Historian: Education not helping students understand themselves

HISTORIAN Dr Rita Pemberton says the education system is not tailored toward ensuring students understand themselves and their talents.

She was the main speaker at a discussion, titled History & Heritage, at the Hochoy Charles Administrative Complex, Calder Hall, on December 3.

The discussion was among the events to commemorate Tobago Day, which ends on December 19.

Saying the world is becoming increasingly competitive, Pemberton told an audience of mostly students that the education system needs to respond more strongly to global trends.

She observed students are still being steered towards certain types of jobs.

“We are still caught up with this silo education – directing people, specialising people, from very early. But people do things and when they come out they want to do something completely different,” she said.

Pemberton, a Newsday Tobago columnist, said she knew a student whose father wanted her to be an engineer, but who opted for another career.

“She went and did the engineering and then she come and do English because that is what she wanted to do – she wanted to be a writer. We have to be sensitive to that – that all of us have some kind of talent, and school is the place where you develop the talent.

“But the first thing school must do for you is to make you understand you, and that is where our education system is failing miserably.

"So we have people who discover they love history. But when? When they get old.”