So much has been invested into the educating of our people
but the gesture which has always been seen as a productive and grand extension
now bares the strain of being the albatross about the necks of the academic.
Day in, day out we listen to the local news and hear of efforts to reduce the
numbers as it links to unemployment and we must welcome the moves but we must
also be inclined to notice that most of this energy is directed at the Jamaican
who I would deem as none academic. As I said before this is a move that is
welcomed but I believe to be limiting and superficial.
The stress has always been placed on us educating our
children but now we have educated them we have sent the prized cattle to the
wilderness to die. We have not done properly our home work to understand that
in no capital is put forward to support this group of well thinkers then most
will become underemployed or unemployed couch warmers and deviants as there are
not enough job opportunities for this intellectual grouping. For this country
to move forward seriously we have to complete the investment process of
education. We have educated the youth its now time to break the piggy banks and
start financially backing these promises.
We have for years complained about brain drain and its
effects on our economy but we have never genuinely tried to strategically
tackle the problem. When the government sees it best to invest the countries finances
as a way out, into street cleaners, drain cleaners, curb painters, ‘JEEP’
drivers and political band wagonists for a couple months of labor it only
solves the problems for a day and emphasizes the point that we have clearly
lost our integrity as a progressive nation. You can’t put money in the hands of
babes and fool (no disrespect) to make substantial and sustainable gain. If we
want to see significant change the government will have to redirect its
injections towards those persons it has educated so that they can create and
innovate new and more effective business solutions. We did not only educate to
fill job vacancies in already existing and overwhelmed companies. Not everyone
will want to be an employee any ways, Jamaica is filled with ambitious and
educated youth able enough to take the reins to move the country further now
that they are intellectually inclined at making better decisions.
A young man leaves college/ university fresh with
inspiration and business ideas and sets out on a path of difference due to his patriotic
values but recognizes the he just stepped into the rat race, the dead end. He
failed to realize that his last name isn’t Matalon, Stuwart, Azan or Levy and
the room he rents came furnished so he has no collateral. He recognizes that he
doesn’t naturally have the financial backing that was a façade and reality sets
in. He tries channeling his energies towards seeking funding but concurrently
his savings dwindle and he is in a predicament of not having an alternative. He
seeks a job to finance what’s left of his dreams and zeal but realizes that he
is underpaid and underemployed living hand to mouth and the process has lost
its point.
This anecdote is to emphasize on the struggles faced by so
many of this countries brightest minds. Losing hope like the Burwood Beach and
the truck loads of sand which mysteriously disappeared from its shores. Our political will has been dragged through
curry gravy and left behind zinc fences so that our politicians can get
expensive SUVs and grand houses where they rub shoulders with fake smiles. The
time is now for change and an onus needs to be placed on the government to make
the right choices. For too long our citizens have tried to make a difference on
their own, the private sector has done so much but see its efforts being squandered,
blatantly and unapologetically. Employ the educated and your business will
prosper, afford the educated the needed capital to start new ventures and our
economy will see exponential growth. Employ our educated and real opportunities
will be prospected for the under educated poor.
The in adequate measures that are institutionalized in order
to employ development are failing fast. Opportunities run wild and are
exhausted collapsing daily around us due to our inability to meaning fully
exploit them due to our government’s inability to comprehend responsible
leadership. Enterprise has lost its head to the blades of the ‘pork barrel’
system. We focus on impractical answers to our situations not because we are
blind but because we deliberately blindfold our selves.
Hands can’t make fashion if there is no fabric. Banks make
no practical sense if there is not capital.
Government spells no sense without thinking beings. Development is a no
show without proper investment. Universities pop up daily graduating academics
in droves without first doing their market research into the availability of
jobs or business opportunities and investments. Maybe I have read improperly
into such but there is a discrepancy somewhere. I won’t go so far and blame
these institutions of higher learning but I will emphasize the lack of vision on
the part of our past and present governments.
I fear to believe that the educated have no vote or that
they are not choosing to execute their rights to adult suffrage. Why is it that
the efforts by the governments seem to rest with the un/undereducated poor at
the expense of the educated. Why is it that we have chosen to throw out the
baby with the bath water in order to maintain power in a failing state? There
is no need for citizens to be banding their bellies and bawling when there are
so many educated and patriotic individuals sitting at home because no one
recognizes the dilemmas of not fostering progress. Our countries problems as
Mr. Perkins preached upon till death lies purely with the mismanagement of our
countries most viable resource, its people. The academic minority has been cast
aside, left to realize their fate as
casualties of a war while the powers that be parade in their “Emperor’s New
Clothes”. The presumptions of progress have caused us to not buy into a genuine
idea of development.
Save the educated we save the nation. “Without vision the
people perish”. We have grown our farms to support our children built our
schools and universities to foster their development, now that they have
matured and are ripe with ideas we have left them unattended so that the fruits
of our labor can fal and rot by the wayside. Let us get a grip of the bull’s
reigns before they go trampling through the fields and damaging the crops of
all that’s left in our coffer. Let us be
the change we need. Let us not as a government but as citizens of this our
island nation, redirect our energies towards a better state. A good education
has always been propagated as the key to a prosperous and productive existence
for all. Let us practice what we have preached and embrace our own rhetoric’s
for a change.
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