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Bernard Coard
Winston Bernard Coard (born 10 August 1944) is a Grenadian politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister in the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) of the New Jewel Movement. In 1983, Coard launched a coup within the PRG and briefly took power until he was himself deposed by General Hudson Austin.
Bernard Coard, the son of Frederick McDermott Coard (1893–1978) and Flora Fleming (1907–2004), was born in Victoria, Grenada. He is connected to Grenada's prestigious Cenac family: a first cousin of the Honorable Justice Dunbar Cenac (1939–2023) of the Eastern Caribbean High Court, and a nephew of Dennis Vivian Cenac, a former solicitor in the West Indies Associated States Supreme Court.
Coard was attending the Grenada Boys' Secondary School when he met Maurice Bishop, who was then attending Presentation Brothers' College. Coard and Bishop shared an interest in left-wing politics from an early age. They became friends and in 1962 they co-founded the Grenada Assembly of Youth After Truth. Twice per month, the two would lead political debates in St. George's Central Market Place.
Coard left Grenada for the United States, where he studied sociology and economics at Brandeis University and joined the Communist Party USA. In 1967, he moved to England and studied political economy at the University of Sussex. That year, he married his wife Phyllis while they were students in England, and Coard joined the Communist Party of Great Britain.
He worked for two years as a schoolteacher in London and ran several youth organisations in South London. In 1971, he published a 50-page booklet How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System: The Scandal of the Black Child in Schools in Britain. It explained that British schools had a pervasive bias toward treating white children as normal, which led to black children being labeled as "educationally subnormal" (learning-disabled). Coard wrote:
The [black] children are therefore made neurotic about their race and culture. Some become behaviour problems as a result. They become resentful and bitter at being told their language is second-rate, and their history and culture is non-existent; that they hardly exist at all, except by the grace of whites.
Coard's thesis was widely cited, even long after his revolutionary career, as a summary of the role of institutional racism in the relationship between race and intelligence. In 2005, it was republished as the central article in the collection Tell it Like it is: How Our Schools Fail Black Children. A 2021 BBC One documentary entitled Subnormal: A British Scandal describes the events surrounding the racism of a leaked school report, leading to the publication of Coard's booklet. Produced/directed by Lyttanya Shannon, and executive produced by Steve McQueen, the film features interviews with people who were put into ESN schools, and activists, academics and psychologists and others who worked to expose the scandal at the time, such as Gus John and Waveney Bushell. In a 2021 article, Coard concluded that, 50 years after the ESN scandal was exposed, "the substance ... of the educational suppression of Caribbean-origin children remains".
After completing his doctorate at Sussex, Coard moved to Trinidad. From 1972 to 1974, he was a visiting lecturer at the Institute of International Relations in the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. He also lectured from 1974 to 1976 at the Mona, Jamaica campus of the University of the West Indies. During his stay in Jamaica, he joined the communist Worker's Liberation League and helped draft the League's manifesto.
Bernard Coard
Winston Bernard Coard (born 10 August 1944) is a Grenadian politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister in the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) of the New Jewel Movement. In 1983, Coard launched a coup within the PRG and briefly took power until he was himself deposed by General Hudson Austin.
Bernard Coard, the son of Frederick McDermott Coard (1893–1978) and Flora Fleming (1907–2004), was born in Victoria, Grenada. He is connected to Grenada's prestigious Cenac family: a first cousin of the Honorable Justice Dunbar Cenac (1939–2023) of the Eastern Caribbean High Court, and a nephew of Dennis Vivian Cenac, a former solicitor in the West Indies Associated States Supreme Court.
Coard was attending the Grenada Boys' Secondary School when he met Maurice Bishop, who was then attending Presentation Brothers' College. Coard and Bishop shared an interest in left-wing politics from an early age. They became friends and in 1962 they co-founded the Grenada Assembly of Youth After Truth. Twice per month, the two would lead political debates in St. George's Central Market Place.
Coard left Grenada for the United States, where he studied sociology and economics at Brandeis University and joined the Communist Party USA. In 1967, he moved to England and studied political economy at the University of Sussex. That year, he married his wife Phyllis while they were students in England, and Coard joined the Communist Party of Great Britain.
He worked for two years as a schoolteacher in London and ran several youth organisations in South London. In 1971, he published a 50-page booklet How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System: The Scandal of the Black Child in Schools in Britain. It explained that British schools had a pervasive bias toward treating white children as normal, which led to black children being labeled as "educationally subnormal" (learning-disabled). Coard wrote:
The [black] children are therefore made neurotic about their race and culture. Some become behaviour problems as a result. They become resentful and bitter at being told their language is second-rate, and their history and culture is non-existent; that they hardly exist at all, except by the grace of whites.
Coard's thesis was widely cited, even long after his revolutionary career, as a summary of the role of institutional racism in the relationship between race and intelligence. In 2005, it was republished as the central article in the collection Tell it Like it is: How Our Schools Fail Black Children. A 2021 BBC One documentary entitled Subnormal: A British Scandal describes the events surrounding the racism of a leaked school report, leading to the publication of Coard's booklet. Produced/directed by Lyttanya Shannon, and executive produced by Steve McQueen, the film features interviews with people who were put into ESN schools, and activists, academics and psychologists and others who worked to expose the scandal at the time, such as Gus John and Waveney Bushell. In a 2021 article, Coard concluded that, 50 years after the ESN scandal was exposed, "the substance ... of the educational suppression of Caribbean-origin children remains".
After completing his doctorate at Sussex, Coard moved to Trinidad. From 1972 to 1974, he was a visiting lecturer at the Institute of International Relations in the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. He also lectured from 1974 to 1976 at the Mona, Jamaica campus of the University of the West Indies. During his stay in Jamaica, he joined the communist Worker's Liberation League and helped draft the League's manifesto.