NYS Glimpses of a new society

 Glimpses and Inklings of a New Society: Seychelles NYS

By Simon Murray with Jay Derrick, Sheila Paterson, Gay Lee and Phil Sutcliffe

This is an essay of fragments, reflections and memories. It has been put together by five people who worked at the NYS in varying capacities for different periods of time in the early 1980s when this extraordinary experiment in education and living differently in the world began. This is not the ‘last word’ on the NYS and how it attempted to propose a very different experience for the lives of young Seychellois between the ages of 15 and 17. We don’t believe in definitive ‘last words’ anyway and, besides, the NYS merits a book-length account and evaluation of its aspirations, challenges, failures and triumphs. If such a volume is ever to be written – and 40 years on it is maybe too late now anyway – it should be led by Seychellois people who have been involved in this real-life laboratory in different capacities as students, teachers, animateurs, organisers, policy makers and political strategists.

In this account we trace some of the organising, cultural and teaching experiences which the five authors were involved in and how these spoke to the models of learning proposed in Olivier Le Brun and Robin Murray’s initial report (The Seychelles National Youth Service: the Seed of a New Society) to the President of Seychelles, France-Albert René in July 1980. This visionary document – part socio-economic analysis, part philosophical discourse, part pedagogical scaffolding, and part manifesto for a programme of socialist education - was accepted by René and his Government and became the lodestone and blueprint for the NYS, at least in its early years.

I arrived in Seychelles very early in January 1981. Following an ‘interview’ with Olivier Le Brun in London  – more an engaging and wide-ranging conversation – in the autumn of 1980, to my astonishment, I was initially appointed as overall coordinator of the NYS at the Port Launay site, but within a few weeks this post was recalibrated to that of ‘advisor’. This came as a huge relief since I felt that such an important role should go to a Seychellois and not a white European from one of the two countries which had originally colonised this Indian Ocean archipelago of 115 islands. However, it was evidently felt that my background with a sociology degree and posts in further and adult education (the latter as a tutor and organiser for the Workers’ Educational Association [WEA] in the West of Scotland) equipped me to work in an advisory capacity with both the teachers and the NYS coordinating committee under the overall leadership of Florence Benstrong. It was a shifting and hybrid role, lacking a clear brief but which entailed a small amount of teaching and supporting the teachers in the delivery and development of the curriculum. I was also a member of the coordinators’ management committee and as such was the only non-Seychellois person in a quasi-policy-making and management role. Often my job seemed to be that of negotiating or mediating between the coordinators and the teachers.

Learning Kreol helped me to have a better rapport with the kids once I felt confident enough to do the teaching in Kreol. For a start it put me at the disadvantage that they were in – my Kreol was not great and neither was their English so it made us more equal. They really liked it when I got stuck for a word or said something wrong and I made the point of asking them to tell me the right word or the right way of saying something. (Gay)

In the summer of 1980 a 3-week pilot project tested out some ideas, undertook initial training with Seychellois animateurs and began to map out how the NYS might work in practice when it opened its gates to 820 young people the following February.  Le Brun and Murray’s ‘Seed of a New Society’ framed the discourses, conversations and practical activities of the event. The pilot project included the building of a miniature model village, production of 3 issues of an embryonic NYS newspaper (Vilaz Lazenes) led by Frances Murray and rehearsals for a village ‘parliament’ which might function on a regular basis when the whole village was properly up and running. When the first phase of the NYS opened on the beautiful Port Launay site in February 1981 an eclectic band of teachers had been recruited from Europe (UK and Belgium), Sri Lanka, Guinea Bissau, Mauritius, Canada (largely from French speaking Quebec), and, of course, Seychelles itself. This disparate group came inevitably with different levels of training, experience and commitment to the Socialist ideals of the NYS and its heuristic approaches to learning and teaching. As is evidenced in these adjoining accounts the curriculum was to be delivered through a modular system of courses known as ‘blocks’, each one blending education with production and theory with practice. Alongside these seven ‘blocks’ – Health, Animal Husbandry, Fishing, Culture, Crops, Information and Construction/Technology, Maths, English and French were taught as core curriculum. It was also the expectation that each ‘block’ would generate a range of optional projects. Apart from the challenges of productively integrating theory and practice actually in or around the classroom, the teachers – individually and collectively – were charged with developing modes of assessment and discipline which somehow articulated the utopian ethos of a democratic and Socialist system of education. No small task under any circumstances and one that often generated hugely differing perspectives and solutions.  

An over-riding challenge for all the teachers was how to encourage and enable the students to become active agents in their own learning rather than passive recipients of given information and knowledge. Both Jay and Gay drew upon the writings of Paulo Freire and his critique of what he aptly called the ‘banking’ system of education. Freire writes: ‘Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is a spectator, not re-creator’ (‘The “Banking” Concept of Education’. Ways of Reading, 2008). Of course, those teachers who were disposed to follow Freire type pedagogies often ran up against pressures of time, space and the sheer numbers of young people in any one class. Moreover, the NYS was taking in students much habituated to the ‘banking’ model upon which their primary education had been based. Gay, teaching in the Health Block, remarks,

Jay, teaching the core maths classes and in the Information Block noted in his diary something similar:

And Gay describes (with some self-deprecating honesty) a tactic which she once employed:

At a meeting of teachers to discuss pedagogy and classroom strategies, Jay put up a poster identifying the inappropriateness of the ‘banking’ system of education which included Freire’s statement ‘the revolutionary society that practises banking education is either misguided or mistrusting of men’.

The debate engendered by his poster apparently provoked torrid and passionate discussion amongst teachers and animateurs. Nonetheless, many teachers found strategies which, even if for short periods of time, animated the students and generated energy and action. Working in the Information Block Jay recalls

Gay remembers,

Phil and Jay – at the NYS in different periods - both worked in the Information Block helping the students to write, compose and organise material for the NYS newspaper. Phil from Newcastle upon Tyne was a journalist and on arriving in the Seychelles to his surprise was initially assigned to work on the Seychelles national newspaper, The Nation, for two months. However, after eventually arriving at the NYS he worked with students on a wall newspaper as part of the Information Block. They produced several editions a year and the whole process was – for better or worse – entirely democratic. Phil wryly recalls:

In an evening club Phil also worked with the students in producing the ‘official’ NYS newspaper, Vilaz Lazenes, which was printed in Victoria (the capital) on The Nation’s presses. He typed up all the student articles which were then glued to a sheet ready for the Web Offset printing process. Phil recalls with some amusement a piece of student writing about Bob Marley who had died in 1981. The article was then referred back to him since reference to Rasta was banned in the NYS – perhaps across the whole of Seychelles - in the belief that it encouraged drug taking and other nefarious practices. Printing the edition was then delayed during serious discussion with the student journalists and whilst a replacement piece was found. Phil also fondly recalls some beautiful artwork by student Antoine Madeleine which was published in Vilaz Lazenes, an example of which we reproduce below.

Before Phil’s time at the NYS Jay also worked in the Information Block, particularly helping to produce images for the newspaper. He deliberately attempted to raise questions about the politics and poetics of the camera and photography alongside actual image making. In his diary he records on 24th April 1981 that:

Behind and alongside the specific subject matter of the ‘blocks’ there were always pressing questions about wider issues of behaviour and social relationships, particularly in relation to sexuality, health and gender. I seem to remember these matters were grouped together under the rubric of ‘family life’ and Jay recalls discussions with the students in the clusters about teenage pregnancies and mentions Seychellois teacher, Eddie, saying that ‘if a woman gets pregnant then the man just leaves her’. As a trained nurse, and working in the Health Block Gay devised a sex education syllabus. She writes:

In relation to the complex issue of evaluating the teaching Gay recalls some very practical and embodied evidence of achievement, a measure of success which would surely have resonated with the aspirations articulated in Le Brun and Murray’s ‘Seed of a New Society’. Towards the end of her two years with the NYS she notes:

Sheila, from Montreal came to the NYS with several other Quebecois teachers whose work was to be focused on learning English (or French) as a Second Language (ESL/FSL). Quite early on, however, she was re-designated to work on building up the library which was to be located within the newly designed Resource Centre. The move delighted and enthused Sheila, as she recalls:

It became Sheila’s job to garner books from wherever she could find them. With support from the Seychelles National Librarian, Mrs Jackson as well as the librarian (Mrs Ernesta) at the Ministry of Education, they discussed the development of the Resource Centre. Sheila was also charged with training a young Seychelloise who would take over from her when she returned to Canada. In fact, an Australian teacher, who was also a trained librarian, was assigned Sheila’s role after her departure. Various embassies offered to contribute books and Sheila particularly remembers an engaging encounter with the charming Soviet Ambassador at the presentation of several 100 books. She writes:

As with many other teachers, Sheila put time into activities beyond the block teaching and embarked on a project, supported by the coordinators, to teach swimming. It was a mixed success as the young people ‘came and went willy nilly’ but Sheila persevered and notes that:

The stories recounted above by Jay, Sheila, Gay and Phil all offer a tiny and partial glimpse of life at the NYS during the first four years of its life on the Port Launay site. Subsequently, the project expanded to three other locations and more teachers were recruited. In these early years the ‘Seed of a New Society’ document continued to represent the largely dominant model for how the NYS might work and develop. Its very ambition, however, presented all the participants with huge challenges and it became clear quite early on that within the Government of Seychelles there were different and sometime conflicting perspectives on what NYS objectives and daily practices should be. During my time in Seychelles there was clearly considerable pride from President René and his ministers in what the NYS represented, or was trying to represent. In the 1970s and ‘80s Seychelles was strategically significant within and around the region in maintaining the Indian Ocean as a ‘zone of peace’, a cause particularly espoused by the non-aligned countries of East Africa and South Asia. In 1981, during visits to the country to discuss the international politics of the Indian Ocean, leading world figures such as presidents, Indira Gandhi, Julius (Mwalimu) Nyerere (Tanzania) and Chadli Benjedid (Algeria) all visited the NYS amongst much excitement and anticipation. Each one of these events, I recall, represented a celebratory and optimistic moment both for this tiny country and its young people, singly and collectively ‘seeds of a new society’.  

Authors

Simon Murray (January – December 1981) with Jay Derrick (March – July 1981), Sheila Paterson (February 1981 – March 1982, Gay Lee and Phil Sutcliffe (Both March 1982 – March 1984). Dates in brackets represent time spent at the NYS.

Simon Murray teaches contemporary theatre and performance at the University of Glasgow.

*Simon Henderson became Simon Murray following his membership of the Actor’s Union, Equity, in 1991. There was another Simon Henderson in the union at that time and he has since kept Murray as his professional name.  See Simon Henderson, “The Seychelles National Youth Service: An Experiment in Socialist Education”, Community Development Journal, vol. 17, no.3, 1982.

Jay Derrick teaches and researches practice-based learning at University College London Institute of Education. Jay had previously worked with Frances Murray at the Friends Centre in Brighton on an innovative adult education project.

Gay Lee is an almost-retired clinical nurse with experience in adult education.

Phil Sutcliffe is a freelance journalist.

Sheila Paterson is a retired ESL teacher and school librarian