Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, Senator Harcourt Husbands (left), was pleased to see the calibre ofprojects on display. Here, he is posing with the winning team from Queen’s College and Anderson King (centre), Vice President of Corporate Communications and Marketing at Sagicor Life Inc.
STEM – New Way Forward
Wed, 05/25/2016 - 12:00am
By:
Peta Rowe-Forde
Based on the premise that today’s visionaries will be tomorrow’s leaders, Sagicor meted out its Visionaries Challenge to secondary school students to create projects based in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) to hone their skills in the respective subject areas.
Seven teams stepped up to the challenge and put on a display that was thought to be of high quality. Anderson King, Vice President of Corporate Communications and Marketing at Sagicor Life Inc., noted that while he was filled with admiration and hope as he browsed the exhibitions, he also felt a hint of envy knowing that the students had already attained skills that he did not have at their age. King went on to say that each year he is amazed by the potential in the ideas put forward, but more so in the potential seen in students. He stated that seeing that Barbados has moved from a plantation economy to a tourism economy, there’s no telling with these visionaries where Barbados could be headed next. This challenge, King said, aligned with the goals set out by the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation.
Continuing in this vein was Parliamentary Secretary for said Ministry, Senator Harcourt Husbands, as he congratulated the students and teachers for their efforts and maintained that the projects had reached
an extremely high quality.
While expressing his gratitude to Sagicor for sponsoring such a programme, Husbands revealed that when the Ministry opens the first of six nurseries in September, it will be equipped with new
curriculum which will expose children to technology, math and science at an early age. This, Husbands states, will aid in providing children with the skill set needed to survive in their
modern-day world.
Speaking directly to the participating students, Husbands assured them that while a lot of the STEM subjects may seem irrelevant now, exposure to them will put them in good stead for the future. He told them that they could look forward to enjoying significantly improved quality of life due to their exposure to STEM, noting that his generation was probably the last that could have “gotten by” without some study of the subjects.
To this end, he implored the students to do as he says and not as he did and make the best use of the opportunity given to them.