In the last three editions of the Business Guardian, the publication carried two-part contributions on the issue of innovation by Mary King and Gillian Marcelle/Keston Perry, along with a note from Mrs King last Sunday explaining the difference in the position she takes compared with Marcelle/Perry.
Ms King, of course, has laboured for a long time in the vineyard of promoting innovation in the local economy–but as I have explained to her privately on a number of occasions, it is difficult to have an innovative economy in a country in which the education system encourages learning by rote and which actually punishes innovation.
On the issue of T&T possessing a culture that punishes innovation, I pointed out to her in January that in this country we had the spectacle of an Attorney General pursuing a lawsuit against a UWI engineering professor who was attempting innovation in one of the few things that we are so proud to boast was created here.
I submitted to her that the fact that the UWI professor was "selected" by the PNM, but hounded and vilified by the PP demonstrated the fragility of her proposal for the selection of "bright, young people" who would "devote all their waking hours" to innovation in a "centre of excellence."
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