BU’s favourite caller to a popular talk show made the point recently – those who contribute significantly to political campaigns and political parties are the ones who consume scarce foreign exchange. These are the companies and individuals described as wholesalers and retailers who patrol and control the political landscape of Barbados. BU’s favourite caller was provoked to respond to well known self confessed political financier Leron Gibbs. Gibbs is known as one of the political shapers who has funded Peter Wickham CADRES polls.
If we want to increase our foreign exchange earning capacity we have to target growth areas designed to deliver the result. In a climate where limited resources exist, both time and financial, one has to decide for example if to priortise tax concessions to a Cost-U-Less compared to a professional or company in the export sector. It continues to be an embarrassment ignorant politicians allow an obvious a strategy to incent export oriented businesses to be compromised because of greed and political expediency.
At the root of our problem in Barbados is an inability to embrace innovation to affect how we do things. Now required in a global space which demands it to be competitive. A comment posted to the Innovation NOT Being Taught in Schools by BU Newbie Dee Word is recommended reading:
Today I saw some pics from a public high school in NY and it reminded me of this discourse re innovation. The school, Brooklyn Technical, is really unlike anything in B’dos with a roll of some 5K students and over 250 teachers/administrators.
In terms of standards from a Bajan perspective, schools like HC and QC would be the best comparison based on the merit testing which is also used at Tech that allows only those with outstanding scores to gain entry.
However, that’s where the comparison ends.
With respect to innovation this is one of the schools that would be a model (in a very restricted and selective way, of course) to emulate. Our education system would be be unable to match what is done here in all instances
These high school kids get to learn legal matters, aerospace engineering, as well as architectural, civil, biomedical, software and chemical engineering. Industrial design,environmental science and ‘gateway to medicine’ are options for majors and all this coupled with the ‘regular’ things like physics, applied maths, languages, social studies and so on.
But what led me to this were the pictures I saw. One of a complete court room: a modern court room with all the equipment. This the high school students have as their practice turf.
The other picture was of an actual house the kids doing architectural engineering. were building.
Now, this is school is somewhat unique in terms of size and its system of allowing students to major in a particular field. But other high schools catering to the best and brightest have similar types of offerings particularity in the sciences
So in the context of innovation in our schools, this unfortunately reinforces only too well the point by David Weekes and others of how far behind we are and will continue to fall.
+++Image of courtroom: (Found this link for those keen to see the room)
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/brooklyn-tech-transforms-storage-area-lifelike-courtoom-classroom-budding-law-students-article-1.964242
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