My interest in liberty and inequality started to take shape when I met Amartya Sen, who was Master of Trinity, Cambridge at the time. His work in welfare economics led me to coin the term epistemic poverty as a descriptor of a distinct type of poverty.
Epistemic poverty is a poverty of minds.
Epistemic poverty is a poverty of minds. This perspective departs from a strict adherence to standard definitions of poverty based on lowness of income and embraces instead the notion of the creation of intellectual capital as the basis for economic advantage. The ability to reason well is not only constitutive of development but must be at the heart of any development strategy.
In the West Indies the discourses on schooling are persistently ‘nostalgic’; trapped inside a colonial ring of white boulders that encircle the flagstaff at the forefront of the school. My angle into the narrative is about what’s ‘next’.
Education for Liberty pivots largely on the Rawlsian notion of justice as fairness and the hope of releasing the imagination. To have any inkling of what’s next one must have precise notions about the future of work. The Next Aims of education must serve to future-proof the economy with a generation of inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs.
