Parenting & Family Quote by Lynden Oscar Pindling

A small line with a big tell: Pindling frames education less as a moral good than as infrastructure for national survival. “We must” isn’t a gentle suggestion; it’s executive language, the grammar of state-building. And the ellipsis matters. It implies a longer, familiar argument already in motion - as if the audience has heard the stakes before and now needs the marching orders.

The phrasing “more schools and teachers” is pointedly material. Not “better values” or “higher standards”, but the concrete inputs a young country can actually budget, build, and measure. That pragmatic inventory also signals urgency: whatever system exists is insufficient in scale, and time is the enemy. The line “to fit our children for tomorrow” carries a quiet edge. “Fit” is not “free” or “fulfill”. It suggests preparation for a specific future - a labor market, a civic order, a postcolonial economy that won’t wait for idealism. The subtext is social engineering in the best sense: if the Bahamas (and its leadership) wants sovereignty to mean more than flag and anthem, it needs human capital.

Contextually, Pindling’s tenure sits in the arc of decolonization and early independence politics, where leaders had to convert political liberation into administrative competence and upward mobility. Education becomes the bridge between promise and legitimacy. If tomorrow is going to be different, the state has to manufacture the citizens who can operate it - and Pindling is blunt about who bears responsibility.