Published May, 2020

We know that WRITING is the most complicated form of human expression. The mechanics of language (spelling, grammar and even syntax) aside, writing is about organised content involving imagination or perspective, vocabulary and tone. Together they form a message, which translates to a mental image (like a script becomes a movie) from which we internalise, interpret and reflect. 

Writing was always difficult and to write well takes commitment to trial, error, guidance, perseverance and PRACTICE. It is multi-dimensional both in the skill involved and the objective. 

Writing, directly or indirectly, underpins all clear and apposite expression and many of us feel this commanding skill has been on death row for quite a while. It is waiting its turn, just as its partner, spectacular handwriting, did before it. Let’s be honest; it is only a short time until the former joins the latter in the crematorium of irrelevance. 

While many, myself included, are happy-sad to surrender a pen for a keyboard, the loss is strong fine motor skills. In abandoning the desire to write well, we are accepting the demise of the most powerful tool in human communication; the ONLY tool that sets us uniquely apart in the animal kingdom.

The irony is that writing starts early in childhood. We put crayons, with which to scribble, into our toddlers’ hands, long before we expect them to link the sound ‘ah’ to the letter ‘a’ and the picture of an apple, thereby introducing them to the power of reading words. 

When the focus on reading begins, it takes over entirely. In my opinion, reading is only a part of the skill in the development of tapping intelligence and independent learning. At its most arcane level we feel, somehow, a 3-year-old who can read can be considered intelligent (therein lies the bragging rights).  

Am I being histrionic? Perhaps for some, but not for all; there are two interpretations of that sentence intended.

Somehow, I think we have this very wrong, especially when it is the mechanical aspect to reading that we are tempted to boast our babies can do well. Not reading for higher order thinking (which should come first), but decoding words. Hence the tragic shame of Dyslexia, where able minds simply do not read or spell well. Irony again: Dyslexia probably boasts the most creative minds, talented and visionary humans on the planet: Einstein and Da Vinci among them.

As a parent and a teacher: language is everything. Taking a picture and asking questions; promoting critical thinking, is the first step. Being read to and questioned on the images being created in the mind’s eye is the second aim. Organising thoughts with which to respond to questions comes third. Articulation comes next, improving syntax or communication structure. Reading AND writing together finally follow; forget the correct spelling (that will come in time), but the important foundation has been laid. 

Work on expression of thoughts through words, linking verbal and written, and plug in vocabulary. Invest in the enjoyment of strong communication and the desire to read more and more complex language will be inherently and independently sought.

Somehow we believe that once a child can read, we can step back; we lose sight of the goal: to create strong communication through writing. I believe that our social focus is all wrong because we should be focusing on the need to communicate through writing well, teaching the art of organising thoughts and words along the way. 

The signs have been around for years. Many students receive an ‘A’ for Knowledge, a ‘C’ for Application and a ‘D’ for Expression at CXC. They know the material (memory), they are fair at linking disparate information (critical and adaptive thinking) and weak at expressing themselves (writing). 

Every year, one CXC English Language student’s essay is selected as the best in the Caribbean. I have combed through records and I have never found a single winner from Barbados. I would be overjoyed if I could be proved wrong.

So, what do we, as parents and teachers, do? We demand writing tasks be given with encouraging feedback and editing opportunities. Only PRACTICE cleans up thinking, strengthens skills and improves writing proficiency. Like therapy, there is immense pain for a gain. Like therapy, once a week is insufficient. Like therapy, we procrastinate and invent excuses.

To communicate cleverly is POWER and it takes concentration, organisation, immense thought, time, re-thinking and practice. Only with the best chosen words and the supporting tone can we send a message we intend. As William Gass says, ‘The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words’.

Parents, your challenge is to first expose your children to the words of great writers – audiobooks being an underutilised treasure chest. It is only with words that they can think, reflect, solve and articulate ideas that make a difference in who they become, how they are measured by others and the destiny they were born to seize. 

I think of Greta Thunberg in quoting Marjane Satrapi, ‘All big changes of the world come from words’.

Published on May, 2021

At the age of eleven, my maternal grandfather was forced to leave the Lodge School when his father died. As the oldest of eleven children, he had to go out to work to support his siblings, his mother and her three spinster sisters. With his father’s death, they lost their home and almost certain starvation loomed. I often think of their hardship and the profound responsibility that rested on the shoulders of a little boy. By eleven, whatever literacy and numeracy skills he had acquired were the extent of the formal learning he had with which to survive in life. This is by no means an atypical Barbadian story. 

Also characteristic for its time was the story of my maternal grandmother, whose father was a wealthy Roebuck Street merchant. After receiving a complete education at Queen’s College, she was expected to marry and run a household.  Her destiny was socially restricted. The grand-daughter of an infant slave, my grandmother, educated and privileged as she was, could only hope to marry a man to whom her bloodline did not matter. This ill-matched couple settled into a life of subsistence, raising their four children, two of whom almost didn’t survive into adulthood, due to malnutrition. 

The children would take a buggy and horse to school, the journey taking an hour each way; coming home by the light of a lantern, particularly on the evenings when they stayed at school to play tennis – their only social outlet. Homework was done in those pre-electricity days by lamplight and thanks to the Carnegie Library, they read voraciously. Only through books could they travel in their mind to faraway places; the world would never be their oyster.

University study was a treasure afforded only by the wealthy, regardless of a child’s potential. My mother was a gifted Mathematician and her tertiary study consisted of the luxury of returning to school for a second Form 5 year to take secretarial subjects, which augmented her School Certificate, received the year before. Life was limited and choices were few. Opportunity was what children made of their limitations.

This was the ethos under which I grew up: you want a life, work for it. Independence was non-negiotiable; there would be no hand-outs. Your life was what you chose to shape. 

My paternal grandfather grew up in a different world with few material hardships. He was an Island Scholar (in the days when only one student a year would be afforded that honour) and he attended Cambridge before joining the Colonial Crown Service. A glowing career lay before him, but his untimely death from Spanish Influenza, in 1917, orphaned his young sons overnight. My father and his brother were sent to boarding school in England and they had the opportunity to attend university. Were it not for the Nazis preparing for war from 1933, my father would have qualified as an Engineer. He chose to drop out of university and return to Barbados to help his island during what was predicted to be unprecedented hardship.

So, when I hoped for a career in Art, a profession which was unlikely to be lucrative, my very pragmatic mother insisted I study Book-Keeping at school, together with my A Levels. “You are never going to be wealthy,” I was told, “therefore you need to know how to manage the pittance you will make. I am not sending you to university unless you leave school with this knowledge.” I cannot tell you how much I hated all things Mathematical and the thought of accounting terrified me. 

However, failure was not an option because that would certainly mean no university. What began as a threat-fuelled promise from my mother taught me much about doing what I must, in order to get what I wanted. My career in Art lasted fourteen years; I have used my book-keeping knowledge for over forty. My mother was right.

The majority of Barbadian children today live in the ‘oyster world’. With ‘free’ primary through tertiary education. They need never suffer the hardships of past generations; the death of a parent, reduced economic conditions or looming war do not limit their options. The only thing that limits them is the choice they make daily: to learn, or not to. 

It is understandable that parents want their children to follow their dreams and enjoy the journey; to seize the opportunities they are blessed to have and to make an independent and fulfilling life for themselves. Compared to past generations, our children live in a ‘candy story’ of possibilities. So why are so many not taking advantage of this buffet? All they have to do is turn up, walk in and enjoy.

Parents know that ‘knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns.’ Yet, words without weight dissipate into nothingness.

Opportunity offered, without expectation demanded, is simply a recipe for entitlement. 

I am convinced we are absolutely heading in the direction of ensuring hardship returns. Not by the ‘lemons’ life throws, but by the table we lay – where we do not demand children contribute to the meal provided. 

Published on 29 June, 2020

Independence is the top of the pyramid of life and the pyramid of learning.

Because the education landscape has changed overnight, if there was ever a time when the goal of independence should be actively pursued by every student, it is now. 

What was a ’fine dining’ experience of knowledge being served on a silver platter in classrooms, has now been replaced by personal kitchens; not even a ‘buffet’ where students could just wait their turn. 

Students must recognize that learning has now become THEIR JOB, almost entirely. The future is too uncertain, especially in the provision of education, as we have traditionally known it. 

With education being ‘free’, it was easy to take it or leave it; to successfully achieve, benefit from, survive or ignore. COVID-19 has changed that completely. 

So, formal education is NOW really about the involvement of all students, and their parents, in the level of personal learning they wish to embrace. What we have seen in the last few months is that the self-motivation to achieve independently, dictates those who are able to ‘feast’ on success. 

There is no alternative now, but to harness self-reliance and self-regulation – ‘conscious personal management that involves the process of guiding one’s own thoughts, behaviours, and feelings to reach goals’. 

I have not read of any government-led school system in the world that has a practical solution of what happens next, facing the predicted yo-yo of COVID outbreaks. It is obvious that classrooms must accommodate fewer students and online teaching is far more effective teaching fifteen, than teaching thirty. There is a point of efficacy in numbers because children require management. 

The physical distancing that protects lives will alter every aspect of attending school, especially the close social activities and interactions that attract parents to place their children in ‘big’ schools. The level of adult supervision, that is required for safety in a large environment, is just unrealistic and unsustainable.

As much as we all want ‘normal’ to resume, we have to face that it may never do so. Therefore, we either wait and see, or decide to act, making uncomfortable, proactive changes in how learning happens. Even the best-case scenario of students having two or three ‘live’ lessons each day is inadequate. Unless they find a way to tap into independence early, thereby effectively driving their own learning, academic progress will slow down for most, and disappear for some.

Parents know what I am talking about. The majority have already witnessed it, with considerable dissatisfaction. So a pro-active, paradigm shift has to happen. Grumble if it makes you feel better, but face the fact that independence on an individual, and changed practices on a family level, are the best tools moving forward into uncertain times.

Mathematical models predict that COVID-19 will be with us indefinitely and schools, IF they re-open, will have to close again before the end of the year. So, here’s my advice on what to put in place now.

Ensure your child has two things: a well-lit, comfortable and distraction-free work space separate from an entertainment area where they can unwind and play. 

Secondly, create the structure (including rules) that will provide the boundaries of behaviour and expectations of performance. 

Every student will now require online access, but therein lies the challenge for parents – how to separate the electronic tool from the toy, so that there is not simultaneous access. Freedom, choice and trust are the catchwords of the adolescent. Parents can choose either to serve these delights liberally or to rigidly portion control them. There is no in between. Set up User profiles in the early; one for learning and one for playing. Never divulge the password for the latter; control entry and monitor duration.

Summer holidays is the perfect time to prepare, particularly for secondary students. Let them start combing the internet for websites, groups, pages and forums packed with information in their subjects, for the coming year. Facebook has some amazing groups, like Geo for CXC. 

Whatever level a student is promoted to, let him or her (not you) find someone who was there the year before. Note the material covered and the course weaknesses (lack of textbooks, poor notes). If they are entering Forms 4 through 6, have them download the free syllabi from www.cxc.org. Buy them Study Guides; have them make copies of notes from next level students. This will set them up for INDEPENDENCE.

There is a lot of online information around at the moment with Question Papers and Virtual Lessons on You Tube; have them download them before they disappear. Set up folders on Google Drive for each subject and if possible, ask their school to send the new Schemes of Work. Create a personal Resource Library and the means to track syllabus completion. 

No student can be truly independent (and enjoy the power it brings) without planning and tools. The secret ingredient is parental control, boundaries and structure. In preparing for the worst, the best will be a magnificent surprise and students will be ready to OWN their personal achievement, whatever way the pendulum swings.

Charles Swindell said, ‘Success is 10% of what happens and 90% of how you react to it’. 

Enjoy the summer, but make it count! 

Published on 27 April, 2021

I have always believed that every school must practice, ‘mainstream inclusion’. 

This means that students, with different strengths and needs, enjoy the benefit of learning together within a mainstream classroom. 

This is easier said than done, requiring enormously skilled teaching professionals, and every school must have this ethos at its core; it must be their model.

Before we consider strengths and needs, let’s examine the foundation stone of assessing cognitive ability. This governs, to a great extent, aptitude (ability and ease) in acquiring and synthesizing information. 

IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, is measured by Clinical or Educational Psychologists through a battery of Assessments only these professions are qualified to use. 68% of the population fall within the normal range of IQ scores from 85 to 115. 14% of the population each fall within the ‘low-normal’ and high-normal’ ranges. 

We recognize that students with a functional IQ of under 70 or above 130 have two distinct types of ‘special needs’. The children with <70 will generally find learning across the board, quite challenging and disconnected. The children, who are ‘gifted’, with an IQ of >130 may find curriculum simplistic and irrelevant.

Now envisage a classroom of 20-30 students, with IQs ranging from 65 to 140, especially within the context of a larger private school. How can the teacher accommodate ‘mainstream inclusion’? 

We know that most parents want their children in mainstream learning with peers their own age. While students are not permitted to jump ahead a year, some are ‘kept down’. Issue No. 1. 

Most teachers will teach to the ‘normal range’ (IQs between 85 and 115). 

Without considerable differentiation within the classroom, intervention by specialist teachers, continued professional development and incredibly robust academic and attainment planning, many children will ‘zone out’ from over or under stimulation. Issue No. 2.

Then, let’s factor into a mainstream classroom: EQ (Emotional Quotient), SQ (Social Quotient) and PQ (Positive Quotient). Issues Nos. 3 through 5.

Regardless of IQ, students have varying EQs, or Emotional Intelligence, manifesting within the classroom. This is “the ability to understand, use, and manage emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict. It can also help to connect with feelings, turn intention into action, and make informed decisions about what matters most to you.” https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/emotional-intelligence-eq.htm

SQ, or Social Intelligence, “is the ability of a person to tune into other people’s emotions and read the subtle behavioral cues to choose the most effective response in a given situation.” There seems to be a widely accepted view that SQ will be the Intelligence most needed in future careers. https://www.socialigence.net/blog/difference-between-iq-eq-and-sq-the-social-intelligence-and-why-sq-is-the-future/

Finally, PQ, or Positive Intelligence, is believed to matter even more. Shirzad Chamine, describes PQ as: “the percentage of time your mind is serving you as opposed to sabotaging you, simply exhausting your mental resources without any redeeming value. On one side of this battlefield are the well-disguised Saboteurs, who wreck any attempt at increasing either happiness or performance. On the other side is the Sage, who has access to wisdom, insights, and often untapped mental powers. The Saboteurs and Sage are fueled by different regions of the brain.  We are literally of two minds and two brains.” As you can deduce, high PQ results in lower anxiety and less stress (as in exam preparation). https://www.positiveintelligence.com/why-pq-matters-more-than-iq-and-eq/

So, in a word, what every teacher faces, is a classroom filled with Neurodiversity. Coined in 1998 by Sociologist, Judy Singer, it “refers to variation in the human brain regarding sociability, learning, attention, mood and other mental functions.” 

Enter Neurodiversity within ‘mainstream inclusion’: “The social model rejects the notion that an individual must be “normal” to enjoy the full range of human experience, arguing that an impairment should not constitute a barrier to inclusion or access.” https://www.learningdisabilitytoday.co.uk/a-beginners-guide-to-neurodiversity

This is where Learning Disabilities (abhorrent word) enter the classroom: Dyslexia, CAPD, Dyspraxia, Dyscalculia, NVLD, AD(H)D, Autism etc. All brains are wired differently, but shouldn’t each child have the opportunity and support required to access individual potential, through utilizing the strength of their specific neurodiversity? There must, therefore, be accessibility for different brains.

As ‘disabilities’ are invisible, about 15% of any school’s population, gets ‘left behind’, consigned to a disparaging label, and in some cases, punished for what they cannot do well. Case in point is the student who writes in large, disjointed, poorly-formed letters or the student who cannot spell. They may be given lines to write – even in 2021. The student who cannot sit still and disrupts the learning of others, is often excluded from the classroom and sent to the Principal. 

How can the student with poor visual tracking copy notes accurately from a board? How can the student with poor auditory memory be expected to write dictated notes? 

My questions are: if we know the science behind IQ, EQ, SQ and PQ, why are we not adapting our educational system to meet student neurodiversity? It is easy to blame a failure in learning, but are we actually failing in our teaching practice?

And finally, when are we going to accept that schools are not setting up students for success?

Published on 1 June 2020

Today, I am musing on the words of Yevgeny Yevtushenko: “Telling lies to the young is wrong. Proving to them that lies are true is wrong. Telling them that God’s in his heaven and all’s well with the world is wrong. The young know what you mean. The young are people. 

Tell them the difficulties can’t be counted and let them see not only what will be but see with clarity these present times. Say obstacles exist they must encounter, sorrow happens, hardship happens. 

Who never knew the price of happiness will not be happy. Forgive no error you recognize, it will repeat itself, increase, and afterwards our pupils will not forgive in us what we forgave.”

Raising children is the most important (and difficult) job we will ever do. Everything else pales in insignificance.

Daily, as parents, we have opportunities to teach principles, values and concepts which impact our children’s future choices. Sometimes through explaining or questioning, but always with the objective of enlightenment.

I vividly remember the day my five-year-old son learned about Opportunity Cost, among other things, equally significant.

The ice-cream truck visited his school every Friday and I gave him a one dollar coin to buy an iced lolly. On collecting him, I asked if he had bought the one he wanted and how much it had cost. He replied it cost 75 cents, so I asked him for the change. His look of shock was indescribable. ‘Mum’, he whispered, ‘I did not need it, so I threw it away’. 

It was pointless to be angry as my heart was melting; savouring his innocence. Facing me was an opportunity for learning; one I believe my son has never forgotten.

First I explained how physical money replaced bartering and why; how it works in our world with different currencies having different value and how those values can be impacted by events. Even little children love big information – it’s like a cross between being entrusted with a grown-up secret and magic.

Then I talked to him about the benefits of saving ‘extra’ money. He was surprised to learn that if he gave me 25 cents and I invested it well, he would receive a dividend or interest depending on what agreement we made. He liked the idea of making more money for ‘free’ and his questions were constant. 

However, the Merchant of Venice became an interesting challenge to explain many years later, in Medieval society’s hatred of Shylock, the Jewish money-lender. That conversation involved a great deal of history and sociology. 

My message is, here, stick to one concept or one principle at a time, in its time, in context, and let your child’s conscience be its own guide. You won’t be disappointed; children have a beautiful view of fair-play and non-discrimination when adult (often instilled) belief systems are kept out of the equation.

Thirdly, I explained the opportunity cost of that 25 cent coin: ‘A benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else.’ In his case, there was no sacrifice to achieve something else he needed, but I asked him if he had to make it, what could it be. That, he grasped with immediate clarity.

Finally, I asked my little boy, if there was anyone who did not have enough money to buy an iced lolly. There wasn’t, but if there had have been, he realized immediately that he would have given, without a second thought. 

Of course, the choices we make when we forgo personal opportunity costs to help another, comes later in adolescence. But in that conversation, the lesson had been internalized and social conscience was so deeply engrained in him, that such a subject never had to be discussed between us again.

So, my question today, to parents reading this article, is, are you seizing every opportunity in discussing grown up principles with your young children to enlighten them? 

On that day, over twenty-five years ago, when my son discarded a pittance, I chose to forgive an innocent error I recognized for what it was – lack of knowledge – and it has never repeated itself, or increased, and my failure to explain prior to that day was forgiven, as was his blameless choice.

It is the unexpected, seemingly unimportant and easily overlooked conversations that change children’s perspectives. Changed perceptions change future choices – changing everything. On a concrete level: friendships, relationships with teachers, conversations with strangers and respect for all people, whoever they may be.

    As Rudyard Kipling wrote, ‘If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch…’

On an abstract level: attitudes are altered and character begins its journey in being defined. Integrity, vision, compassion and service are the real goals. Academics merely serve a purpose to provide a living.

What we all have to consistently develop in our children are the deeply inherent principles that define their lives and their contribution to their world – their opportunity costs.  

This is our defining role as parents and teachers. Together, what an awesome force we are!

Published 25 May, 2021

After last week’s article on, ‘Life’s Lemons’, I thought I would tell the sequel of how ‘Pig Money’ impacted my life and continues to change those of my students.

In the 1910s, my maternal grandparents lived on a plantation, when every estate was a sustainable community. They grew what they ate; the seasons and the generosity of neighbours dictating their diet. Any surplus from the kitchen garden, orchards or slaughtered livestock was sold and every penny was saved.

My grandmother, born into a merchant family, grew up understanding the power of investing savings rather than just placing a monthly pittance in the bank. Gradually she bought single shares in a publicly traded company, which slowly accumulated over decades and were inherited by my mother and eventually, by me. 

Sound investment reaps rewards but there is almost certainly no instant return. It was these shares, that enabled me to further invest by buying premises for a school. ‘Pig money’ was the foundation of generational investment, born of example, sacrifice, savvy and patience.  

‘Pig Money’ Lesson 1: vision requires a steady commitment and perseverance. ‘Rome was not built in a day’ but ‘all roads lead to’ it.

I may have inherited ‘Pig Money’, but my true inheritance was insight. One of the ways in which I share this is through insisting that primary students learn about entrepreneurship. You must start instilling ideas, that grow into opportunities, and becomes a mindset for business acumen that creates personal independence, as early as possible. 

In Lower Secondary, I insist in students learning about investments and by Form 3, Economics, Business and Accounting. 

One way to motivate students to read about the impact of global events is through an Investment App, where they ‘play the Stock Market’ and make connections between conflict and oil, new technology like crypto-currencies and the factors behind volatile stocks. They are exposed the challenges faced through the world trend to ‘go green’, its infrastructural cost and political resistance, in spite of social demand, and why investing in futures remains so risky.  

Students may see the Investment App, (Investopaedia.com) as a game but the benefits behind the learning objective is profound. Discussion, discovery, collaboration and fun abound in every class. 

Investment classes encourage students to think in global terms and teaches them the power of analysis through making connections with disparate information. Barbados is a small cog in a global wheel; it will remain small forever if we do not ensure students understand the role they can play in changing the status quo through diversification.

‘Pig Money’ Lesson 2: diversification is key and schools must have an authentic plan to provide for “the future (which) is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”

Learning is for life; tomorrow is closer than students think. It is going to require knowledge that is vastly different from any information they have been exposed to academically. Children are smarter than we give them credit for and their tragic trend of disengaging from traditional education is because they want what schools here have not yet begun to offer. 

Every generation of parents wants their children to achieve more than they did and suffer less hardship; this is natural. The question is: what are schools doing, in the twelve years we are teaching curriculum, to prepare students for buying into potential-fuelled, risk-welcomed, confidence-inspired, personal success? 

The ‘Millennial mindset’ beautifully illustrates the evolution of the consciousness of all those under the age of forty. Those Gen X-ers (Millennials) born after 1981 have only twenty-five years before retirement, yet we are still preparing the Gen Zs for the 11+ exam and teaching CSEC curriculum, packed with archaic topics in outmoded formats. 

‘Pig Money’ Lesson 3: if you do not plan for the next generation, you will leave them far worse off than yours was.

Enter opportunity costs; a concept those old time people instinctively understood. Simply, ‘the value of what you have to give up in order to choose something else; the value of the road not taken.’

Investments require personal involvement and nurturing; a lot like parenting and teaching.

As a parent, I recognised my investment came with a choice: I could either be my children’s friend when they were teenagers, unapologetically dispensing the tough love they needed (and being despised frequently) or being their friend when they inevitably became independent adults. Too many parents make the mistake of giving for ease, favour or to meet the demands of peer-pressure, without uncompromising expectation, and end up raising dependent, entitled young adults. Weak seeds create a poor harvest.

Great teachers invest mind, body and soul into their students. We love great examination results but we understand all too well that ‘a man’s character defines his destiny’. We hope that parents will partner with us in laying the foundation for both. Too often students live in a no-man’s-land of mixed messages. Every year I witness a greater disconnect between the parent-teacher relationship with children growing up knowing ‘the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ 

It is time we bring back the vision, and the action, of the ‘Pig Money’ generation.

Published on 30 march, 2021

As I sat eating lunch yesterday, physically distanced from a group of women my age, I realized I was alone in my view of time and what the future holds in education.

I was unique in my exposure to the writings of Theoretical Physicists like Michio Kaku. Therein lay my different perspective of how time evolves and will continue to change the human experience.

I felt like the time traveller, from the Outlander series, who in 1773, saw a book and remarked, ‘He has written in a ball point pen which will not be invented for another hundred and fifty years.’

I listened to this group of women who were saying that students will always need to be in a school, taught face-to-face by a teacher. 

I told them that schools of the near future will all be online, creating opportunities for students, currently uneducated, who will be receiving degrees from Harvard or Cambridge before 2175. 

Predictions are that by 2050, 65% of the world’s universities will cease to exist physically. I explained that access to the internet will create a social equality in one way and a social gulf on the other. That it is almost certain that only the exorbitantly wealthy will have the benefit of in person instruction at universities and with this, the college experience we value.

It was surreal. There I sat, feeling like a time-traveller myself. I could have been saying, ‘The day will come when a book could be read on a phone’, or ‘Algorithms will enable us to text those who have died and their replies will sound just like them.’

As we know, these already exist. 

The first Homo Sapiens, arose alongside other hominid relatives, approximately 300,000 years ago. Yet it was not until 3500BCE that the wheel was invented. Do the Math. Similarly, there is evidence that it was only 12,000 years ago that dogs became pets. Consider those timelines when thinking about human development. 

No one really likes adapting to change; swift change least of all. However, with the exponential growth of technology, human progress is predicted to advance the equivalent of a thousand years within the 21st Century. 

Driverless cars already exist and the only reason we need pilots on aircraft is because we do not yet trust computers, as we trust humans.  

So, as much as we want our children back in school, I think we are looking at things in the wrong way. 

We cannot stop progress, but we can impact it decisively. We can choose to actively create our world as we want it to become or technology will create it. That is the only choice we have and we need to decide quickly which of the two will happen. We linger at our peril.

‘Mario Klingemann, a German artist who uses AI in his work, has radical views on creativity.  “Humans are not original,” he says. “We only reinvent, make connections between things we have seen.” While humans can only build on what we have learned and what others have done before us, “machines can create from scratch”.’

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/04/can-machines-be-more-creative-than-humans

So, those who boast, or believe, that computers will never be as creative as humans, need to wake-up.

Several articles have been written, with consternation, about the Millennial’s disregard of objects we hold dear like tokens passed down through generations, the desire to own their home and their preference of spending money on experiences rather than ‘stuff’.  This is just the beginning.

Our grandchildren will never need a Driver’s License. They will be able to design their offspring. They will have no need for laptops; their corneas will be computers. Computer chips will be implanted at birth; there will be no physical money. They will live well over a hundred years. They will have no need to visit other countries in person; it is likely they will not even choose to live on planet Earth.

Aldous Huxley wrote ‘Brave New World’ in 1932 and predicted a world 600 years in the future. 80% of his predictions have materialized in 80 years. Unfortunately, such novels are no longer on the Caribbean syllabus. George Orwell’s ‘1984’ is another discarded, thought-provoking gem. 

Our students are allowed to choose subjects like History and Literature; neither are compulsory. So, they are enabled to neither learn from the past, nor think about the future. 

With these reduced options, exactly what are we educating our children to understand, to feel, to realise, to action, or more relevantly, to create?   

Right now, education in the Caribbean is equivalent to driving a car with wind-up windows and without power-steering. As far as I am concerned, we have failed the current generation of students.  They are learning the obsolete, to a large extent, and are doing so in blissful, trusting oblivion.

The truth is, our grandchildren will not miss what they never knew. Therefore, are we at least on the path to empowering them as we should be? Absolutely not!

We have not yet failed those entering Kindergarten. However, you can rely on one certainty: if we schmoose, we will lose.