http://www.nalis.gov.tt/Biography/history_JamesOliverCutteridge_lateAsstDirE
ducation.htm

Captain James Oliver Cutteridge has probably suffered Trini criticism longer
than anyone else in history.  As early as 1923, two years after arriving
here, he was promoted to Assistant Director of Education and his
vilification began.



Ex-teacher Howard Bishop, a Garveyite and editor of the Trinidad
Workingmen's Association Journal, Labour Leader, began the attack, which he
sustained for many years.  Cutteridge, wrote bishop, was not qualified for
the post.



He retired in 1942 and left Trinidad.  Still, the editor of the Clarion,
organ of the Trinidad Labour Party, consoled himself in 1948 with the
thought that Cutteridge was "spending his last days in a wheeled chair and
wearing a bib."



His death on August 2, 1952 in the Isle of Man brought no respite.  In 1963,
40 years after the vilification began, Sparrow sang "Dan is the Man",
pouring scorn on the folk tales and parables Cutteridge put in his West
Indian Readers.





http://www.trinicenter.com/Cudjoe/2004/0710.htm

Dr. Williams would have welcomed the rise of the ramlelas; the hosay and the
carnival arts as counter-discourses to the dominant discourse of the
colonial-capitalist order that strove to impose their values on a colonized
people. No wonder, he was so contemptuous of J. O. Cutteridge, the author of
several of our early school texts, whom Dr. Williams acknowledged as having
"a negative rather than a positive" impact on his life. In 1901, Joseph de
Suze, a local school master wrote Little Folks Trinidad to tell us about the
wonders of our world. Trinbagonians may remember Cutteridge who Sparrow made
infamous in his biting satire of our educational system in his calypso, "Dan
is the Man in the Van." Few of us know who de Suze is. In elevating Inniss
and decentering Cutteridge, Dr. Williams suggests that we need to honor
those who went before and to acquaint ourselves with the intellectual
culture that make us who we are. Hence his emphasis on the ennobling
dimensions of his enterprise. "[In my lectures] I sought always to instill
pride, to give a new sense of dignity to the people. Our history was the
politics of the past, made for us by others. It was a necessary guide to the
politics of the future, made for us by ourselves."



Marcus Day, DSc
Director
Caribbean Drug Abuse Research Institute
Box 1419
Castries
SAINT LUCIA

VOICE 1-758-458-2795
FAX 1-758-458-2796
CELL 1-758-485-9100

-----Original Message-----
From: Members of the Society for Caribbean Studies based in UK
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sandra Courtman
Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 7:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Who is/was Dan Cutteridge?

Dear Members,

I am using The Mighty Sparrow's 'Dan the Man' with students this week and
wondered if anyone could tell me who Dan Cutteridge was and why he was made
famous in Sparrow's song?

Yours in ignorance, and many thanks

Sandra