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Injustice to children

Published:Friday | December 6, 2019 | 12:20 AM

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I am responding to Ms Shawna Kay Williams-Pinnock’s letter of Tuesday, December 3, 2019, ‘Our children are struggling to read’. I cannot understand why the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information continues to place greater priority on completing a curriculum overloaded with facts to be memorised and concepts beyond children’s grasp rather than on teaching children to read.

It is hard to imagine the feelings of frustration, boredom, and inadequacy that many children must have when they cannot read or are reading much below their grade level throughout primary school.

Intervention, with the aim of instilling in children a love of reading, should take place during grade one, or at the latest, at the end of grade one. After that, children’s negative attitudes escalate. Postponing intervention to grade five or seven is doing children an injustice.

HELEN WILLIAMS