Youth Unemployment in St. Lucia, the West Indies: Perceptions and Expectations on Education and Work
Seaver-Taylor, Mary Ellen
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/69167
Description
Title
Youth Unemployment in St. Lucia, the West Indies: Perceptions and Expectations on Education and Work
Author(s)
Seaver-Taylor, Mary Ellen
Issue Date
1987
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, Bilingual and Multicultural
Abstract
This five-chapter case study compares and contrasts the views of two dominant actor groups, policymakers and employers, and of two subordinate actor groups, teachers and students, in Castries, St. Lucia, 1982. It begins with a theoretical examination of the relationship between education and employment where the status conflict perspective is brought to bear on the St. Lucian educational context to the end of discovering to what extent a society's views on education and jobs contribute to a better understanding of the problem of youth unemployment.
A number of qualitative data gathering techniques were employed in this exploratory study, the results of which include data from elite interviews conducted with a convenience sample of policymakers and employers and from questionnaires administered to stratified cluster samples of secondary school teachers and students.
The study concludes that the status conflict approach might best be regarded as a supplement of rather than a substitute for the more widely discussed functional/manpower and neo-Marxist accounts. As a supplement, this perspective is, nonetheless of considerable heuristic value in helping to shed some light on several problematic aspects of the policy issue of youth unemployment.
First, the evidence from this study suggests that constant conflict and complexity exist in the ways in which status groups view the link between education and work. Second the findings suggest that the extent to which St. Lucian schools serve the needs of the modern formal labor market appears to be quite exaggerated. Third, social struggles over occupational positions manifest themselves in this study along complex social networks of communication where "godfathers" and their relatives and friends bargain with other "godfathers" and their relatives and friends for valued social goods (e.g., jobs). These patterns of complexity suggest that the process of educational planning might not, by itself, be the only appropriate means for solving the problem of youth unemployment in St. Lucia and abroad.
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