Education is used as an indicator of class in both readings. The level of education attained dictates the jobs which a person can do, some of these being higher on the social ladder than others. The mastery of Latin, French, and reading of the English literary masters was considered necessary to elevate oneself above the masses. To succeed one had to become some form of “fool” according to Clarke; whether academic or athletic.pg.69 But even so, the learned individuals educated in the Caribbean were never held in high esteem the way British people or those who had gone abroad to be educated were. Clarke states that there was a firm distinction between “masters” and “teachers” with teachers being black men who patiently earned their external degrees from the University of London via correspondence while the masters were either white Englishmen or black men educated in Britain. pg.18
Worship and love of the oppressor is a prevalent theme in “Growing Up Stupid…” and one of the most crippling aspects of colonization. According to Itwaru there is a “pathetic source of pride” about being colonized that blinds people to the destructive nature of the empire. Barbadians in Clarke’s novel embraced all things British with almost religious zeal, from their ink to their soap and their revering of the Queen and the Royal Family. The British are placed on a pedestal and regarded as the epitome of society – the embodiment of all things brave, heroic, civilized and great. (pg. 18, Itwaru) To cleave to British ideas and education was to “better oneself”, to turn away from one’s barabaric and illiterate past. There is a frightening lack of awareness of self as “Barbadian” in Clarke’s novel and no consideration of Barbados outside of the context of a British colony. Barbadian history is not taught and as far as Clarke was concerned as a boy, the Battle of Hastings in 1066 was “the beginning of things. Of civilization.Of the world.”pg.76 and the English held demi-god status:“We didn’t see him as a human being. He was an Englishman sent down to us by the King or our leader or Churchill.” pg.43
The Empire seeks the breaking of the spirit. Colonized people experience a disconnection from ancestral roots which leads to their ultimate brainwashing. The enslavement of Africans is a reality which the British Empire attempts to sanitize or even deny. Clarke and Itwaru both comment on the unwillingness of the colonized to accept that the British were perpetrators of human bondage, believing instead in the British as their liberators. “ No book at St Matthias or Combermere dealt with this shameful Amurcan invention. It was the Amurcan blacks who were slaves, not the English blacks! England would never allow any of her subjects to be held as slaves.” pg. 154
But no matter how these facts are denied they still exist somewhere in the consciousness of the people. This leads to a double consciousness - a form of psychic torture. Itwaru speaks of the struggle between the “home self” and the “school self”. This is experienced by Clarke in his novel. His home and school selves were so different from each other, with one existing in the natural comfort of his village while the other was “educated” and servile.
Various events illustrate the war Clarke fights with himself. We he conformed, life became easier for him: he was a “credit to the school” via his athletics, the smear of his illegitimacy was removed and he was able to join the cadets at a high rank. Eventually he would surely have a “good job” and elevated social standing. By contrast his home self must have seemed so subordinate and undesirable, poverty stricken and unenlightened. Itwaru asks whether one can ever win a war against oneself and in the novel Clarke appears to be fighting a losing battle. His double existence is particularly highlighted in his conflict between the Cathedral and the Church of the Nazarene. He “belongs” to the upper crust Cathedral and sings in the choir by virtue of being a “Cawmere boy”, yet his mother belongs to the Church of the Nazarene, and it is there that he eventually accepts Christ. He attends the Nazarene Church during the week, but on Sundays he sings in the Cathedral. Eventually the choice is made for him. He is caught breaking the rules at a cadet camp and the book ends with him enrolling in Harrison College stripped of his rank as a cadet, marking, as he says, “the time for him to dream of new beginnings”.
