Maureen Clement, the educator and facilitator of the music programme at the Maximum Security Prison in Arouca, believes teaching is about transformation – exactly what she has done for scores of inmates over the past 16 years.
“The purpose of teaching is transformation. If I’m teaching you and I don’t see the transformation, then I have a problem. I am not doing what I’m supposed to be doing or what I’m doing isn’t working and I have to get something else that would work.
“So when I see the transformation, it’s not that I feel proud but I think the curriculum is working, which is what I’m there for.”
Clement, 65, was a teacher at what was then the Aranguez Junior Secondary School before working at the Science Centre at the National Institute of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (Niherst).
In 2000, she became the person in charge of the British Gas TT Science Bus which visited numerous schools and some of the prisons, including the Youth Training and Rehabilitation Centre.
“Sponsored by BG and the Ministry of Education, we went around and showed schools how science could be interactive. It also acted as a training ground for primary school teachers so they could see how to make science interactive in their classrooms and make it more fun.”
One day, she went to a function at the Maximum Security Prison (MSP) where “a kinda band” played the anthem. She approached a prison officer and told him there were errors. He asked if she could “fix” it, and if she could, he would organise for her to visit the prison and do so.
“Everything was put in place, I went, I fixed the anthem, and he asked, ‘Well what else you could do?’ and that’s how the programme got started in 2007.”
[caption id="attachment_1007647" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Commissioner of Prisons Deopersad Ramoutar. -[/caption]
She told Sunday Newsday some of the inmates had completed Grade 1 in music theory with two prison officers who had some music knowledge. But many had limited exposure to academics and had literacy issues so she would teach spelling and reading as part of the programme.
Also, for one year, she arranged for a teacher from the Youth Training and Employment Partnership Programme (YTEPP) to do a literacy and numeracy programme with the inmates so they could understand the questions in the exams and answer them.
Clement told them she would take them to Grade 5 in one year, which she did, and did again three times over the next ten years. She said the programme was sustainable because, as those in the first group advanced, they taught the newer students. And the only student who ever failed, failed Grade 6 because he was too busy teaching others.
Since she was the only teacher, when she needed help with practical classes she brought in guitarists, drummers, pannists and other professional musicians to show them different techniques.
“The goal of the programme is not necessarily to make musicians out of these people. The whole idea of the programme is to help the men see there is another way and to m
