So I went to the London School of Economics to do the Bachelor of Commerce degree which offered accounting, business management, commercial law and a little economics and statistics. I would simultaneously study law to fall back on if nothing administrative turned up. Lucia for a job in the municipal service or in private trade. Eventually I decided to study business administration, planning to return to St. I wanted to be an engineer, but this seemed pointless since neither the government nor the white firms would employ a black engineer. I did not want to be a lawyer or a doctor. The British government imposed a colour bar in its colonies, so young blacks went in only for law or medicine where they could make a living without government support. At this point I did not know what to do with my life. In 1932 I sat the examination and won the scholarship. But this was at the expense of not reading enough history and literature, for which these years of one’s life are the most appropriate. This job was not wasted on me since it taught me to write, to type, to file and to be orderly. Lucia government scholarship to a British university, but I would be too young for this until 1932. My next step would be to sit the examination for a St. I left school at 14, having completed the curriculum, and went to work as a clerk in the civil service. My mother was the most highly-disciplined and hardest working person I have ever known, and this, combined with her love and gentleness, enabled her to make a success of each of her children. My father died when I was seven, leaving a widow and five sons, ranging in age from five to seventeen. This gave me a terrible sense of physical inferiority, as well as an understanding, which has remained with me ever since, that high marks are not everything. So, the rest of my school life and early working life, up to age 18, was spent with fellow students or workers two or three years older than I. In fact, he taught me in three months as much as the school taught in two years, so, on returning to school, I was shifted from grade 4 to grade 6. When I was seven I had to stay home for several weeks because of some ailment, whereupon my father elected to teach me so that I should not fall behind. My progress through the public schools was accelerated. The islands were dissimilar in religion and culture, so our family had some slight characteristics of immigrant minorities. My parents, who were both school teachers, had immigrated there from Antigua about a dozen years before. Share via Email: Sir Arthur Lewis – Biographical Share this content via Email.Share on LinkedIn: Sir Arthur Lewis – Biographical Share this content on LinkedIn.Tweet: Sir Arthur Lewis – Biographical Share this content on Twitter.Share on Facebook: Sir Arthur Lewis – Biographical Share this content on Facebook.
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