Introduction 
The broad picture of the democratization of Caribbean societies and their education systems has been relatively well represented in the historical literature, but some published sources such as Gordon (1963, 1968) are no longer in print, and did not, in any case, set out to provide a coherent picture of developments in science education. This subject area has moved from a position of outright rejection in the 19th century to one of such prominence that some science is now compulsory up to about age 14, and it remains an attractive option beyond that age, at least in secondary school. Most Barbados scholarships in the last third of the 20th century were in fact in science and technology.