Evolution, adaptation and re-creation

This week I read an article in Educational Digest International, speculating on a post-COVID-19 world and the predictions for schools globally.

“COVID-19, like the flu, will evolve, adapt, and re-create itself, never ever allowing humans to safely assume the risk has disappeared. COVID-19, or its descendants, is destined to be part of the human story from hereon.”

Although the article focused on how international private schools must redefine themselves in the current environment in order to survive, I was unequivocally convinced that without PARENTS demanding education’s evolution, adaptation and re-creation in Barbados, mandated by Government vision, there will be no successful NEW AGE for us as a Nation.

Be under no delusion, there WILL BE a New Age internationally in education post-COVID-19 for all schools, irrespective of country or ownership.

The truth is, we have been BEHIND the world in education for quite a while now – those who can afford it, send their children overseas and others invest to ensure scholarships so that their children’s talent or potential has opportunity to forge a global presence.

Consider the ‘brain-drain’ that has created a diaspora for which Barbados can be proud. For decades it has gone untapped; foreign economies have been the beneficiaries of Bajan luminaries. Those left on ‘the rock’ are largely devoid of opportunity.

Yet, as evidenced by the extra-lessons industry, we know that ‘free’ education is not free at all. Every one of us who pays income tax pays for ‘free education’. The amount (I was told by Minister Jones in 2008) was $25,000 per year for every child at government secondary school. Twelve years later, while taxes and government teacher salaries are up, in my mind, the quality of education our children receive has exponentially decreased. Every tax payer in this country must now demand value for money spent.

Lives, futures and destinies that will shape our country depend on education – when are we going to get value? When we DEMAND IT as parents, as constituents, as nation-lovers!

And it is within this context that parents are waiting for ‘normal’ to resume in schools? When ‘normal’ was inadequate and bordering on the obsolete before the pandemic? Taxpayers of ‘easy’, beware!

Most schools have demonstrated a reactive response to closure in Barbados; some a proactive response. Both responses are inadequate for the future. Our efforts have been like David, minus the slingshot and stone, facing Goliath. I don’t want to use the word, ‘ostrich’, but staring the obvious in the eye can only work for so long before the evident obliterates the ‘best we can do’.

The Economist, John Clarke, said, ‘Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns.’ The irony is that we KNOW what needs to be done with education. We are actively evolving, adapting and re-creating our medical establishments, but we are holding on to the notion that ‘normal’ was adequate enough in education.

We have to ACT with VISION now, so we jump the abyss, not just in keeping up, but in forging ahead, if we want our children to be competent and involved in seizing global opportunities in the New Age – opportunities that will place Barbados as a glowing example on the world stage, where it has the very real potential of being with our stable political and libertarian value systems.

Evolution, adaptation and re-creation organically take place when we are willing to “put [ourselves] and family first; in our desire for a more comfortable life; in the sacrifices we make for our children; in our desire to protect our culture; in our need for social connection and community”.

Surely, how a country educates its young is linked to all of this? It enlightens youth as to their personal power and responsibility from which develops their ability to see the vital importance, acquire the skills and create the framework to actually succeed in the ‘core aspects of being human’.

Why I believe it is our national life or death responsibility to implement immediate visionary planning in envisaging the re-creation of our educational system, is because “there will be no winners in COVID-19 – only degrees of loser.”

To what extent, in education, are we (collectively parents, teachers and the private and public sectors) willing to wait and see, holding on until the ‘normal’ can resume, before we are forced to admit that we are investing in our own demise by complacency?

“Quality of education is linked to the adaptability of the workforce; just as technological adaptation plays a vital role in addressing human resource problems.” Our people have always been our greatest national resource and we are not investing in them as we should. We must change the way we deliver learning because ‘free’ has become far too expensive for the declining quality our children are receiving.

And no, home-schooling is not working! But the “decade of zero growth, such as is forecasted for Latin America and the Caribbean and could be experienced across much of the world” means that Government provided education must step up to the plate – evolving, adapting and re-creating itself. If not now, WHEN?

Julia Hanschell can be contacted on smartstudying@gmail.com