Guyana, Caribbean need to refocus educational infrastructure

Dear Editor,
COVID-19 has laid bare the region’s health fragility and vulnerability to biological events such as the pandemic. It has made clear our lack of preparedness for future events like this one, and our inability to deal independently with threats of this nature. This reality amplifies the urgent need for an indigenous STEM knowledge-creation infrastructure. Ideas are the currency that ensure our survival as Caribbean people in the global matrix.
COVID-19 has made clear that a capacity for knowledge creation is the currency of the future. CXC has the network and the expertise to drive knowledge creation in all of its facets across our region, and Guyana will soon have the resources to make a comprehensive self-reflection possible.
In 1972, participating governments of the region established the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC). The mandate of the CXC was to provide the Caribbean with “syllabuses of the highest quality; valid and reliable examinations, and certificates of international repute for students of all ages, abilities, and interests; services to educational institutions in the development of syllabuses, assessments and examinations’ administration in the most cost-effective way”, to ensure the global human resource competitiveness of the Caribbean.
However, during September 2020, controversy erupted in Guyana and other parts of the Caribbean over unsatisfactory grades awarded by CXC in this year’s sitting of the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE). CXC had, in light of the novel coronavirus pandemic, modified this year’s tests. This controversy, coming as it has at the intersection of newly found oil wealth in Guyana and COVID-19, reminds us that “CXC is expected to facilitate the development of human resources for Caribbean development, provide training for the leaders of the region, and serve as the intellectual apparatus to nurture our identity as Guyanese and Caribbean people. “This furore over the validity of the examination results raises the question of how well CXC has enhanced the “global human resource competitiveness of the Caribbean. It is now worth remembering and reiterating that Guyana’s energy resources, uncovered after years of failed exploration, can transform the Caribbean region’s future.
Guyanese, we cannot afford to miss this opportunity for transformation. To ensure a prosperous, stable, and secure region, we must make significant and strategic investments in our education infrastructure.
Guyana and the Caribbean need to refocus their educational infrastructure on knowledge and value creation. Guyana’s oil resources can catalyse the Caribbean’s growth as a region characterised by excellence in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) research and innovation. Our geography and demography are our destiny.
The Caribbean’s development trajectory must innovatively target the existential challenges we face, particularly in health, energy, and the environment. The purpose of our intellectual infrastructure must be to solve Caribbean cultures’ problems and enhance our ways of living. The time has come for the Caribbean energy majors, Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana, to coordinate their actions across the energy sector on an energy independence plan for the entire region. Achieving this goal would require innovation and value-addition across the whole sector of regional energy assets — natural gas, biofuels, solar, and wind.
CXC must begin to see itself as a catalyst for regional innovation to address the profound existential challenges. It must start to see itself as an institution that engages citizens across the Caribbean in an informed and rigorous conversation about our future. It must begin to see itself as an institution that connects young Guyanese, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Barbadians, Antiguans to meaningful opportunities in a global economy.
The mission of CXC today is to catalyse Guyana and the Caribbean’s need to refocus their educational infrastructure to help us live better lives, and Guyanese oil sector revenues can resource this reimagination of CXC. If we are strategic in our educational investments, the Caribbean region can become a new global energy hub.
British Petroleum found oil in the North Sea in the 1970s. By the mid-1980s, there were over 100 offshore installations. Similar to what is occurring in Guyana today, a new oil and gas industry took root.
The Caribbean’s ambition must be to leverage Guyana’s offshore oil and gas industry to develop a modern Caribbean region. To do this, we must restructure CXC as an institution. We need Caribbean petroleum engineers to determine the best drilling methods to manage the production of oil and gas in such a manner as to protect our environment.
Today’s high-tech petroleum engineers shoot 3D “pictures” to walk around inside an image of earth virtually. They guide drilling rigs from control rooms miles away. They work with cutting edge, advanced directional drilling technology, sophisticated software, remote-operated vehicles (ROVs) underwater, and with 3D visualisation.
CXC must begin to engage in syllabi, curriculum, and assessment development to foster knowledge creation in these areas. Our mathematics exams and college preparatory courses, particularly those in the sciences, require more rigour than currently obtains if we are to produce, in sufficient numbers, students likely to be successful in petro-physics, geology, geosciences, geophysics, chemistry, hydraulics, environmental sciences and information technology.

Sincerely,
David Adams