Where are we head­ing in T&T? I have been ask­ing these ques­tions for a while. It seems that every­one is try­ing hard to ob­tain a de­gree to sit down at a desk in a gov­ern­ment of­fice and then claim suc­cess by get­ting a fat month­ly salary. Their work pri­mar­i­ly con­sists of fol­low­ing out­dat­ed poli­cies and pro­ce­dures.We can blame the politi­cians for en­cour­ag­ing this kind of lazy and un­pro­duc­tive as­pi­ra­tions of our pop­u­la­tion as they are guilty of do­ing the same them­selves.

In the pri­vate sec­tor the same ap­plies. Busi­ness­men ob­tain sweet­heart con­tracts from the gov­ern­ment for mil­lions or even bil­lions of dol­lars for do­ing shod­dy work. No checks and bal­ances. No busi­ness in T&T will sur­vive in a re­al­ly free mar­ket.Are we en­cour­ag­ing our chil­dren to be cu­ri­ous and life-long learn­ers?

The an­swer is no! They are en­cour­aged to fol­low a strict syl­labus which has no rel­e­vance in to­day's world. They are re­ward­ed for be­ing sheep­ish and con­form­ing and not for be­ing prob­lem-solvers. If a child is cu­ri­ous and asks ques­tions, he is con­sid­ered a trou­ble mak­er, keep­ing back the class, test­ing the teacher's knowl­edge or a "slack­er" by our ed­u­ca­tors.

We con­fuse ge­nius with stu­pid­i­ty as it takes a teacher with in­tel­li­gence to un­der­stand in­tel­li­gence. Chil­dren are giv­en triv­ial projects which nei­ther chal­lenge their brain nor have use­ful­ness in the re­al world. These point­less projects and ques­tions orig­i­nate with­in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.Are our teach­ers/lead­ers em­brac­ing tech­nol­o­gy?

Again the an­swer is no. Tech­nol­o­gy is still con­sid­ered a cu­rios­i­ty and is on­ly im­ple­ment­ed if forced to do so by in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions. In­no­va­tion is ac­tu­al­ly con­sid­ered il­le­gal and unau­tho­rised by the gov­ern­ment ser­vice and against pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dures. Gov­ern­ment tech­nol­o­gists in sweet T&T have no au­ton­o­my and must go through a chain of bu­reau­crat­ic com­mand. Then noth­ing gets done.

So, af­ter say­ing all of this, you still want T&T to be a world leader and com­peti­tor? We are far from it, be­cause we are the Sau­di Ara­bia of the Caribbean. No­body here needs to do re­al and in­no­v­a­tive work, as the oil and gas in­dus­try sub­sidis­es in­ef­fi­cien­cy and ob­so­les­cence.Why fight the bu­reau­crat­ic sys­tem of the gov­ern­ment which re­wards re­li­gios­i­ty and cul­ture, pol­i­cy mak­ing, at­tend­ing meet­ings, do­ing mean­ing­less pre­sen­ta­tions and writ­ing thick re­ports which no one reads?

Richie Smith

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