By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Digital Editor

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

UNIVERISTY of The Bahamas assistant professor Dr Mayuri Deka has warned that the erosion of humanities education, and by extension, critical thinking in schools both at home and abroad undermines democracy.

Speaking at UB’s Future of Democracy Conference, Dr Deka said the worldwide retreat from humanities-based programmes due to funding cuts, if unchecked, will produce students less equipped to question information, engage with diverse perspectives, or imagine alternative futures.

“Anything that involves democratic processing is dependent on critical thinking, and that begins in the education system,” said Dr Deka, who presented at UB’s Future of Democracy Conference yesterday.

“From kindergarten up, the classroom is the most important space that young people have, because that is where they learn how to parse information, to figure out whether it’s factual or not, and then decide.”

Dr Deka underscored that fewer students are being exposed to literature, even as research shows today’s generation reads more than any before. The difference, she said, is that young people are reading in new spaces — through digital platforms, music, and media from other cultures — and schools must adapt curricula to connect those forms of engagement back to critical thinking.

Her presentation explored how globalisation and supranational institutions increasingly shape government decisions at the expense of the democratic majority, fuelling distrust and disengagement. She argued that while technology has empowered youth movements around the world — from the Arab Spring to Gen Z-led protests in Nepal and the Philippines — it also amplifies misinformation and ideological silos that threaten democratic participation.

In a side interview with The Tribune, Dr Deka stressed that critical thinking has been politicised, pointing to how the term “woke” has been weaponised as an insult.

“Think,” she said, “about the word used for liberals, they are called woke. What does that mean? You would rather be asleep? That’s what you want? You want people to be sleeping. Now ‘woke’ has become a derogatory insult, but instantly if someone calls you woke, you should ask them, so you want me to be asleep?”

She added: “Our freedom is at stake. I’m not talking about freedom in terms of liberalism. I’m talking about the freedom to be who you are, to think differently and to not be persecuted if you don’t agree. That is what is going.”

Dr Deka said Bahamians may not yet connect present challenges to authoritarian trends, but cautioned that ripple effects are already being felt.

“It is a distant thing to a certain extent,” she said.

“We have not reached there. But we are starting to see it, because of the number of students who could not go to the United States to continue their studies due to visa issues. Now they feel it firsthand. What happens in one country affects all of us.”

She explained that the underlying risk is an education system solely focused on producing workers and leaves young people unable to imagine alternative futures.

“There’s no time for imagination,” she said when asked about the impact of socioeconomic factors like increasing poverty or high crime. “The system has been built so that you just exist. You don’t want people to be imaginative, you don’t want them to be creative, because then they question. You want them just on the edge of existence, because then there is no questioning at all.”

For Dr Deka, classrooms must become spaces where students can imagine, empathise, and build resilience against disinformation. Without that, she warned, citizens risk becoming technically skilled but politically powerless.