SUNDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER, 2016 – UWI TODAY
13
REFLECTION
I admit that usually,
traditionally,
teaching is far too tedious, far too
boring, far too useless. Whether
it is in the primary grades or at
the university, most students find
education something that must
be gotten through rather than
something enjoyed. Kind of like
taking cough syrup. It’s supposed
to be good for you but tastes
horrible.
This is why educational
re s earche rs t a l k about t he
problems of shallow learning
and disengaged students. This
is why the famous Brazilian
educator Paulo Freire deplored
the “banking” model of education:
the teacher deposits information
into passive and empty students
who then regurgitate it back
on the test. Such education,
Freire argued, destroyed life and
embraced death because it viewed
the world as static andmechanistic
and students as nothing more
than “receiving objects”. Such an education, Freire warned,
wanted “to control thinking and action”.
But a true education, a transformational education, is
exactly the opposite. It helps and prods and forces students
to engage in their learning and in the world, to confront the
assumptions they make and the lives that they lead, to learn
to ask difficult questions rather than settle for easy answers,
to think deeply and act decisively.
This is not easy to do. It is actually the hardest thing to
do in all of education. To support students to move beyond
their comfort zones, to think outside the box, to see the
world from a different perspective, to accept that they could
be wrong and that it will require work and perseverance and
an open mind to find a better answer. No, these are not easy
things to teach.
We in education pride ourselves on creating new and
better models and methods and strategies and technologies
for teaching. And sometimes they work. But all too often
we forget that our teaching means nothing if our students
aren’t learning. This is why over one hundred years ago the
American philosopher and educator John Dewey warned
teachers that they were fooling themselves if they thought
they had this figured out. Teaching without learning, he
cautioned, is like selling without buying. You can’t claim
to have sold a car if no one has bought it. It is the same in
the classroom. Our success in teaching is absolutely and
fundamentally tied to our students’ success in learning. You
cannot have one without the other.
And this is why a teacher will save the world.
Because good teachers understand that education
matters and help their students understand it too. They
make the subject come alive, become relevant, become
useful, become important. They show students how it takes
caring hearts and careful thoughts to turn knowledge into
Diversification,
which means having multiple and
unrelated sources of income for one’s economy that is
viewed as a means of increasing productivity and achieving
sustainable development. Economists believe that a
diversified economy, during volatile economic conditions
allows one industry to be more competitive when another
might be stressed. The performing industries can keep the
economy relatively healthy and export markets can be kept
competitive. Despite these advantages, diversification of
Caribbean economies has been particularly difficult given
their traditional agricultural-based-mono-crop nature,
small size, lack of output and export diversification and the
difficulties of shifting resources from one sector to another.
While countries such as Barbados, Jamaica and
Trinidad have achieved some level of success in economic
diversification, particularly as it relates to Information
Communication and Technology (ICTs), financial
services sector and marketing, the economies of many
other Caribbean countries remain relatively undiversified.
Although Trinidad and Tobago has been identified as
having one of themost diversified and advanced production
structures in the Caribbean region, this economy has
recently faced many challenges amidst falling oil price
bringing to fore the timeliness of the diversification
dialogue. Additionally, it is believed that Caribbean
countries with dependency on service exports (tourism)
are more resilient to changing economic conditions and
less volatile than goods export.
However, volatile economic conditions such as
recessions and the changing global economy can create
incentives for Caribbean countries to adopt a more
proactive approach to diversification and in so doing
strengthen their economies. Economists recommend that
for Caribbean economies to achieve a diversified economic
structure of production there is the need to develop new
products and services, attracting foreign direct investment
and seeking more export markets for the same product.
Initiatives such as CSME can be capitalised to achieve these.
While there are many advantages of having diversified
economies and there is the awareness of the benefits of a
well-diversified economy in the context of the Caribbean,
there is the need to question the appropriateness of models
of diversification for Caribbean economies and the ways in
which diversification is facilitated.The literature points to an
advantage of diversification as being its ability to encourage
the development of new sectors of the economy. As such, the
annual Conference of the Economy (COTE) presentations
will be organised along the following five sub-themes
exploring possibilities for diversification in Trinidad and
Tobago and the wider Caribbean in these sectors:
Education and Human Resource Development
The Energy Sector and Diversification
Trade and Development
Agriculture Sector Development
Services Sector including Financial Services
COTE
is organised every
year by the Department
of Economics and is on
this year between October
13 and 14 at The UWI,
St. Augustine Campus.
The conference this year
honours former Head of
Department and Senior
LecturerMrMartin Franklin,
and will explore the theme
Managing Development in a Volatile Economic
Environment: AddressingDiversificationChallenges.
Roxanne Brizan- St. Martin is an Instructor
with the Department of Economics,
The University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus.
A Teacher Will
SAVE THEWORLD
B Y D A N B U T I N
Diversification
in the
Caribbean:
Keeping the basket filled
BY ROXANNE BRIZAN-ST. MARTIN
action and thus why knowledge
is power. They help students
glimpse the road ahead, how to
successfully navigate what can’t
be known in advance, how to be
lifelong learners.
Don’t get me wrong. Many
of us become smart and happy
and successful adults without
a transformational education.
Many roads can lead to the same
mountaintop. But in these cases,
I would suggest, we get to the top
despite our education rather than
because of it. We succeed because
we care about our goals and
dreams. And that is exactly what
a transformational education
does. It links theory and action,
knowledge and practice, the life
of the mind with the work of the
hands.
There are teachers all over the
world that already do this. These
men and women are artisans in
the classroom, crafting real-world
assignments, developing simulations, building partnerships,
fostering problem-solving projects, all of which help
students better understand and embrace their education.
For such teachers, education is not confined to the four
walls of the classroom. Exploration and discovery can of
course occur while sitting at a desk. But such teachers see
the world as their classroom. They use city streets, online
resources, workplaces, riverbeds, laboratories, local schools,
indeed, whatever they can find, to turn education into a
living process rather than a dead product.
Which is exactly what both Freire and Dewey wanted.
Students become teachers and teachers become students.
Knowledge becomes something valuable to be used and
developed.
I know that all of this sounds utopian and unreal.
Universities all too often don’t have the funding to transform
how they are structured, professors all too often don’t have
the desire or training to transform their teaching and
students all too often don’t have the incentive to transform
themselves. Everything is much, much easier if it stays static,
mechanistic, the same.
Until we come to realise that staying the same is actually
giving up on ourselves, our children, our world. I say this as
someone who has been transformed by a teacher and who
as a teacher (I hope) has transformed others. And if you are
reading this, I bet that you too have experienced something
similar. And so both you and I know that it is possible to be
transformed. Both you and I know that with the right teacher
in the right classroom nothing is impossible.
So in the end, I don’t think of a transformational
education as the almost-impossible rather, I see a powerful
education every day when good teachers involve and engage
their students to co-create their futures and fortunes. That
is something we should all believe in.
Professor Dan Butin will be the keynote speaker at the Premium Teaching Awards, sponsored by UWI St. Augustine and
Guardian Group Limited, on September 23 at the St. Augustine Campus. The theme of this year’s award ceremony is Student/
Teacher Partnerships: The Crux of Learning and celebrates the work of exemplary teachers. Professor Butin is also the Founding
Dean of the School of Education and Social Policy at Merrimack College, USA. He is the author of over eighty academic
publications, including eight books, three of which have been translated into other languages. Dr. Butin has been named by
EducationWeek as one of the top 200 “Public Presence” Education Scholars four years in a row and blogs at the Huffington Post.
