est. 2007

Barbados Underground

Bringing News and Opinions to the People

Rigour required in the education reform debate

The following was submitted as a note to the blogmaster with minor edits applied. It touches on a subject matter we have been discussing for many years, education reform and the lack of intellectual rigour being applied to adequately equip our people for the global marketplace – Blogmaster

As you may know, in 2022 the Government through Export Barbados opened the International Food Science Centre in Newton to help small Food manufacturers scale for export by providing them with the technology and equipment.  Since the opening of the facility a number of food manufacturers have benefited.  However, the adoption of AI and Robotics in Barbados by the private sector and even the lack of basic investment in digitisation, e-commerce and Research and Development by the mature private sector and the limited financing options available for star-ups, has meant that Barbados cannot be competitive in any form of modern manufacturing  and it has hampered productivity in non-manufacturing sectors.  

This is compounded by the fact that our workforce is being drawn from a population who goes through an outdated education system.David, please read what Dr. Grace -Ann Jackman said about how outdated the 11-plus exam is.   

Export Barbados CEO Mark Hill took the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) president on a tour of the Food Science Centre.  Here is what he had to say about the lack of investment by the private sector in technology over the years. 

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/ScgooRXCUSnGAkwi/?mibextid=UalRPS

This brings us back to the point I made on Barbados Underground a few weeks ago. Armchair critics only talk about economic diversification while being cold to the idea of digital transformation and education reform. Direct and coherent statements like the ones from Dr.Jackman and Mark Hill are what we need in the discourse to take us forward, not incoherent rambling from the uninformed. 

23 responses to “Rigour required in the education reform debate”

  1. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Well!

    How many decades have we heard these same things?

    Have we not already destroyed generations of small and medium sized manufacturers in this country as though they were bugs?

    And if the country has so destroyed all these indigenously produced, pun intended, manufacturers, in which set of universes can such claims about manufacturing prospects be made?

    Would such not require the unearthing of reasons why such a self destructive ethos was permitted?

    Really, what are we to say to the long departed, Trevor Clarke, Hampden, the Millers, Roberts and the still living Matthew Small, Andy Toppin, Nasser and more?

    How will it be possible to protect local manufacturers given the World Trade Organization’s rules? Rules requiring the absence of protectionist measures generally.

    How can this discourse even be conjured without a reflection on where the country is in relationship to the battle between manufacturing and financial capitalism?

    How is this going to be possible without an international situation where balance of payments are made to actually balance as Keynes proposed?

    Talk about leapfrogging 2.0 tech to 4.0 seems hollow. Certainly just buying these tech tools from China will merely make worse current problems and will NOT address the manufacturing of these new scientific ‘means of production’ required for industrial transformation, bottom up.

    Weeeee have many more questions.

    But having seen, close up, a few of the manufacturing failures of recent weee fear that the regime will do no more than try to set up another generation for more of the same outcomes.

  2. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    Pacha.
    Brutally on point!
    Amen.

  3. Lessons, Extended Refix Avatar
    Lessons, Extended Refix

  4. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    What rigour? What education? What reforms?

    Listening to the DLP branch meeting. Saint Michael South, we presuppose!

    Whether Verla Depieza, Pedro Welch or Ryan Walters, dey say senator if you will!

    It’s like if Mottley didn’t put two 30-loves in dem for all the maladministration when last in government.

    But yet, the once thought dead DLP continues to quack like a Dee

    Thorne is in the line up of speakers, it seems. However, it gives us little pleasure in surmising that he too represents no departure from the mean, the general tendencies.

    Rigour? Education? Reform?

    These are foreign to this political culture!

  5. David Avatar
    David

    We had the late Leonard Shirley and of late Ralph Jemmott but generally we are not observing anybody speaking with intellectual rigour in a country that spends generously on education.

  6. Tron Avatar
    Tron

    I am against an overly sophisticated education that could tempt the masses to question the state, government, business leaders and church.

    What we really need for the masses is affordable primary education. That is enough to serve in the hotel plantations.

    UWI should be reserved for the small elite.

    For knowledge is power.

  7. William Avatar
    William

    @ David
    Leonard Shorey was the most conservative of them all. He was against education reform.

  8. David Avatar
    David

    @Willian

    Shorey was part of an intellectual debate and this was the point.

    https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000230018/PDF/230018eng.pdf.multi

  9. William Skinner Avatar
    William Skinner

    @ David
    Interesting that we would mention Shorey and Jemmott and not
    Comrade John Cumberbatch, the late President of the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) during the 70s when the call for the abolition of the Eleven Plus and reform was at its zenith.
    We believe , it was Comrade Cumberbatch, who deemed the Eleven Plus “elitist”, who was the main voice calling for education reform.
    People such as Shorey were bitterly opposed to Comrade Cumberbatch and those other Comrades ,within the Barbados Union of Teachers, who were in the forefront of exposing the damage the exam was doing to the development of the country.
    Fifty years later , which are two generations, none of the two administrations, has demonstrated any progressive education reform policy and the bungling of the current administration, is nothing more than an embarrassment, regarding the issue.
    Indeed, the current Prime Minister, was far from stellar , when she was Minister of Education . This seems to be a closely guarded secret but , it is highly believed that the politilization of the Ministry of Education reached great heights , during her stewardship. To this day the truth about Edutech has never been told.
    The current efforts are farcical because the so-called reform package weas launched with great political PR fanfare and within a few weeks , when it was stripped of the gloss, all that was revealed resembled the now popular pretty talk.
    We heard a whole lot about Schools of Excellence and Junior Colleges. The idea of Junior Colleges is nothging new. But , when it was asked ,how Schools of Excellence would have been determined, there was no answer.
    The talk about public involvement and town hall meetings was just as farcical.

  10. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    Shorey, Cumberbatch, Edutech, Education Reform….
    All have been a waste of time, producing poor results…. because…

    Can someone enlighten a lowly bushman on how the Hell we will be able to roll out an ‘Education Policy’, when we have not yet determined what EDUCATION really is, nor have we been able to define a long term NATIONAL strategic vision….?????

    How do you plan a ROUTE, before you have decided where you intend to GET TO…?

    What a place!
    What a curse!

    A country is SUPPOSED to have a long term STRATEGIC MISSION and a VISION of what success means. What are ours?
    Is it to please and impress the IMF, WHO, PAHO, IDB and UNICEF?

    The Education ‘policy’ THEN charts the path SYSTEMATICALLY towards that vision, and the RESULTING Education ‘System’ prepares the citizens to:
    – Understand and buy into the SET national vision
    – Fit into the various roles REQUIRED to execute the vision
    – Identify and reward those who exemplify CONFORMANCE to the strategic plan
    – Review, refine and update the vision and plans as the world changes around us

    Any OTHER “eddykashun” policy or planning is largely a waste of money and resources. Basically producing unfulfilled youth – who then mostly run off to foreign lands (AFTER our expensive local investments in wasted ‘eddykashun’ shiite efforts).

    Where there is no vision, we all suffer – by going into never-ending DEBT.

    …BUT we will no doubt be LOVED by the IMF / WHO/ PAHO/ IDB and UNICEF…. if that is any consolation..

  11. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Skinner

    The DLP is no better. For a party seen by some as more ‘progressive’, under Ralph Thorne, it’s more conservative. As well imbued with a religiosity supportive of the backwardness of this miseducation system.

    If you have Africans, born in bondage, and from their first conscious moments are fed with lies intellectual damage has a head start.

    That Cumberbatch remains a giant after two generations speak to his greatness and to the moral corruption so we’ll centered.

    In the end we shall continue to waste time with political snake oil salesmen because there has never been any deep commitment to anything other than the petite bourgeois education system.

    When it comes to education, regardless of for whom we vote, we get a Leonard Shorey!

    Not even continuing failure could avoid this known outcome.

  12. William Skinner Avatar
    William Skinner

    @ Pacha
    Wew said :
    ” Fifty years later , which are two generations, none of the two administrations, has demonstrated any progressive education reform policy and the bungling of the current administration, is nothing more than an embarrassment, regarding the issue. ”
    No where did we indicate that the DLP was/is any better.
    @ Bush Tea
    We assure you that Comrade Cumberbatch was not a “waste of time” We were closely associated with Comrade Cumberbatch and the Barbados Union of Teachers(BUT) during that period. The public was told by both parties that the BUT wanted to stop poor children from going to Harrison College. It is a view still held by Ralph Thorne and Walter Blackman in a Brasstacks program seems to believe so as well.
    There is nothing fair about the exam , it is breeding marginalised students and citizens.
    We have said on this BU for many years that if we want to look at what education reform looks like, we should look at what Japan did when it realised that its industries , especially auto, were lagging behind the USA.
    You are absolutely correct, outside of your obviously uninformed and certainly unfortunate view of Cumberbatch, who by far is the closest example of a true revolutionary , that one could find anywhere in the Caribbean.
    Personally, I am proud to state publicly that I am an unapolgetic disciple of Comrade John Cumberbatch.

  13. slow motion Avatar
    slow motion

    Perhaps the problem with Barbados is that everything is done in slow motion,
    even politics is dragged out. If you look at the DLP saga there is 1 statement made per week for the Sunday papers and it is all such a drag. People lose interest easily and news cycles today last not more than 1 week not months on end.

  14. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    How much manufacturing goes into mango juice and coconut water though? The processing cannot be that hard or expensive.

    As for the furniture, the old crates dressed up in fabric and slapped together with a few tacks, that most people buy, it is sold for thousands of dollars. Is that the cheap imported stuff? If so, it is highly overpriced. I feel I could lick up one of them in a couple of hours for a Grantley.

    WTO rules would definitely affect the viability of certain manufacturing. But not all.

    So..we do what we can and leave out the rest.

  15. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ William
    Your point is that Cumberbatch was ‘not a waste of time’ ….because you were closely associated with him…?

    Hello??!!

    Boss…
    In the absence of ACTUAL RESULTS, …that move society forward (even if only in one’s immediate environment) the net effect is a ‘waste of time’.

    WRT the 11+exan, emotional rants about its biases are childish rubbish – IN THE ABSENCE OF PRESENTING A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE.

    The 11+ ACTUALLY SOLVED a glaring problem of SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION in Barbados, and replaced it with a system of ACADEMIC discrimination.

    The ACTUAL desired position (outlined by Bushie above) is one where we discriminate towards OUR NATIONAL VISION in our education placement.

    (But first we need a national vision).
    cause…
    Where there is NO vision…..

  16. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Skinner

    Don’t be so touchous!

    Ours is no direct and oppositional position to yours.

    We’re just commenting generally.

    Certainly, you did not explicitly say so. However, your general tendency seems less than equally weighted.

    Indeed, unlike you, this writer cannot be convinced that meanings should be limited to any particular series of words, as stated within a specific moment of time.

    Maybe that’s a function of the relative political histories.

    Have the last word!

  17. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Bushie

    All your arguments become fatally flawed by a certain and constant variable.

  18. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Last night weeee heard Ralph Thorne blaming the. BLP for igniting the confusion within the DLP.

    Weee are to believe that Mia Mottley is all powerful. That the faux innocence of the DLP entitles them to the absence of disbelief.

    If we do, then political inbreeding is the chief cornerstone

    Of course, these were not his precise words. However, this conclusion could only have been avoided but by a wordsmith, with intention.

    This morning the party is in court!

  19. Enuff Avatar
    Enuff

    David

    Were you rigorous in setting up this blog? Yes,/no and why?

  20. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Been looking for info in the DLP law case. Well, the CJ had to adjourn seemingly based on the insufficiency of documents filed.

    By lawyers.

    Maybe, just maybe, the DLP should follow Barrow’s advice and “stay out of Coleridge Street”, even if now moved!

  21. David Avatar
    David

    @Enuff

    The blogmaster’s view pales compared to what is your opinion.

  22. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ Pacha
    Bushie…All your arguments become fatally flawed by a certain and constant variable
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    LOLOL
    Ha ha ha
    Murda!!

    Two responses:
    1 – A “constant variable” is an oxymoron… most ‘un-Pacha-like’.
    2- Perhaps, my dear Pacha, the flaw is in YOUR court….

  23. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Not necessarily!

    Should be interpreted as.

    Certain, meaning not to be defined or hidden.

    Constant, meaning ever present

    Variable. meaning to various degrees

    In all, an ingredient not to be named. Which is always present to various degrees.

    Meaning, that yuh is a smart salesman of the craft.

    Like Shane Warne who delivered five or six different leg brakes. But they were all legbrakes.

The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.

Trending

Discover more from Barbados Underground

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading