For more than four decades, the Caribbean Examinations Council has been one of the region’s most consequential institutions. Beyond certifying students, CXC has shaped curricula, classroom priorities, parental expectations, and — quietly but decisively — the values our societies reward. It is precisely because of this influence that I write to you now.

For as ancient wisdom quietly reminds us, without vision a people perish — and empathy, patiently taught, is among the clearest forms of vision a society can possess.

Leadership worthy of the name emerges not from spreadsheets alone, but from disciplined moral imagination. Repairing the world order does not mean restoring some imagined golden age. It means recalibrating our collective compass: re-centering truth over traction, responsibility over reach, and long-term consequence over short-term gain. The academy also performs another quiet but essential function: formation. It does not merely produce research; it shapes minds...Read More

Hurricane Melissa again revealed the cost of centralised fragility. But, distributed rooftop solar offers households resilience where transmission lines repeatedly fail. When households generate energy, they gain protection from outages, fuel price shocks, and rising living costs.

Dr Jones is a Jamaican computational chemist and Senior Research Scientist at IBM Research, where he leads work in quantum applications spanning chemistry, materials science, catalysis, and polymer degradation. A Morant Bay High alumnus, he earned his PhD from University of California, Los Angeles, after attending Bard College, and joined IBM in 2010. He is internationally recognised for pioneering BPA-free plastics recycling and was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leadi

'Precisely three years and two days ago, my colleague, business partner, finest thought-clarifier, and most erudite friend, Dr Cynthia Elaine Lewis, passed over into Glory Land. She died suddenly on December 31, 2022. Toward the end of 2022, shortly before her passing, I coined the syllogism billioneering. Cynthia asked me—quietly but insistently—to define it rigorously. At the time, I did my best. It was not enough. What follows is a clarified Comparative Map: Billioneerin

We are providing practical evaluation of your college application essays, with guidance on improvements where warranted, up to 15 February 2026.These services are open to all interested students; membership in A-QuEST is not required. However, A-QuEST Y41 Doclings will continue to receive all of these services free of cost, as part of our ongoing commitment to this cohort. Conditions apply.

Dear Doclings & Parents/Sponsors of Y41 Cohort, I hope this finds you well and in high spirits despite the passing (re)birth-pains of Cat. 5 Hurricane Melissa. This Gantt Chart now supersedes the A-Q Checklist for the management of your entire Application Project, as it explicitly incorporates the scheduling realities created by the pre-, actual, and post-Hurricane Melissa disruptions to Jamaica’s institutions for the foreseeable future.

He said, Minott, stop it. Leave the Number 9 shirt alone. Get out of the way of the real forwards. And just like that, I desisted from my puerile vanity. I stepped back. It is a lesson Jamaica’s Cabinet Ministers—two of the women and nearly all the men—might consider before their next press conference or their next in-camera bright idea that becomes tomorrow’s national headache. The lesson is simple: do not wear the Number 9 shirt if you are not a striker...

Collapsed roads, failed culverts, unstable slopes, and flooded communities are not just the work of heavy rainfall. They are the consequences of political preference taking precedence over engineering judgement. This pattern recurs across administrations, but its effects become more lethal as climate risks rise...Read More

If ever Jamaica needed proof that we stand within a real Caribbean community, it came quietly and movingly today, 18 November, when several smaller CARICOM states—many with far fewer resources than ours—stepped forward to express solidarity with Jamaica after the devastations of Hurricane Melissa. Messages of support and emergency pledges from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, Dominica, Cuba, Belize, Barbados, and Antigua & Barbuda may not command

Dear High School Seniors of Jamaica, Haiti, the Cayman Islands, and Cuba, I pray this message finds you safe and steadily regaining strength after Hurricane Melissa—however difficult that journey may still be. Your university dreams remain alive. You must still secure your place in college. And that means writing compelling, truthful, and memorable application essays. Below are 20 concise, British-English essay topic ideas aligned with the current Common App prompts. Each i

Black River is one of our oldest towns of elegance, enterprise, science, and firsts: electrification, motor vehicles, cinema, trade, and progressive civic life. It carries a legacy of outward-looking innovation that must not be allowed to fade. Its river, coastline, mangroves, and wetlands form a priceless natural defence system and ecological treasure—one which Melissa has reminded us is fragile. To rebuild Black River in the same way it was before would be a national mis

Knowing promotion of climate-change denial anywhere in CARICOM should be a criminal offence, especially when done to project and/or protect “billioneering” for private gain. After Jamaica's Melissa and Baryl cases, that position is no longer radical; it is elementary self-defence. To keep licensing, subsidising, or platforming climate liars is to aid and abet future Melissa-like disasters and their psychological carnage. Taylor is right...READ MORE

Some will argue that criminalising climate-denialism infringes on freedom of speech. But free speech has never implied the right to cause public harm. One cannot shout “fire” in a crowded theatre. One cannot freely advertise cyanide as cough syrup. One cannot spread medical falsehoods that endanger children. In the same way, one should not be permitted to knowingly spread scientifically disproven narratives that: undermine disaster preparedness, influence vulnerable commun

some events demand reverence, not re-enactment. To parody tragedy is to desecrate memory. It is this boundary Jamaica now risks crossing in Kingston Pirates Week—where history’s violence becomes spectacle. The proposed Kingston Pirates Week aligns primarily with the economic/commercial and political/ideological categories: a tourism-marketing exercise couched in heritage rhetoric. It commemorates no emancipation, offers no moral reflection, and risks aestheticising brutalit

In the early hours of Saturday, October 18, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) issued a statement on the “security build-up in the region.” The document struck a familiar chord of regional caution: reaffirming the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, reiterating the need for dialogue and adherence to international law, and emphasising respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. Yet, the very wording of that statement, and several underlying dynamics, invite deeper reflec

A 2022 report by the Caribbean Education Policy Review (CEPR) noted that students perceived as “well-rounded” were 2.5 times more likely to receive leadership appointments than those with similar grades but humbler demeanour. That bias, rooted in adult admiration for charm, creates what sociologist Errol Lawrence calls “a hidden curriculum of personality privilege.” Teachers may not intend harm. They are often overworked, rather underpaid, and quite desperate for success s

In Jamaican culture, the phone is no longer simply a tool of convenience: it is part of the daily ritual, the social status totem, the anxiety-soother. When youth ask, “Are you on WhatsApp / Facebook / Instagram?”, often the answer is expected: yes. The phone is assumed.The metaphor of worship is apt: we invest attention, emotion, time, status in the SIM and device. We sacrifice other things — quietude, reflection, community gathering, mentorship, spirituality.Thus the provoc

Everywhere one turns, Caribbean elites are polishing illusions designed to feed their own greed at the expense of the “poor people” they profess to love. If hypocrisy were exportable, CARICOM—led by whichever smiling old or new figure of the moneyed class—would have a trade surplus. A generation ago, moral outrage came as naturally as breathing—a civic reflex. Today it has been replaced by strategic ambiguity: “Let’s not rock the boat.” In such a climate, editors and broadca