THE LATE Prime Minister David Thompson was a citizen and leader of Barbados who placed education at the centre of national development, says Minister of Education and Human Resource Development Ronald Jones.
Jones highlighted this fact as he delivered the feature address at the Lions Club of Barbados Central opening ceremony of Language Arts Quiz Competition at St George Primary School.
The minister said Thompson embraced spiritual and emotional learning and issues which lay very strongly within the effective domain.
“What we should really remember and keep within our minds and within our hearts is essentially what he stood for as a Barbadian.
One of the things he stood for was the educating of our people but more particularly our young people.
“And educating not within only the construct of formal education where parents get children ready and send them to a school to be dealt with by teachers and education leaders. But educating them within the non-formal attributes of education . . . . honesty, respect, obedience, love, appreciation, sympathy are the things that he sought to pull at the centre of national policy and national governance,” he said.
Jones commended and saluted the Lions Club which sponsored the quiz that included participants from schools within the St George and St John district.
He said activities such as the quiz were contributors to engaging the minds of the nation’s youth in positive dwellings.
“One of the best ways to mobilise the youth is to engage their minds, to encourage them to be messengers of knowledge, the messengers of learning. So that when they are filled with that knowledge and filled with that learning they can become transfers of that knowledge and of that learning.” (AH)
