Academics back Patois as first language in schools

Academics are lobbying Jamaican policymakers to seize on perceived growing comfort with the use of Creole in formal settings to have the native tongue accepted as the first language in schools.

Coordinator of the Jamaican Language Unit at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, Joseph T. Farquharson, delivered his speech in Creole, or Patois, at Wednesday's unveiling of a miniature statue honouring language activist and poet Louise Bennett-Coverley at Mona's Main Library.

He said that although Jamaicans are becoming more at ease using the Patois in formal settings, it is not given the credence it deserves in the education system.

“For decades now, UNESCO had advocated that children should be taught first in their mother language. And UNESCO, on the basis of research, has said children do better academically when that happens, because a child has already started to interact with his/her world in their mother language,” said Farquharson.

“It makes sense to start literacy in that language, and then once the child has gained literacy, then you move on to another language.”

UNESCO's language rights assert that everyone has the right to learn in their own language and that cultural and linguistic diversity is key to sustainable societies.

“There needs to be much more discussion as it relates to the education system, especially the beginnings of reading with that first language. Research has suggested that many of the problems of standard English have come from not recognising that the first language is Patois,” Professor Emeritus Mervyn Morris, a leading scholar on Bennett-Coverley's work, said in a Gleaner interview Wednesday.

Anglican priest and linguistics scholar, the Rev Bertram Gayle, believes that Jamaican Creole can be used to help students learn the English language.

“They are not going to become successful in the process if it is that we do not begin with what they know. It is not a matter of displacing English; it is a matter of using the Jamaican Creole to help our students better learn the English language,” Gayle told The Gleaner.

While acknowledging the importance of the Jamaican creole, Minister of Culture Olivia Grange said it's also important that Jamaican students are fully competent in English as the universal language.

Grange was the keynote speaker at the unveiling of the miniature statue of Miss Lou.

Its unveiling, along with a floral tribute held at National Heroes Park, formed part of the celebrations held Wednesday to honour the late folklorist on the 103rd anniversary of her birth.

The statue is a miniature version of the one mounted four years ago in her hometown of Gordon Town, St Andrew.

The minister said she hopes the statue's location will inspire students at the university to expand on the work started by Miss Lou.

“There is no fitting space for this to be done than in the heartbeat of Caribbean erudition and scholarship. It is truly fitting that this maquette is being located here at the university library, where aspiring Jamaican and Caribbean leaders in academia, industry, commerce, and politics can come here for tutelage and example, pause regularly to interrogate world politics, sociology, arts, and culture, and economics,” Grange said.

The culture minister said that Bennett-Coverley tackled social issues and allowed Jamaicans to be proud of their native language.

“Miss Lou encompassed the substance of the Jamaican character. She was able to articulate the sociological and political aspects of our lives as depicted through the politics of culture and identity,” she said.

Regarded as the 'Mother of Jamaican Culture', Miss Lou was born on September 7, 1919, and died on July 26, 2006, in Canada at age 86.