Have you ever given thought to why so many of our university graduates cannot find jobs? Have you puzzled over whether it is not due to the students, but the system itself?
Do you know if we have a philosophy of education with clear objectives? Every time I read about the top achievers when SEA results come out, I stand in my shoes and I wonder.
When I attend a UWI graduation ceremony I wonder about all those bright young people who graduated from law school last year and are still looking for someone to hire them. What was the objective, the meaningfulness of their education?
On Wednesday last week, Theodore Lewis wrote an excellent article about “meaningful work” which he defined as a fundamental concept in the Caribbean because the society was built on work.
The work he historically focused on was African slavery and East Indian and poor-white indentureship, initially done by people who were mainly plantation and agricultural workers.
What education system there was then was planned with a definite objective tied to the economy. That was its job. It was tied to what Lloyd Best and Kari Levitt called a plantation economy.
It was not by accident that the first internationally-recognised tertiary institution in Trinidad was the Royal College of Tropical Agriculture, a school with an international reputation for excellence. Its students came from all over the world, eager to learn to prepare for careers in the many varied disciplines of agriculture.
That was “meaningful work” at the time recognised by the colonial system which structured the society around it.
The few public schools, provided by the Colonial Office and available to children in the West Indies (which were established here, I am told, even before they were provided to all children in England), were focused on knowledge according to colonial policies at the time, to support the export of plantation products and the technical and administrative staff for what locals used to call familiarly “the Col Sec.”
The Royal College was an excellent training ground for those who then went into every other “business.” including the “business” of culture.
It wasn’t that long ago and many people trained there are still around.
The system was intended to provide locals with an understanding of how to exercise authority. Education curricula were designed with “a long eye’ with the objective of developing minds to respect authority to ensure a disciplined society in the future.
That is what schools were for. Children were taught to line up, like good little soldiers and wait to be told to march to class. They still do that.
Standards were agreed and UK tests (the hated 11-plus) continued to measure achievement. Come Independence and in the uncertainty of the transition, an education Concordat was created intended to heal the educational “split” between creed-based, fee paying “good” schools and free government schools with lower standards so that going forward every creed and race would have an equal place.
So what happened? Why does the re
