THE education system in Barbados needs to be revamped in order to facilitate children of different learning capacities and to accommodate youth who want to get into certain sectors where classroom learning simply would not suffice.
This is according to Founding Member of the Barbados Entrepreneur-ship Foundation (BEF) and the BEF’s Education and Talent Development Pillar Champion, Keith Miller, who delivered remarks at the Graduation Ceremony for the Agriculture Entrepreneurship Programme at Almond Bay Caterers on Sunday evening.
He said that we often hear reports in the media of someone stating that the education system is not preparing the young people for the world of work by teaching them the non-traditional skills that they would need to get and secure a job or to become an entrepreneur.
However, he questioned how a young person can develop these skills if they have never been taught how.
“Year after year we hear on the news that the problem in Barbados today is that schools or the university or the colleges are not producing graduates who are ready for the workforce or to be an entrepreneur. Well, if you have never experienced it in your life, how can you be good at it?”
Miller likened it to learning how to drive without even getting into a car and stated that this is why the BEF developed the $20 Challenge to expose the young people to entrepreneurship.
“Schools with the normal timetable and traditional curriculum cannot do that. Not the way that it is structured now. So our role at the BEF is to demonstrate to the Ministry of Education, demonstrate to the educators, what can be done with our young people if you work with them the right way and give them the opportunity to actually experience what you are trying to teach them; to give some relevance to what school is all about; somebody that they can relate from the classroom to their everyday life.”
The BEF Founder stated that one of these sectors is agriculture because while there are certain principles that you can learn in the classroom, a field such as this one requires hands-on learning experiences.
“The third thing that it is addressing is education and I think that most people would agree that we need somehow to change the education system. My personal opinion is that it doesn’t need complete … reforming, it just needs tweaking because in simple terms, agriculture, you can’t teach it in a classroom. You can teach the principles, but the student has to go outside and get in the ground and actually be hands-on and learn how to work with the animals or work with the crops and so on.” (PJT)