I would like a pointer to the statement if there is one. Andrew Young has always said it like he sees it, whoever and however it offends.

I was told many years ago that there was a TV program in the USA looking at Education in Barbados, concluding that it was learning by rote.
That followed an article in the Barbados Advocate back in the days of the Barrow government when a minister said that almost all Barbadians could read and write but most were not functionally literate.
Coincidentally the same comment was made to me earlier this year at a funeral by a guy who left Barbados at age 3 and had just returned to England from his holiday in Barbados.

I wonder if there are any statistics to show the percentages of the population reaching certain shelves of achievement, categories such as general labourers/servants, artisans, clerical/general administrative, top civil servants/lawyers, Company directors, engineering and IT professionals, professors, researchers, innovators, etc.

It would provide some assessment of input and outcomes of the educational system so one could gauge its effectiveness and ranking.

The effectiveness of an educational system is not measured by how many bits of paper are issued – a goodly number of the most successful men have never had a University education or dropped out early, notables such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and many others that are less worthy of media attention but have made no less of a contribution.
Even Bill Gates and Steve Jobs could not have made it without the dedicated and smart thinkers and doers who collaborated and worked with and for them. In most cases the guy with the original idea has to start with a small core team and grow the seed ideas beyond even what the originators ever thought by bringing in talent with expansive thinking.

Hewlett and Packard started off building radios in a garage
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-information/about-hp/history/history.html
Others like Raymond Brown and Calder Cunningham who started RACAL which has progressed in leaps and bounds to become a world leader in electronics and telecommunications with titles as Vodaphone and Chubb.
Likewise many successful world class companies started out in garages or with a PC in some guy’s bedroom.

We are waiting for the next innovation with a Barbadian stamp.

It would be interesting to read the considerations Young based is conclusion on.

@Crusoe

Did what you described occur in the land of the free?

A country where the first amendment is considered sacracant?

On a related matter one wonders if Minister McClean would have whispered into the ear of US Attorney General Holder to convey a message to France’s Sarkozy to back the hell off from Barbados. Could it be that France is still pissed at Barbados for leading the fight against the OECD under Arthur? We should recall what a pissed of France has done to Haiti.

Lets make this clear, dont know about you all, but Herr Sarkozy comes across to me as a little Napolean.

Remember he also threatened to walk out of a G20 meeting if he did not get his way.

Very dangerous. Pity none of the others had the balls to open the door for him.

Bloomberg is right, it is a public square, one’s right to protest shouldn’t infringe on another’s right to enjoy that space. When they set up a library it indicates that they want to make it permanent.

What would the authorities in Bim do if I was protesting against some cause and decided to camp out in Heroes Square?

Only yesterday we heard in the news that the USA has been asked to deploy troops in Australia because of a fear a growing Red Army (China).

BT

Maybe having dug wells throughout the middle east by fermenting civil unrest, the well diggers are now about to fall in themselves…
********
Care to explain or expand on that statement?

Not sure what’s more offensive. The ignorance and arrogance of whiteness that allows it to completely divorce and discard the obvious historical context in which Young was speaking. Or the arrogant implication of the post that blacks like Young are eternally playing black victim and thus keeping blacks down. But whites like the guest blogger, on the other hand, know better and must attempt to educate blacks and save us from other blacks like Young – or basically save us from ourselves.

Or the tired meme that because I have a black best friend, or in this case a black wife, I am completely immune to the way race works in this society and I couldn’t possibly have been blinded by my racial privilege when I wrote this post.
This critique of Young’s speech was completely unscientific and dishonest, and only people who don’t know any better will fall for this type of commentary.

Exactly David. Let’s just solve everything with a kiss and a handshake. Oh, and it would be so nice if you blacks would just shut up about slavery and racism because then racism will magically disappear and we can all enjoy our post-racial world in peace.

Just a few days after the US Attorney General was reported to have rebuked the Froggie PM over his statement that Barbados is a tax haven, we see the same USA listing an off-shore bank domiciled here as a high risky.
We should by now realise that people very often tell us what we want to hear. Take the report in today’s Nation back page that Barbados is above the USA, according to a World Economic Forum Report ,in its infrastructure-its roads,bridges,airport,harbour and other facilities. They however forget to mention Rum, as I am sure that if the person responsible for making this report had physically visited Barbados,that would have been his/main interest.
But no doubt our politicians and political yard fowls will hold on to this and try to convince us sheep that the report in genuine.
God Bless Bim .