BVI SDA School latest to hoist Territorial Flag
In what has since become customary, Deputy Director of Culture, Mrs Brenda Lettsome-Tye spoke to students at the school about the protocols and necessary reverence to be observed during the singing of the Territorial Song and the National Anthem. Mrs Lettsome-Tye also spoke about the Territorial dress and the uniqueness of its print in being representative of the Virgin Islands culture.
Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Culture, Ms Lorna Stevens also offered remarks on the meanings of the colours of the Union Jack and Territorial Flag and the protocols for hoisting the flags, which is a task expected to be done on a daily basis by the students at the school.
Third District Representative Hon. Julian Fraser, RA offered brief remarks during the ceremony and spoke of the UK’s former colonies that have since gained independence. He said, “We as a people… have not been able to focus on something that we can commit ourselves to.” He noted that when he was a child, the National Anthem was sung on very special occasions and remarked that the best way to commit learning something is through conditioning. “If you sing the National Anthem once in a blue moon, you don’t really remember it,” Hon. Fraser said.
He was hopeful that students would not forget the reason for being at the ceremony and the importance of things such as the National Anthem and Territorial Song. “The work that the Minister set out to do… would have been done by you, the children of this Territory,” Hon. Fraser stated before asking the students how many wanted to become leaders in the Territory. While noting that both himself and Minister for Education and Culture Hon. Myron V. Walwyn were from the Third District, he added, “we both are looking forward to this school, to carry the flag, to wear the banner for this mission that he has set out to do.”
Hon. Walwyn re-emphasised the significance of the ceremony as being the instilling of national pride among youth within the Territory. “It may seem simple that we are raising and lowering flags at the school, but it’s about something bigger than that,” the Education Minister stated. He said it was about trying to make the students become model citizens of the country.
He urged them to listen to the words of the Territorial song when they sang it in an effort to understand the story behind it. The story, he said, speaks about the struggle of the Virgin Islands.
The Minister spoke about H. Lavity Stoutt’s contribution at the highest level of the Territory and said the Territorial song also tells about where Virgin Islanders came from as a people and where they want to go. The reason for the emphasis on education in the song, Hon. Walwyn offered, is that “we believe everything in this country turns on education and how educated our people are.”
It was announced during the ceremony, that the school had already completed its third flag as requested by the Minister and had already started hoisting this flag.
Acting Principal of the SDA School, Mrs Sarahvaughn Couteau, disclosed that she was particularly happy that the scope of the Ministry’s flag hoisting initiative also included private schools in addition to the public schools around the Territory. She expressed gratitude to the Minister for the work that he has been doing so far in the schools of the Territory and said he had ‘raised the bar in education in the BVI’
The BVI SDA is now the seventh school in the Territory to have since hoisted the Territorial flag. Chairman of the SDA School Board, Pastor Howard Simon, was on hand to deliver the invocation at the ceremony.
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