We Educate Them to Leave: Is This Sustainable Development for Bonaire?
Every year, young people from Bonaire pack their suitcases, say goodbye to their families and leave the island to continue their studies, particularly in the Netherlands. For many families, it is a proud moment. Their children are going to university or higher professional education to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, economists, psychologists, nurses and other professionals.
But behind that pride lies a much bigger question that Bonaire urgently needs to confront: Is an education system that requires so many of our young people to leave their own island really sustainable development for Bonaire?
Education should be one of the foundations of sustainable development. A society educates its young people not simply so that they can obtain a diploma, but so that their knowledge, skills and creativity can contribute to the future of their community. Yet Bonaire faces a structural contradiction. We tell our young people that they are the future of Bonaire, while the system requires many of them to leave in order to build that future.
Leaving Should Be a Choice, Not a Necessity
There is nothing wrong with studying abroad. Exposure to another country, culture and academic environment can be enormously valuable. Young Bonairians should have opportunities to study in the Netherlands, elsewhere in the Caribbean, Latin America, the United States or anywhere else they choose.
The problem arises when leaving is not really a choice. For many fields of higher education, a young person cannot remain on Bonaire and pursue the education they want. The educational infrastructure simply does not exist locally. That creates a development model in which Bonaire educates its young people through their formative years and then sends them abroad at precisely the stage when they are developing the professional skills the island needs. And then we hope they come back. Hope is not a sustainable-development strategy.
The Risk of Brain Drain
Once a student spends several years in the Netherlands, circumstances naturally change. They establish friendships and professional networks. They may find employment, begin relationships, build families or discover career opportunities that simply do not exist on Bonaire.
Some fear that if they return, they will not be able to find a good-paying job that allows them to live comfortably and repay their study finance. There are many provisions for leaving, but not enough for returning. There is no proper infrastructure to help our young people come back and build their future on Bonaire. Some return. But many do not.
Every young Bonairian who chooses to establish a future elsewhere has the right to make that decision. The issue is not to blame our students for leaving. The responsibility is to ask whether Bonaire has created sufficient opportunities for them to return. If we continuously export our young people for education while importing professionals to fill essential positions on the island, we should question whether something is fundamentally wrong with the development model. Why shouldn't Bonaire deliberately develop its own doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, administrators, researchers, entrepreneurs and other professionals?
The Hidden Social Cost
There is also a human dimension that economic statistics cannot adequately measure. Imagine being 17 or 18 years old and suddenly having to move thousands of kilometres away from your parents, grandparents, siblings, language, culture and familiar environment simply because the education you need is unavailable at home.
Students must adapt not only academically, but socially and culturally. Parents also carry the burden. Families worry about accommodation, finances, travel, emotional wellbeing and whether their children will successfully adjust to life abroad. For a small island community, repeatedly sending away a significant part of the next generation can represent a loss of human capital.
Where Is the Long-Term Education Strategy?
Bonaire must begin asking a different question. Instead of asking only, "How do we prepare our students to study in the Netherlands?" we should also ask: "How do we build an education system that allows more Bonairian students to study, develop and build careers on Bonaire?"
Bonaire does not need to reproduce every Dutch university on the island. That would neither be realistic nor economically sensible. But there are alternatives.
We could develop stronger tertiary and vocational programmes on Bonaire, create partnerships with universities throughout the Kingdom and the Caribbean, expand hybrid and distance-learning opportunities, establish professional training programmes linked directly to Bonaire's labour needs, and provide incentives for graduates to return. Most importantly, education planning should be connected to a long-term assessment of the professionals Bonaire will need over the next 10, 20 and 30 years. Education policy, labour policy, population policy and sustainable development cannot continue to operate as separate conversations.
Sustainable Development Must Include Our People
Development is not simply more buildings, hotels, roads, tourists or economic growth. Sustainable development means building a society capable of sustaining its own people. If Bonaire's economy grows while young Bonairians increasingly feel that their best educational and professional opportunities exist somewhere else, we must ask: development for whom?
Our young people should be able to travel the world, study abroad and gain international experience. But they should also know that Bonaire has a place for them when they return. And eventually, more of them should have the possibility of obtaining quality higher education without being required to leave Bonaire in the first place.
A small island cannot afford to treat its human capital as an export product. The greatest natural resource Bonaire possesses is not its coastline, tourism industry or geographical location. It is its people.
If we truly believe that our youth are the future of Bonaire, then our development policies must make it possible for them to participate in building that future. Otherwise, year after year, we will continue standing at Flamingo Airport waving goodbye to the very generation we say Bonaire needs.
And that leaves us with one uncomfortable question: If our young people must leave Bonaire to find their education, their profession and eventually their future, can we truly call that sustainable development?