Last week, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Tim Gopeesingh in­tro­duced five new Cape sub­jects to the lo­cal school cur­ricu­lum: agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, per­form­ing arts, phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion and tourism.The cur­ricu­lum change is a bold ef­fort to mul­ti­ply the op­por­tu­ni­ties that stu­dents might con­sid­er as part of their school­ing.

While much is be­ing made of the po­ten­tial im­pact of the en­tre­pre­neur­ship mod­ule, at the core of these changes to the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil's syl­labus is an ex­pan­sion of choice that's em­i­nent­ly suit­able to the re­al­i­ty that mod­ern Caribbean chil­dren will face in adult­hood.

At the launch of the ex­pand­ed cur­ricu­lum, a dra­mat­i­cal­ly for­ward-look­ing Dr Gopeesingh man­aged to draw mur­murs of con­cern when he sug­gest­ed that the teach­ing of In­fant Year One and Two be com­pressed in­to a sin­gle year in the ser­vice of a vi­sion of chil­dren with doc­tor­ates at age 20. It's a bold and po­lit­i­cal­ly ap­peal­ing goal, one no doubt in­spired by the suc­cess­es of the ac­cel­er­at­ed teach­ing pro­grammes of oth­er na­tions, but it's ul­ti­mate­ly an un­re­al­is­tic ex­pec­ta­tion in the school sys­tem as it ex­ists to­day.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers