Train J'cans for future jobs, urges educator

Jermaine Francis, Staff Reporter

Dr Fritz Pinnock, head of the Caribbean Maritime Institute, has implored the country to change the way it is going about educating the nation's youth as the occupations for which they are being trained may soon be obsolete.

Delivering the 2014 Grace-Kennedy Foundation lecture, titled 'From Piracy to Trans-shipment', last week, Pinnock said Jamaica must now begin to look at the emerging occupations around the world and start training its citizens for these.

Speaking against the back-ground of the country's quest to become a global logistics hub, the senior educator said: "We have to wake up and realise that having international companies coming here is like us going abroad to seek a job. It is about our certification and our competence."

He added that while degrees are good to have, they must be accompanied by profitable skills that will be relevant in the next 10 years.

Pinnock argued that 60 per cent of the best jobs that will be available in the next 10 years were yet to be created.

He queried whether the country's education system was ready to create new programmes that would meet the demands these new jobs would present.

EMPHASIS ON SCIENCE

Pinnock explained that 70 per cent of the jobs in the future would require knowledge in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and serious emphasis must now be placed on these areas.

Showing a video predicting the top 10 potential jobs that mostly likely will become popular in the future, Pinnock said that jobs will become more complex, encompassing many different micro-careers.