- IAN ALLEN/Staff Photographer
Silver Pen winner Hilary Robertson-Hickling collects her award from The Gleaner's Editor-in-Chief Garfield Grandison at the company's North Street, central Kingston, offices yesterday.
Petrina Francis, Education Reporter
EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS need care and support if they are to survive, Hilary Robertson-Hickling, lecturer in the Department of Management Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and a recipient of The Gleaner's Silver Pen award, said yesterday.
She noted that this would be possible if all stakeholders played their individual roles.
Mrs. Robertson-Hickling was speaking with The Gleaner yesterday, after she was presented with the award by the company's Editor-in-Chief Garfield Grandison.
She won the award for the month of May last year for her 'Letter of the Day' entitled 'Education Under Threat'. Mrs. Robertson-Hickling said she supports the recently-released recommendations made by the task force on education because "a radical reorganisation (of the education system) is necessary.
Asked if she reckons that the government would be able to find the required $52 billion annually to implement the recommendations of the task force, she said: "I think we have got to find it but we are not going to find it in the traditional way."
"We have to start thinking out of the box," she added.
EDUCATION NEEDS INVESTMENT
"I think all stakeholders will have to recognise that it's something that we have to invest in and it's an absolute priority."
In her letter, she highlighted some of the problems that are affecting the education system. "The progress that has been made in education is being threatened by forces within the society, the community, the family and the individual. We are experiencing cutbacks in government expenditure, underachieving students, poor teaching performance and a largely absent vision of what we are trying to achieve," Mrs. Robertson-Hickling wrote.
She added: "We have to look at what is happening to our students and to confront some of the problems that they are facing."
The second-time Silver Pen awardee added that people need to invest in the next generation and recognise that educational institutions are places of transformation.
