School is out and with it thousands of young men and women who are in desperate search of jobs that do not exist.
In addition, most of these young people are dependent on parents and other family who are themselves mired in distress. Some teeter on the borderline of poverty.
In other words, things are tough and getting tougher.
Clearly, this is another one of those matters that require urgent attention from both the government, its opposition in parliament, the Clergy and other religious and some others in civil society.
This action is needed now – thus the urgency in our appeal to the conscience of the Bahamian nation.
In this regard, we are absolutely convinced that this issue is one that cuts to the heart of all that we say we are about as so-called and sometimes self-styled ‘nation-builders’.
While practically all eyes that matter have been focused on unemployment caused and occasioned by the current world economic meltdown, few people have paid attention to another large challenge.
This challenge is the one that is posed by those thousands of young Bahamian men and women who are being graduated from this or that secondary level school.
Few of these people will go on to College or University; and fewer still have been prepared for any of the few jobs that currently exist in today’s economically distressed Bahamas.
These are probably among the worst of days for people who are young, unskilled and/ or poorly motivated.
As for their immediate prospects, speculation leads to one or the other disaster.
Things need not be like this.
Were we to reason together, solutions can and would be found.
But Bahamians are so driven by tribalism, pettiness, envy, self-hate and mutual loathing that we would bicker rather than help build.
This is why we insist that there could have been more planning for this contingency – as there was for some time now every indication that hard times were [indeed] falling.
As in the case of other distresses facing the nation – we have a leadership cadre that hears no voices but its own – thus the current sense of paralysis that seems to pervade the consciousness of most of our nation’s pre-eminent decision-makers.
As time goes its merry way, four years is a short time in the life of a country.
While we freely concede the point as regards one’s perception of times passage, we insist – nonetheless – that it seems a long time now that a blue ribbon committee did sit and did report on the parlous state of education in our country.
Indeed, most people were shocked when they saw it put – in black and white – that the nation’s average mark for education was a dismally distressing D+
Little has changed from then to now.
Indeed, where our society was in distress then, we can report that today’s reality is far worse. Scant progress has been achieved in education over the course of this five year period.
Furthermore, there is today no gainsaying the conclusion that, "the country’s present education "crisis" would have a serious detrimental impact on the national economy by the year 2020 if immediate steps are not taken to put in place reforms…"
Few such steps have been taken.
But by way of timely reminder, Frank Comito executive vice president of the Bahamas Hotel Association said the consequences of not addressing the present crisis would be dire.
As Comito noted, "Twenty years down the line we could find ourselves in a very uncompetitive situation where our cost of living would be incredibly high and our productivity would be incredibly low…"
While we would have loved to report that – four years later – things are moving in the right direction, we need do no such thing.
The fact of the matter is that things have reached a point where catastrophe itself beckons.
For those who might wish to suggest we are exaggerating things, reference need only be made to the facts as they are. In the first instance, economic condition is today simply dire.
Compounding the distress is that this is the hurricane season.
These facts alone should give all and sundry reason to pause and ponder.
- Austin DWI - New York DWI