Jamaica Observer column by Jean Lowrie-Chin - published MON 27 March 2017
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| Edie Weiner - JIS photo |
Ten years ago, she says her high calibre clients were
so impressed by her guidance, that they wondered how she was getting it so
right. She explained that her team uses
30 different thought processes to arrive at their recommendations. Learn more at www.thefuturehunters.com.
Most important of all, she says, is to recognize your ‘educated
incapacity’, as you can “know so much about what you already know that you are
not looking outside”. She observed that educated
people having acquired so much knowledge, that they hang on to it like an
expensive piece of luggage. This is
backward, as she pointed out that while we are hanging on to these brand-name
“bags”, someone is racing into the future with their futuristic “backpacks”.
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| PM Holness with business leader Richard Byles |
While these are great plans, we should heed Edie
Weiner’s warnings that the rapid advance of technology is creating
disruption. She noted that what was
described as a recession in the early 90s was actually a result of the new
disruptive technology. “This was not a recession,” she said, “it was a
fundamental global revolution”.
She says, when asked the question “what should
children be studying now to be assured of employment?” her answer is that they
should become plumbers, electricians and stone masons. Weiner urged an emphasis
on critical thinking in education, stating, “In the future no one will be
paying for “smart”. They will pay for the intelligence that enables you to
figure out things that you have never seen before.”
Our
‘unattached youth’
Weiner’s advice should be taken on board, as the
Government develops the Employment aspect of their commendable HOPE
Programme. “It is estimated that there
is a pool of approximately 120,000 to 130,000 young persons between 15 and 24
years of age who are not in school, not in a programme of training, and are
unemployed,” noted PM Holness. “While a considerable portion of the unattached
would have other institutions, which keep them engaged and supported, such as
their family, their church, community activities or sports, a significant
proportion of them have no structure, order or guidance in their life.”
“Many of them
would not be in institutions long enough to develop character and good
citizenship, positive attitudes and skills to assist them in negotiating the
challenges of life,” said the Prime Minister. “We see them on the street
corners every day when we are going to work and we see them at the same place
when we are coming home. They are at
home every day becoming increasingly hopeless and frustrated … These are the most
productive years in the human lifecycle and we cannot afford to lose the
productive value of our human resource. This is also the age group that is most
affected by crime and violence.” With so many unattached youth, we should not
wonder at the mindlessness and cruelty of recent crimes; the tragedy at
Monteith’s, a respected landmark on Mountain View Avenue is horrifying. I
believe we should incentivise more students to become social workers.
We have seen the transformation of such communities as
Grant’s Pen and Trench Town when young people have been offered training to
make them employable. Being sensitive to their immediate needs, when we led the
partnership of the Stella Maris Foundation with HEART/NTA, we established the
Norma Chang Daycare Centre so that young women could have a safe place to leave
their children while they attended classes.
As we consider Weiner’s reminder that the fastest
period for brain growth is between 0 to 3 years old, we congratulate the
previous and current Boards of the Early Childhood Commission in the Ministry
of education led by Professor Maureen Samms-Vaughan and Trisha Williams-Singh. Both women continue to collaborate as they
have a healthy respect for what each brings to the table: academic understanding of the issues, and
sound organisational skills. Thus, the certification of early childhood
institutions is being accelerated to give those precious young minds every
chance for healthy development.
The Prime Minister noted that several educational
bodies would be merged. “The services would be more effective, have greater
reach and enroll more numbers if they were streamlined and coordinated. The
government has therefore decided to merge HEART Trust/NTA, the NYS, JFLL, and
the Apprenticeship Board in to a single entity,” he said. The streamlining of
technology for the public sector should promote greater efficiency at less cost
for this and other such mergers.
Let’s drop that expensive but burdensome baggage of
old thinking – we have Bolt as our symbol of the world-beating speed we can
achieve with our own homegrown talent and strategic application.
