58 responses to “Rewiring Education with AI?”

1. 

   Bush Tea

   September 12, 2025 at 5:16 pm

   
   

   Who can fire them Hants?
   Wuh…
   If you know that YOU are not performing as a manager, how do you fire your supervisor for not performing…??
   Especially when that supervisor has DETAILS of your own non performance?
   Unless of course you are an OUTRIGHT demon like Trump, and THAT makes it even worse.

   Incompetence is self-perpetuating… and practically unstoppable…
   UNLESS external, RIGHTEOUS, intervention comes at the VERY TOP…

   This is of course why the Boss, Bushman number One – HAS to return…
   else it will be ALL OUT BB ‘cat piss and pepper’ EVERYWHERE…

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2. 

   David

   September 14, 2025 at 4:37 am

   
   

   Preserving our moral compass

   This article was written and submitted by J. H. Hallam King, SCM – (Education and Criminal Justice) former Principal and Special Advisor to the Attorney General.

   This article was inspired by that of Sir Errol Walrond in the Sunday Sun of 31 August 2025, entitled: Beyond the Ministry’s Spin. I endorse his views, particularly as they relate to the moral, spiritual, and disciplinary base of Barbados’ past educational system.

   We need to be mindful of what we adopt or try to adapt to, if what is imported merely updates student learning technologically but does not improve the fundamental elements in educational quality, the moral character and desirable discipline and behaviour of (and in) the child produced. Undoubtedly, much thought and research emphasis have been given by the Ministry of Educational Transformation in seeking to bring student learning on par, or competitive, with leading international systems and standards. For such, all architects in this exercise should be lauded.

   Permit me to suggest some areas – societal and cultural – that ought to demand attention for the confused child. Indeed, for children in general, but especially for those born to teenagers without backup support, or to adults who have conducted violent lives, have been abusive and/or have been incarcerated. Learned Behaviours from Early Childhood

   • In another incarnation following my headmastership, I had oversight in Barbados’ criminal justice system. I observed in Glendairy Prison, at the time, that almost an entire family of adults was incarcerated: son (20 years), his father (40+ years), his uncle (30+), and his brother a year or so older. Those men were ultimately released from prison.

   What admirable or law-abiding values would or could they impart to their children? The Bible teaches us to honour thy mother and thy father. So, what if, in such a case, to honour thy father and thy mother is to defy societal morals and legalities?

   Later, that child enters primary school with rules – but rules differing drastically from those at home. Who should the child listen to? He or she is being punished both at home and at school. Ostensibly, for not doing the “right” thing. What or who is right in that child’s mind? Or, rather, does the child even understand or know the difference?

   • At Dodds (boys in 1998) there was a boy whose mother, in her 30s, had 11 children from 11 different fathers. How or what would a young child, toddler – two or three years old – understand or cope with from such complexity? What lasting impact would its upbringing have on his or her journey through life?

   • A boy of 13 years, attending the school of which I am in charge, has no biological father at home and his mother is barely able to make ends meet. She makes extra money with different male partners in a bedroom separated by flimsy cardboard from the children’s room.

   • There are children abused by stepfathers, as well as those arriving late for school having waited at the bus stop for lunch money from their biological fathers who never showed up. The situation is then exacerbated as the teacher, not au fait with the child’s background, reprimands the child. The poor child is hungry and sleepy – unable to focus – totally absent.

   Hence, “my beef” that all teachers should be perspicacious enough to understand and be capable of teaching the “whole child” – not merely the subject matter. Teacher training in child psychological methodology should be a mandatory prerequisite to teach.

   The Child’s Mind I am schooled in the biological sciences and am influenced to believe in the role of the limbic system of the brain; that primitive part that controls hunger, thirst and natural impulses and behaviours. As readers no doubt know, there is also that subconscious part of us that manifests itself when we are taken by surprise (we may even embarrass ourselves by what we say or do).

   There is that conscious part, which suppresses the first part from acting up. Then there is a third part – our conscience. That subconscious part concerns me in relation to people exposed or subjected to deviance, violence and criminal conduct.

   What is the expected outcome when a child is helplessly immersed in such undesirable – if not unlawful and defiant – conduct? Would that “Freudian id”, that inner self, that subconscious, not show its ugliness on impulse? How could regular teaching methods help those already disturbed minds?

   While seeking to place our educational system on the cutting edge in technology, we should not neglect but rather focus on giving due diligence and meaningful intervention to pre-school education. We should hire professionals in child psychology (including deviant and abnormal behaviours) and, also, in physiological psychology to save those children who deserve better homes and role models.

   If we consider philosopher John Locke’s tabula rasa – that the newborn’s brain can be likened to a blank slate – then whatever that baby or infant “picks up” or learns in those early years could be indelibly etched on that young child’s mind.

   As Special Adviser to the Attorney General in 1997 or 1998, I suggested a British policy called “Binding Over”. That policy would hold a parent financially responsible for any offence committed by his or her child, and would deny the parent’s time and pay to attend court. That way the parent feels “the pain” in his or her pocket and therefore accepts a more responsible role as a parent. (That idea had legal and political implications and was not pursued.)

   At PTA meetings, the main parents – those that the teachers really want to see – do not attend. As far as I am aware, there is no law to make them attend.

   My Main Point

   Which brings me to my main point: how do we save a child whose parents cannot help themselves? A child whose parents do unlawful things as a way of life? A child whose father or mother is a prison recidivist, or sex abuser, or drug trafficker – as a “profession”? What “permanent” legal recourse is there to give that child a chance to become a decent, welladjusted human soul?

   I suggest that we construct solid foundations rather than camouflaging with cosmetics. Maintaining national educational standards while dependent on international financial assistance.

   Some practices have served Barbados well. Practices that gave us “that edge” and respect and admiration in educational erudition over our Caribbean partners and further afield. I question whether many past accepted moral and spiritual values have not been compromised, plummeted or disappeared.

   What happens when a Government wants to borrow money from an international bank? And that bank asks: “What is your Government’s view on, say, capital punishment, or corporal punishment, or of certain rights or orientation of a child, or of teaching Christianity or spiritual subjects in schools, or insisting on dress codes that do not distract in school and from classroom learning, etc.?”

   What happens if the borrower does not agree with the lender’s terms and conditions? Would the borrower depart from its former higher ideals and norms in order to secure or procure the loan?

   I pray, even in “the name of progress”, that we are able to live within and preserve that moral compass that has served us well in education, and allow it to be our Ministry’s guide – if not spin!

   How do we save a child whose parents cannot help themselves? . . . . A child whose father or mother is a prison recidivist, or sex abuser, or drug trafficker – as a “profession”?

   Source: Nation

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3. 

   Bush Tea

   September 14, 2025 at 7:44 am

   
   

   At LAST!!!
   Someone who ACTUALLY understands, and has articulated PUBLICLY, the REAL problems that we NEED to solve in our current eddykashun shitstem.

   AI shiite!!
   If a fella cannot even spell his name, how will advanced computer technology solve his issues?
   The FUNDAMENTAL system is seriously flawed.

   Now for someone with appropriate and meaningful SOLUTIONS…..

   THIS is where we have ALWAYS fallen down….

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4. 

   David

   September 14, 2025 at 7:53 am

   
   

   @ Bush Tea

   Aren’t you conflating a failure at the primary level with the need to be aware how we shore up competitiveness at the national level? Because we are failing at the primary level it doesn’t mean measures cannot be put in place to accommodate those among us and migrant workers who have prerequisite skills to drive national success.

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5. 

   Bush Tea

   September 14, 2025 at 8:55 am

   
   

   Are you SERIOUS?

   Do you build a mansion on a shiite FOUNDATION?
   (…well unless you are our Bajan road administrators of course)

   The VERY FIRST priority in constructing anything of HIGH VALUE, is to ensure that it stands on a FIRM FOUNDATION.

   Back in the 1960’s when we were building a CHATTEL HOUSE level Education system, the existing sandy foundation sufficed for a start. We actually got good results – CONSIDERING WHERE WE STARTED IN the 1940’s.

   Can you rationalize, in 2025, trying to build an AI based system – ON THE SAME DAMN CHATTEL HOUSE foundation?

   Mr King is saying that a NEW, more robust, professionally designed FOUNDATION is vital – unless the objective is to CONTINUE REBUILDING the shiite eddykashun system every 4 years (like we do our ‘modern’ roads – that are built on the same cart-road foundations from the 1940s)
   SMH!!
   Brass bowls WILL be brass bowls.
   The only REAL surprising thing is to have such a COHERENT analysis from someone who was so intimately involved in the mess….

   That such high-level knowledge have not been properly leveraged is YET another sign of our MAFIA society.

   What a place!!!

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6. 

   David

   September 14, 2025 at 8:56 am

   
   

   @Bush Tea

   We have to do both, the world is not waiting for us.

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7. 

   Bush Tea

   September 14, 2025 at 9:26 am

   
   

   How???
   By building the skyscraper – while concurrently excavating the old foundations?
   (like wasteful mill and pave?)

   …OR by enlisting brains like Mr King (AND MANY OTHERS LIKE HIM) to come up with a LONG TERM PLAN – including an appropriate NEW foundation, redesigned ground floors, and futuristic upper levels?

   Basic COMMON SENSE dictates that this is EXACTLY what is required for:
   – Education reform
   – Road construction and maintenance
   – Renewable energy
   – Citizen enfranchisement
   – National Economic stability
   ….in fact, for every shiite!!

   Instead, we get knee jerk intuition, driving expensive and wasteful exercises in idiocy, whose most NOTABLE achievements are to enrich a certain small segment of our society, and by attrition, those who facilitate them.

   Many many hands – yet can’t get one shiite done!

   Pound for pound
   WE are the BB bosses.
   What a place!

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8. 

   David

   September 14, 2025 at 9:49 am

   
   

   @ Bush Tea

   We identify those who are ahead of the curve as we work to improve a more relevant framework?

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