As Barbados’ economy undergoes a transformation, the minister responsible for Small Business, Entrepreneurship and Commerce says there’s a need for curriculum reform in schools.
Minister Dwight Sutherland was speaking Friday at the City of Bridgetown Cooperative Credit Union, Lower Broad Street Bridgetown headquarters during the launch of the Agricultural Entrepreneurship Programme.
The programme is hosted by the Barbados Entrepreneurship Foundation (BEF) and the COB.
Sutherland said Entrepreneurship, which is a Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) subject, should be rolled out in all the sixth form secondary schools.
“The course of study is only pursued by a few schools. Perhaps there is the need to embark on a more extensive rollout among a greater number of schools in the near future,” he said.
“The call is being made for us to seriously re-look the curriculum and indeed make it mandatory that entrepreneurship is taught in our secondary schools.”
Sutherland noted that the 2017/2018 global report, produced by the Global Entrepreneurship Forum, cited a lack of global entrepreneurial development due to the lack of entrepreneurial teachings in schools.
“One of the major criticisms of our local education system is that it continues to produce graduates who are more preoccupied with finding a job on graduating from school, college or university than with creating jobs,” Sutherland pointed out.
Speaking to groups of students gathered from St George Secondary, Alleyne Secondary, Grantley Adams Memorial and Coleridge and Parry, Sutherland stressed that Government is seeking to create new wealth and build an entrepreneurial Barbadian who is “empowered and encouraged to take advantage of opportunities at home and aboard”.
With Barbados’ food import bill amounting to US$400 million, the minister emphasized that agripreneuriship seeks to create employment opportunities and also reduce the island’s dependence on imported produce.
“Any real chance to achieve long-term and sustainable food security depends on the efforts made today to help our children embrace agriculture with a similar passion demonstrated by our fore parents.”
The Agricultural Entrepreneurship Programme which is in its second year will feature 36 participants under the age of 18 from secondary schools, and one group from the Christ Church Constituency Council. It will run to March 2, 2019 and will feature training modules on consumer arithmetic, business etiquette, social media management, leadership and more.
Wait I thought he still in China eating Roast Dog
I was told he ate Siamese cat, at one of China’s expensive restaurants. The cat meat is also called roof rabbit. I never touched the stuff when I once visited China, but I heard Sutherland was licking his whiskers.
“Any real chance to achieve long-term and sustainable food security depends on the efforts made today to help our children embrace agriculture with a similar passion demonstrated by our fore parents.”
We will continue to fail at getting our children to consider agriculture, as long as those who promote the industry remain in their matchbox concept of the sector. Just look the images they employ in their public relations messages: a man or woman in a large straw hat and rough clothing shouting to the top of their voice in grotesque dialect.
Agriculture today has gone beyond that pre-Emancipation mode. It’s now about greenhouse farming and aquaponics, methods that yield high quality and quantity produce.
P.S: Our foreparents didn’t embrace agriculture. It was forced on them during slavery, and after that by sheer necessity to make a living. They might have embraced it if they had access to their own land.
@Olutoye Walrond – What industry did our fore parents embrace before??? Please tell me.
U talk like someone who is also in the same or a different matchbox. Why do u think that the dialect is grotesque? do u not see the damage/assimilation done to this people? That grotesque dialect is a mixture of their previous language mixed with the language of their oppressor. So why r u ashamed of it. All like today the language is still a people with the pronouncing of the TH and this is why our children have difficulty pronouncing bathe, that, etc. Did our people previously speak, Spanish, French, Portuguese, English Dutch etc?? NO
This is apparently our first problem of self building equaling family, community, societal building etc i.e feeling ashamed of our past – no just embrace it and share it with the young. There are reasons for our past that I am sure u r oblivious of.
That same dialect the teachers beat out of our children in schools saying to “speak properly” i.e like your oppressor. Because no one has tried to restore our people is why our people remain in such a mental whirlwind. Entrepreneurship is one thing but the people support, and taxes will be the killer. And where will all of this lead back too???
In full agreement here the more we create the less dependent on government we would be.
Thought that would be Santia’s job
About time. Especially primary. Poor children from class three have no extracurricular activity time. A child needs time to play
I tired hearing “calls” want to see action because every politicians making the same calls
All along we have been teaching our children to either take up a pen and paper job in Bridgetown of a hoe and fork job in sugar plantations owned by the very same Bridgetown merchants. We had an Evening Institute established in 1953, training young men for the City and Guilds Crafts Certificate. The Evening Institute subsequently morphed into the Barbados Technical Institute and later the SJPP/SJIT,and we are still training young men and women to work in manual positions,overlooking the worldwide recognised City and Guilds Part 3 (or its equivalent)which gives an individual the tools to become managers and entrepreneurs in their respective disciplines .
We agree that we need agriculture in order to cut down on our food import bill (we do not really need some of the food that we import) but is it for our poor, black children only or will ALL work together to make it a success? Maybe the blacks with their educational background will wear the cork hats.
It is instructive that the Jews who have a history of bondage and was birthed by a crucible of slavery have been able to take their dessert land and using the water that was available, turn what they were given into opportunities the world now admire and copy. ENTREPRUENEURSHIP, is ultimately an attitude, an expression of self worth and faith, the assessment of need and opportunity lived by action. We have acres of idle land, of planted lawns, of cement, awaiting planting. We do not need another to the curriculum. We need models of units of farming facilitated by government led policy and mechanisms. In New York, using compost and potting soil, people plant food on roof tops and sell them to nearby organic driven restaurants.