EDITORIAL
In Barbados, with our limited natural resources, we recognise that educating and developing our young people is the key to prosperity. With the right kind of guidance, along with their creative ideas and enthusiasm, this country has the potential to grow at a much faster rate. However, it is imperative that they are encouraged by right-thinking members of society so that we do lose this valuable resource.
Over the years, there has been a lot of talk about paying for university education and what will become of the already financially stressed population if the trend of paying for education continued. Thankfully, undergraduate university education is now free again with some conditions for those who chose to embark upon that journey.
For many years, in some sectors of society, an elitist attitude prevailed whereas people thought (and still do think) that one is not truly successful unless he/she has earned a university degree. The time has come for everyone to adjust their thinking if we are to make any progress.
Over the years, along with the free education that youth in Barbados are for the most part benefiting from, progressive governments have been instrumental in opening up avenues for youth in general through easy access to technological advancements and skills training. Any observer from outside this country would say, and correctly so, that we are blessed to have such opportunities available to us even with the economic climate as it is at the moment. What is lacking, however, is the full co-operation and encouragement of the general public. We have institutions such as the Barbados Community College and The Samuel Jackman Prescod Institute of Technology that are viable options for those who want to pursue a post-secondary education. In fact, the subject options that
these institutions offer are needed more today to push this country toward a more rounded status.
We have such a wealth of talent in Barbados that we have not begun to scratch the surface. However, there is a disturbing mentality where some of us build up a person who has the potential to do well with one side of our mouths but we attempt to pull them down with the other because they do not, in our opinion, measure up academically. What eventually happens, though, is that where the stronger willed individual can shake off the undercurrent of negativity and move from strength to strength, the weaker one for the most part is discouraged and we run a serious risk of not benefiting from what he/she could have offered.
There is also a growing trend where we ‘throw things’ at the youth and they become chronic receivers as time goes by. This dismissive behaviour on both parts does not bode well for the future that many of us envision if we want to progress at the rate of other first world countries. Daily we hear on the call-in programmes or see in the media what needs to be done in order to continue the high level of education that Barbados has enjoyed for so long. However, we need to turn these theories into action sooner rather than later or we stand to lose our youth resource and a potentially prosperous future.