Minister of Labour Dr Esther Byer-Suckoo is blaming the education system and workers in the public sector for the lack of leadership and innovation among today’s youth.
Byer-Suckoo said if young people leaving learning institutions are to be innovative and take risks, the education system should first be reformed.
“We need to think outside the box,” she said.
“Our education system still trains our children to ‘answer the questions that I have asked but don’t ask me questions’.
“So when we try to talk about innovation in terms of the scientific process, observation, developing a hypothesis, experimentation, we suppress that in our [children] because when the teacher posits an idea, the children are still expected, even in the 21st century, to say ‘yes, ma’am’ and not so much to challenge that . . . .”
The minister said “the culture and attitudes” of some Government workers also needed to be changed in order for new workers to be innovative and good leaders.
She was speaking during a panel discussion to close a one-day Leadership And Innovation Conference by the Certified General Accountants Association of the Caribbean (CGA) at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre Friday.
“The same thing happens in our public sector,” she said. “We take young, bright [people], they come into the Civil Service and they come with all the energies and ideas and they are exposed to all the technologies.
“So they think there must be a more efficient way for us to do some of these processes that we are trying to do in the Civil Service . . . but somebody older is going to say ‘just cool yuhself, nuh, where you rushing and going? You have 30 years here!’ I have actually heard people saying it.
“So we have to look at it from both ends. We talk about reforming our education system so that our children are more prepared to be innovative and start their own business but when they try to exercise that in school or when they start to work in the Civil Service, we stifle that. So we have to encourage it in the schools and in the workplace and give them the freedom.”
Byer-Suckoo said the ministry was looking at “key areas for development” through establishing a national employment policy but it remained difficult to set up. (MM)
