A Critical Appraisal of Education in the Caribbean and Its Evolution From Colonial Origins to Twenty-First Century Responses

Author(s):  
Nigel Brissett

The countries in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) share a history of colonialism that has left an indelible mark on all their institutions and systems of socialization, including education. A dominating theme across these countries is the question of equitable access to quality education at all levels, an issue that increasingly finds resonance in the 21st century’s technological era. The region has generally made important strides in the areas of universal access to basic education and increasingly to secondary education. Tertiary education has also been prioritized under the new “knowledge economy,” with many countries exceeding the 15% of qualified cohort (those who are academically qualified to be enrolled) that was set as a regional target in 1997 by Caribbean governments. Yet, even with these strides, the education project is still incomplete, with new and continued challenges of affordability and quality. These concerns are now incorporated into the Caribbean’s deliberate attempts at regionalism through the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME), which serves as CARICOM’s organizing mechanism to face the new opportunities and challenges of the 21st century’s knowledge economy. These regional and development plans are expressed in CARICOM’s Human Resource Development 2030 Strategy (HRD Strategy), a multiyear development plan that is predicated on educational advancement across the region. The Caribbean’s educational achievements, equity challenges, and development plans are best understood in a historical context that captures the social, political-economic, and cultural idiosyncrasies of the region.

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 197
Author(s):  
Nigel Brissett

This paper critically examines the possibilities of education for social transformation (EST) in the context of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). This is a region with a history of colonialism and embodies some of the central dilemmas of globalization, such as inequality and environmental precarity. Thus, conceptually, EST holds great promise for social justice and environmental sustainability. The paper argues, however, that EST can be relevant to the region only if it takes account of the enduring deep-seated legacy of asymmetries of power, exploitation and inequality in the broader society and within the education system resulting from colonialism and now exacerbated by globalization’s processes. Using postcolonial theory as the analytical frame, the paper highlights these challenges to EST in the context of the Caribbean and also identifies educational principles for EST to be a catalyst for social transformation in the region.


2009 ◽  
pp. 778-797
Author(s):  
Christine Marrett

nformation communication technologies (ICTs) have facilitated institutional collaboration in distance education. Based on the study, Institutional collaboration in distance education at the tertiary level in the small, developing countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean: To what extent does it enhance human resource development? (Marrett, 2006), the author examines the experiences in the Caribbean between 1982 and 2002. She explores not only the role played by ICTs, but also some of the issues that arise beyond those presented by the technology, highlighting aspects that need attention in order to ensure successful institutional collaboration in tertiary education, and makes recommendations to overcome the challenges.


Author(s):  
Christine Marrett

Information communication technologies (ICTs) have facilitated institutional collaboration in distance education. Based on the study, Institutional collaboration in distance education at the tertiary level in the small, developing countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean: To what extent does it enhance human resource development? (Marrett, 2006), the author examines the experiences in the Caribbean between 1982 and 2002. She explores not only the role played by ICTs, but also some of the issues that arise beyond those presented by the technology, highlighting aspects that need attention in order to ensure successful institutional collaboration in tertiary education, and makes recommendations to overcome the challenges.


Author(s):  
Janinka Greenwood ◽  
Lynne Harata Te Aika ◽  
Niki Davis

Maori people have a history of adaptation of new technologies. In recent decades Maori innovators have taken and adapted digital technologies for a range of purposes that can be broadly defined as educational. In this chapter, the authors examine three cases where groups have utilised, and ‘colonised’, a range of particular technologies in order to build capacity for their tribal groups and wider community. In this way they use technologies as tools to overcome some of the financial, social and political deprivation caused by historic and continuing colonisation. The authors initially locate their exploration in a discussion of the historical context of colonisation, Maori movement towards self-determination, and in a discussion of Maori values and approaches to knowledge. They then present the three cases, beginning with one from a formal tertiary education programme (a Maori one), then examining a tribal initiative for language revitalisation and finally looking at a national use of digital media through Maori television.1


1995 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aggrey Brown

Abstract: The regionalization of new telecommunications and media services in the Caribbean has to be seen in the context of the history of a region which remains fragmented along the lines of antecedent colonial connections. While the inevitability of pan-Caribbean co-operation, if not integration, has to be acknowledged, the regionalization of new information/communication (infocom) services in the Caribbean proceeds along the traditional geopolitical lines. This paper focuses on the English-speaking Caribbean, which comprises the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). The specific issues that are pertinent to the notion of regionalization of services are geopolitical, economic, and technological. More precisely, the region's proximity to North America, the emergence of a competitive global economy, and the role of infocom technologies in the global economy, both as a sector of that economy and as the cohesive element within it, are our main concerns. Résumé: Afin de bien comprendre pourquoi les nouveaux services de radiodiffusion et de télécommunication aux Caraïbes tendent à être régionaux, il faut se rappeler que les pays caraïbes demeurent divisés les uns des autres en conséquence de la diversité de leurs origines coloniales. Bien qu'il faille reconnaître que la coopération pan-caraïbe est inévita-ble, la régionalisation de nouveaux services d'information et de communication dans les Caraïbes se conforme aux alliances géopolitiques traditionnelles. Cet article se concentre sur les Caraïbes anglophones, composantes du "Caribbean Community" (CARICOM)--la "Communauté caraïbe". Les questions se rapportant spécifiquement à cette idée de régionalisation de services sont d'ordre géopolitique, économique, et technologique. Plus précisément, nos questions principales sont: l'effet de la proximité de l'Amérique du Nord sur les Caraïbes, l'émergence d'un marché concurrentiel global, et l'importance de technologies d'information et de communication dans l'économie globale, autant comme soutiens de celle-ci que comme produits marchandables.


Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke

This is the first full-scale look at the essential place of Stoicism in the foundations of modern political thought. Spanning the period from Justus Lipsius's Politics in 1589 to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile in 1762, and concentrating on arguments originating from England, France, and the Netherlands, the book considers how political writers of the period engaged with the ideas of the Roman and Greek Stoics that they found in works by Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The book examines key texts in their historical context, paying special attention to the history of classical scholarship and the historiography of philosophy. The book delves into the persisting tension between Stoicism and the tradition of Augustinian anti-Stoic criticism, which held Stoicism to be a philosophy for the proud who denied their fallen condition. Concentrating on arguments in moral psychology surrounding the foundations of human sociability and self-love, the book details how the engagement with Roman Stoicism shaped early modern political philosophy and offers significant new interpretations of Lipsius and Rousseau together with fresh perspectives on the political thought of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. The book shows how the legacy of the Stoics played a vital role in European intellectual life in the early modern era.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 19-25
Author(s):  
Mark C Anderson

Horror films such as White Zombie (1932) reveal viewers to themselves by narrating in the currency of audience anxiety. Such movies evoke fright because they recapitulate fear and trauma that audiences have already internalized or continue to experience, even if they are not aware of it. White Zombie’s particular tack conjures up an updated captivity narrative wherein a virginal white damsel is abducted by a savage Other. The shell of the captivity story, of course, is as old as America. In its earliest incarnation it featured American Indians in the role as savage Other, fiendishly imagined as having been desperate to get their clutches on white females and all that hey symbolized. In this way, it generated much of the emotional heat stoking Manifest Destiny, that is, American imperial conquest both of the continent and then, later, as in the case of Haiti, of the Caribbean Basin. White Zombie must of course be understood in the context of the American invasion and occupation of Haiti (1915-1934). As it revisits the terrain inhabited by the American black Other, it also speaks to the history of American slavery. The Other here is African-American, not surprisingly given the date and nature of American society of the day, typically imagined in wildly pejorative fashion in early American arts and culture. This essay explores White Zombie as a modified captivity narrative, pace Last of the Mohicans through John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), the Rambo trilogy (1982, 1985, 1988), the Taken trilogy (2008, 1012, 2014), even Mario and Luigi’s efforts to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser.


This first-ever history of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) is told through the reflections of its eight chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. Coeditors Robert Hutchings and Gregory Treverton add a substantial introduction placing the NIC in its historical context going all the way back to the Board of National Estimates in the 1940s, as well as a concluding chapter that highlights key themes and judgments. The historic mission of this remarkable but little-understood organization is strategic intelligence assessment in service of senior American foreign policymakers. It has been at the center of every critical foreign policy issue during the period covered by this volume: helping shape America’s post–Cold War strategies, confronting sectarian conflicts around the world, meeting the new challenge of international terrorism, and now assessing the radical restructuring of the global order. Each chapter places its particular period of the NIC’s history in context (the global situation, the administration, the intelligence community) and assesses the most important issues with which the NIC grappled during the period, acknowledging failures as well as claiming successes. With the creation of the director of national intelligence in 2005, the NIC’s mission mushroomed to include direct intelligence support to the main policymaking committees in the government. The mission shift took the NIC directly into the thick of the action but may have come at the expense of weakening its historic role of providing over-the horizon strategic analysis.


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