‘Each One Teach One’: revolutionary education and training in Grenada, 1979–1983

In March 1979, the New Jewel Movement formed the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada after ousting former Prime Minister Eric Gairy. Reawakening a long history of anti-colonial struggle on the island, Grenada’s Revolution initiated reforms to education, healthcare and employment, and launched new forms of democratic participation and civic engagement. To date, important stories from this geopolitical event – including those of its radical education provision – remain overlooked by geographers. Drawing on the recent accession of archival material including a tranche of Free West Indian newspapers dedicated to Jacqueline Creft (Minister for Education in Grenada 1980–1983) at the Black Cultural Archives, London, this paper analyses the Grenada Revolution’s cradle-to-grave programme of education that precipitated curriculum reform and improvements in teacher-training, and literacy – or ‘popular’ – education. Conceptually, the paper employs a multi-scalar feminist geopolitical analysis that is attentive to the ways shifting geopolitical terrains and agendas are imbricated within fixed, local, and familial experiences alongside those of nation and region. The paper’s central contribution is thus to illustrate the multi-scalar lived experiences and intimacies produced in education amid emerging geopolitical agendas of imperialism and resistance. Detailing the Revolution’s reimagining of schools, community centres, homes, and relationships, the paper argues that this ostensibly national project was also laced through with a politics of internationalism.