Beverley Anderson-Manley
PRODUCTIVITY IS a major determinant of prosperity. Education, including training of the kind that is practical and relevant, is a necessary pre-condition for productivity and competition in today's globalised world.
This kind of education must necessarily allow us to understand that a new outlook is required to understand the ways in which our entire world is changing. One of the tremendous changes taking place, for example, is the impact that powerful organisations like the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have on our lives and the ways in which it is not so much personalities but international institutions that dominate foreign policy issues.
WHAT WE BRING TO THE TABLE
If we want liberation, we have to do the work ourselves and consider that what we bring to the table must be presented as a commodity that is marketable and has value. What do we have that others cannot do without? How do we remain competitive? And most of all, how do we begin to see ourselves in this new world of innovation, competition and skill sets? How do we want others to see us? Do we even have the language that is required to express ourselves powerfully in any arena? Why would anyone flock to our country on an ongoing basis to invest in it when at a minimum, we cannot keep it clean? Why would anyone want to invest in a country where there are such high levels of crime and anti-social behaviour? These are questions to be considered. We have to begin to see all of this in its complexity and interconnectedness.
CHANGING OUR PARADIGM
Therefore, this new world outlook requires at a minimum that we see the world differently and that the filters we see through allow us to see the interconnectedness of things. In a sense, therefore, while the world has changed, we still tend to see it through a paradigm that has long since gone. If you think of a paradigm as a box we create to simply make sense of the world, we begin to realise how dangerous it is when this box is for another time, another place.
Take crime as a case study. One of the reasons we are caught in a trap is that we are seeing it through old eyes and therefore ignoring how interconnected all these issues are. What other results can we expect in a situation where poverty exists and the parents and grandparents are absent so that often, children are bringing up themselves? So, it is not just the situation of poverty, but the fact that the mother who, in the past, could stay home, is now in the workforce and often in dehumanised jobs - while the father continues to be missing and the State cannot pick up the slack. The grandmother is also absent as she too is in the workforce. The immediate impact: No one is bringing up the children and children are having children. The long-term unintended consequence of this is showing up in Jamaica today.
When it comes to jobs, we are seeing a phenomenon all over the world where economic growth is not leading to jobs. In looking at the world through new eyes, we ought therefore to be making small business policies and programmes one of our priority areas. It is well known that when a woman has a job, it makes a difference to the entire family. In many cases where women are independent, they choose when to have children. We also know that within the age group 14 to 24, the unemployment rate for women is twice as high as that of men.
FROM VICIOUS CIRCLE TO VIRTUOUS CYCLE
Let us, at a minimum provide all our children with the type of education necessary for them to live a full life and make a difference in the world. Let us commit to moving away from the vicious circle into a virtuous cycle where the immediate and long-term impact of our choices now could just be a productive, educated, trained, safe and prosperous Jamaica.
Beverley Anderson-Manley is a Broadcaster, gender specialist, political scientist and transformation trainer.
