the same path or not and whether women have the same advantages as men in this career, as their husband.

Speaker 2: 24:12

So to answer your question about the gender dynamics in the teaching field, but in the social movement or the social aspect of the job, I found it interesting to find women's voices, women's writings, more in women's associations, not much in political associations or political parties, but mostly in women's associations time of the change of status in 1946. You have two women-led associations and the rassemblement feminine is the gathering of women. It's an association led by paulette nardal from the movement and you have some teachers taking part of this. As a charity work they go to rural areas, they give milk to families in need. So I found traces of women teaching part of this association.

Speaker 2: 25:23

And the other association is the union des femmes de martinique, which is a union of women of Martinique. It's a more leftist association close to the Communist Party, but it's also a place where I found some traces of women teaching, especially Solange Fitt Duval. Solange Fitt Duval was a woman teaching in primary school by the 1960s. She was part of the labor union, teacher labor union and she was also part of the Union des Femmes de Martinique. So this is some of the places you can find a woman teacher activism in Martinique. But you really have to look for it and search it, because at the beginning is not what appears first in unions records or in unions journals, for example unions, uh, donors, for example.

Speaker 1: 26:33

I think that's a tremendous sort of connection to our previous episode that talked about um, the negritude movement in palatinar doll, um, as being one of the sort of unsung or, you know, maybe under discovered or understudied women who are really tremendous in terms of activism and supporting.

Speaker 1: 26:49

You know, women's activism, particularly at the time, and also, you know, puts us in contact with other greater social movements. When we look at what negritude means for the French Caribbean and other parts of the French world right, thinking broadly about colonization and what ties us together, french world right, thinking broadly about colonization and what ties us together, I think one thing that I found really tremendous in your work is this narrative of, you know, having to look for these stories in a particular way, because women are not showing up in the surveillance right as often, and that gets to a whole another paradigm of gender hierarchies and what we think, what society maybe thinks women are capable or not capable of right, and the ways that you're, you know, finding their works, their activism, their contributions to our history in sort of nuanced ways, and so what has that sort of looked like for you in terms of doing this research?

Speaker 2: 27:52

that sort of look like for you in terms of doing this research. So it's actually quite difficult, but it's depending on your object. So in writing archives, in official archives, you really have to know the names of the people you are looking for. So what helped me is that I had this list, as I told you, and so once I had the list and then I found the files, I could also connect when I saw something on other archives maybe a letter from the government or something that is not in my original archives I could connect the name and say, oh yeah, this is this person who is teaching in this school or who was part of this labor reunion at this moment. And on the other hand, it's also really difficult because sometimes you have one name of one person that is not, can be a substitute teacher, is not always present. So it's kind of difficult when you are working with administrative archives and writing archives.

Speaker 2: 29:03

But I also did interviews with former teachers. I did interviews with both men and women teaching by this time. I found mostly people who started in the late 1950s and during the 1960s, so at the end of my period of study. So at the end of my period of study, and some of the women I interviewed were really enthusiastic about talking about the action in labor, study and be ready for the new year. So it's kind of a way I saw women implication in their work. Some other women gave me to look at the notebooks where they were preparing notebooks. Where they were preparing they, they, they listened, and other were really I won't say shy, but they were really discreet and didn't want to talk about anything else except their job. So when I asked about uh, were you part of union or were you, uh, have you ever been on strike once? It was like a taboo question and they say that it was not for them or they were not concerned about anything political. So I saw so a way that the information can be blocked for you because you're looking at a subject that is not particularly interesting for women in general, we can say, or especially at this time, it doesn't mean that they were not part of it, but sometimes the refrain or the they are like putting self-restriction of themselves, you know.

Speaker 2: 31:08

And another thing I found interesting is that sometimes also they reflect on the situation as you ask the question. So you talked about the negritude movement or a political movement after or during the wave of decolonization, and some of the women I interviewed were not actually part of it. But, as I did the interviews, they talked afterward of what it meant for them at this moment to to be part of this change of status, to see the changes in the school institutions, to be considered as equal as their French counterparts, and so it's also a way to get the information, although you have to know that it's a reflection during our current times and not something that happened at the moment of the event. That happened at the moment of the event. And one last thing I wanted to say I also got some writing, personal writings, from women teaching, and some were especially writing.

Speaker 2: 32:21

They were writing about Martinique, about the French system, in the form of poems, because you can learn poetry in school and sometimes these teachers were writing poetry for their students. But the subject of this poetry really strikes me because it's about school, it's about Martinique and the history of Martinique, but I found it really interesting as a way to see their opinion about their career, about the institution.

Speaker 1: 32:58

Yeah, that is, I think, sometimes the biggest challenge I have personally in my own research the like double-edged sword of interviews and oral histories. Right that on one hand, at least in my opinion it's so great to actually like get to speak to the people who were there, right when you're doing more recent, maybe 20th century, research. But the other challenges you know having to contend with they're still here and so there are things that they're not necessarily going to want to share or, you know, based off their own experiences. People are obviously still here with us, still having to contend with maybe some of the challenges or the traumas of their experiences and maybe don't want to talk about it. But I think in a sense it's like the the-edged sword of being a researcher right, wanting to get these stories, but also being respectful of their truth, their power in telling their stories. Right, deciding what they want to share and what they don't want to share with us.

Speaker 2: 34:01

And I found it really interesting and it was actually the case especially for women, because mostly all men I interviewed were really voluntary, they were willing to share, to show me what they wrote and what they wrote in journals. But I have to dig a little bit and try to make these former women teachers more comfortable to share the information with me. And I think it's part of maybe it's a social things, but it's part of the nature to be more reserved and especially at the time where women were not really allowed to be vocal in some spheres like political spheres. So I found it interesting that you still have those patterns of behavior when you are doing conducting interviews nowadays I'm going to sort of pair my next question or next set of questions in two right um, of course.

Speaker 1: 35:10

One, our standard strictly facts question, on the ways that you know you see this history of education showing up in popular culture, in various books and things to that nature. But also, aligned with that, what are sort of some of your biggest takeaways in terms of this moment for education, particularly in this, you know, post-department status For Martinique, for the French Caribbean. What do you think this really stands alone as as a period of study?

Speaker 2: 35:47

So for your first question, I'm thinking about two cultural objects, and I have one movie that is from a quite popular book in Martinique. So the movie is called La Rue Casenegre, or in English, sugarcane Alley, from a Martinique movie director, and the movie is based on the novel of joseph zobel of the same title uh, la rue casneg and it's a story about a martinique in the 1930s, in a rural area, how children were growing up in a sugar cane alley and how education was important for the main character to get out of this town and going to the capital, getting his primary school degree and then higher education degree and at the end be a civil servant, which was the ultimate outcome. And I remember in this movie there is a scene where the teacher in the rural school he wrote on the on the board instruction is the second key to your freedom, and so this movie really stuck with me and I think it was something that also pushed me to learn a bit more about teaching and how teaching was important, how teachers were perceived in the 20th century. In mountaineer. And in the same vein, the same link, I have this also book by patrick chamoiseau. The book is called chemin d'école, or school days in english. And so this is the second book of patrick chamoiseau about his childhood, and this one is particularly about his first years at school. But it is in the 1950s, so it's a year later, but Martinique is already a French department. But you can still see connection about the way schools were sometimes crowded, the way schools were sometimes crowded sometimes where you had teachers from French metropolitan land who doesn't speak a bit Creole and have to manage to teach to these children, and you see also how the one teacher can be important for one child who then becomes Patrick Chamoiseau, the writer that we all know now. So those two objects are really interesting If you want to discover this story about teaching, but on a cultural standpoint, and also, I think especially the movie is a really good one.

Speaker 2: 38:56

And so, to answer your second question, what do I hope that the studying of this story will inspire for our future? So, first, I hope that, on the social history level, I hope that, uh, we will know more about those little people, those person who made the history of the islands. You know, sometimes we know more about the big names, the one that made revolution, of big politicians, uh, that changed a part of history, but we forget about people like you and me who are working on a daily basis to change things out at the level. I think it's really important to make more social historical studies about those kinds of people in French West Indies, but also in the Caribbean in general. So teachers, postal workers, hospital workers, nurses and so on. So this is the first things. I think that is really important.

Speaker 2: 40:11

And the second thing regarding education is that sometimes, especially in France and in the French Overseas Department, you heard a lot of talking about what we learn in school is not really our history, about former French kings that doesn't have anything to do with what happened in Martinique since the beginning of history and even before the arriving of the French. I think that it's interesting to put this thing in perspective, because when you look at the programs, when you look at the programs of primary education, teaching during the 20th century, you have a part of the curriculum that is about the territorial history, the territorial geography. You have also things about french history. It it's really complex.

Speaker 2: 41:14

What I want to say is that you have books, mainly about Martinique history, that are used even in the 1920s, 1930s. So it's not always black or white, it's not always that distinct and that separate and it's like certain things are more complex and you need to know this history to see if nowadays it's things have changed or not. Do you learn more about slavery? Do you learn more about the workers in the sugarcane field or not? Do you learn more about slavery? Do you learn more about, um, the workers in the sugarcane field or not? But it's too easy for me, I think, to say that you never learned this or you have never been taught this history, because I have kind of proof in the archives that the history of Martinique and the geography of Martinique were a bit inserted in the curriculum. It was not much and more can be done still, improvement can still be done. But regarding this debate, I think it's important to know the history to, uh, be more accurate in the debate I think that's beautifully said.

Speaker 1: 42:41

Just, you know, for one us being aware that, you know, history is ever changing, it's ever happening, right, um, and so it's not enough to just be like, oh okay, this thing happened in the 17th century and like let's sort of move on. Right, there are new discoveries, new things to be understood, hopefully new like documents that somebody sits in some archive, like we do, for hours on end, right, trying to discover something else that you know we've either neglected or, you know, has been sort of hidden from us. Right, because that's oftentimes also part of these colonial exchanges. Right, that there are things that have happened that they're housing somewhere without letting us access or know about, certainly. But I think, on the other hand, what you said about activists certainly touched me in that, like you know, of course we are always going to have our maybe you know national heroes or you know these big picture people, but there are also tons of other people who have contributed to empowering us, to changing us us, to our evolution. I certainly even think about my own trajectory in school, and you know the two teachers I had in elementary school who really motivated my love for history, to sort of push me further, and I oftentimes think of them in terms of my studies. So this also is a note to everyone, right, that not only is history ever happening around you, but also be on the lookout for all those people around us who are certainly activists in their own right, whether we think about them or not as such, or whether they consider themselves that or not. Absolutely. I thank you so much, nora, for being here.

Speaker 1: 44:34

I think this is an important conversation for us from our own, of course, personal interest, right, but I think we are also in a world now where teaching is contentious, right, where there are all of these sort of attacks on education in various ways.

Speaker 1: 44:51

Also, as you rightfully noted, right, the impact of migration on teaching, whether that's teachers from elsewhere coming into the Caribbean, as you were talking about in the case, or, and I think, more in recent times, there's also a conversation of teachers not being paid enough in the Caribbean and leaving to go to sort of the global north or some of the more developed countries to teach, to earn for themselves, which, of course, I think you know everyone has the right to do so in a sense, whatever makes their livelihoods better, right, but this story, or you know this, this adherence that in the work that you're doing in terms of us describing and knowing the history of our teachers and the impact that they've had, I think is really critical for our own empowerment as Caribbean people, whether that is in the islands or in the diaspora.

Speaker 1: 45:49

So I thank you for the work you're doing. I'm really excited for you to keep pushing forward, as I know the journey it's a long journey, but we'll get there right and I'm totally excited to see the work that you bring to the fore. So again, I thank you for sharing your work, your budding research with us on Strictly Facts, for being a listener as well and also now a guest um for being a listener as well and also now a guest and um for our listeners. I hope you enjoyed. I will link the novel or the.

Speaker 2: 46:21

I think it says memoir, right, oh yeah, one part of his memoir, okay.

Speaker 1: 46:24

And the movie also, the novel from the movie, yeah that's what it is, so I will link the novel, the movie and the memoir on our show notes for you all to check out if you're interested in learning a little bit more about education in Martinique. And till next time, lookalore. Thanks for tuning in to Strictly Facts. Visit strictlyfactspodcastcom for more information from each episode. Follow us at Strictly Facts Pod on Instagram and facebook and at strictly facts pd on twitter.