COMMENTARY: Careers with a difference

I’m not sure if the government is a achieving its objective of putting a graduate in each home, but we seem to be well on our way to putting graduates behind the tills in supermarkets. If you don’t believe me, check it out the next time you checkout.

I am not referring to students working to supplement their studies, but to graduates with an Associate Degree. It is the same scenario in our call centres. And it doesn’t end there. In the Sun newspaper there is an advertisement for what is in effect a basic machine minder. Educational requirements: at least an Associate Degree in Applied Science or Mechanical Engineering!

Mind you, most engineering graduates wouldn’t know a machine if one feel on their head. And this goes for graduates in all fields that are in essence practical. Up to a hundred years ago it was the master craftsman that determined good design; not at the drawing board but at the workbench. Thomas Telford (1757-1834), the godfather of civil engineering, left school when he was twelve and served his apprenticeship as a stone mason.

I suggest that rather than putting a graduate in each home we put a skilled person in each home. Let me qualify that by saying, a fully skilled person. You cannot learn a skill in six weeks; it takes six years and then some. Moreover, I would like to see a passionate person in each home, and by extension, a creative person in each home. By these means Dominica would begin to experience a new lease of life.

Regardless of the State College’s commendable “empowerment courses” when I look down the long list of subjects on offer at the college, the Creative Arts are for the most part conspicuous by their absence. This is not surprising, as they are largely absent from secondary school syllabuses. Five years ago, when I offered an introductory one-year Visual Art course in collaboration with the Dominica Institute for the Arts, there were no takers. Elsewhere in the world students would have been queuing around the block to enrol!

In conversation with scores of students, either with an Associate Degree, studying for an Associate Degree or having given up on a degree a couple of years into their studies, I found that most wished they had more carefully considered their options on leaving school. As work demands the best years of your life and the best hours of each day, it behoves you to get it right so as to enjoy and find fulfilment in the job you’re doing.

Over the next few weeks I will be offering a series of thought provoking workshops for school leavers and college students wishing to pursue a career with a difference. Art, Design and Craftsmanship will be high on the agenda. The sessions will be free of charge and held at my Antrim Studio.

For further details email: [email protected]

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2 Comments

  1. Hendricks ismael
    August 28, 2017

    There is something wrong with the entire system of educating people in the caribean . After the British gave us independence , we did not change the system to produce job creators , we still produce civil servants . We did not create a model of our own where we have training , development , technology , to support value creating activities . Our value chain is weak, management is none exastance . After 50 years of getting college degrees and we cannot even supply enough protein for a small island state, we cannot manage a small cable tv station, we cannot manage $100.000.000 contract bulding hotel, road , what did we learn in college . One college person with half a brain should be able to supply chicken and pork to the entire island and have extra to ship down island . The name of the aid bank should be changed, government is making millions available to people to build companies and create jobs and soft drinks comes from st Lucia , training to manage and produce is needed badly .

  2. tek
    August 28, 2017

    Well said… only time will tell for the people who don’t want to be competitive and creative.

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