Utilise local research talent

THE EDITOR: It is now public knowledge that a CDN$2 million contract was awarded to the universities of McGill and Montreal to design and deliver a Master’s Level Modular Leadership Training programme for 50 members of TT Ministry of Education’s senior, middle and school administration management teams. This award exposes as empty rhetoric all of the glowing tributes paid to the research capacity of UWI at the recent opening of ‘research days’. Here we have a local university whose scholars are respected internationally, yet UWI is often ignored when consultancy services are required in education and other areas.

We boast of our own Institute of Business, our MBA programmes and our highly respected Department of Management Studies at UWI. The School of Education has an impressive record in research focussed on many areas of education, including leadership, management and administration. Yet we go abroad for consultants, what a shame! All this talk about Vision 2020 must be regarded as mere ‘grand charge’ when we continue to genuflect at the feet of foreigners of dubious competence. It is well known that these imported programmes cannot address the unique cultural environment of TT as programmes based on local research. Furthermore, the imported programmes often foster beliefs that are in contradiction to our own value system.

For example, a contract to train secondary school teachers in technology education was recently awarded to Mt St Vincent University, in preference to UWI. The training started last year, and on page 109 of their student handbook, I found a section which venerates Samuel Colt and lauds his “significant invention”: the Colt revolver, exalting its ingenious revolving cylinder design and other attributes of the gun. Although I recall that the right to bear arms is cherished in the North, I do not think that we need to glorify the gun at this point in time. I should add that this programme, which deals with technology, is silent in respect of our own steelpan and the development of sealants from asphalt by our own Dolly Nicholas. Apparently these achievements were not good enough.

I believe that very soon Independence Day will be a day of invocation for an independence that was never realised. The sad thing is that it is our own leaders who show preference for the foreign consultants. This is done so blatantly that I sometimes wonder what influenced these decisions. Some may cite lending agency stipulations for these decision. If such were the case, we will be better off financing these programmes ourselves. In so doing we will be building capacity that will make Vision 2020 a reality.

DAVID SUBRAN
Chaguanas