Letter of the Day | Urgent need for bilingual education in schools

THE EDITOR, Madam:

The Gleaner editorial, “Reading for maths,” published on August 30, makes this indisputable claim: “Reading and comprehending in the language of instruction is critical to learning, which is a foundation to children being able to do their sums.” How can children learn any subject if they do not understand the language of instruction?

For several decades, enlightened and visionary Jamaicans have been calling for the introduction of a new approach to language teaching in our schools. Experts at The University of the West Indies, Mona, have been advocating bilingual education in primary schools. This system would see us embracing the Jamaican language, which is the mother tongue of most primary school students. It would become the first language of instruction for these students. English would be taught as an essential second language.

If someone had told me that the day would come when l would agree with this language education policy, I would call them mad. You see, many of us speak English every day in our business and personal life and we take competence in the language for granted. What we don’t realise is that this is definitely not the case for many Jamaicans.

l am currently mentoring three youngsters from an inner-city community. None of them can speak a word of English. I have watched these boys struggling to complete simple sentences in English. One of them constantly twists up his mouth in an effort to get out an English word or sentence. But they are all fluent in Jamaican and make perfectly good sense in their first language. Like these boys, many of our children pass through the school system without being taught English efficiently. The challenge now is to make all Jamaicans fluent in English.

The Gleaner editorial wrote: “As the Orlando Patterson Commission disclosed in its 2022 report on reforming Jamaica’s education system, 56 per cent of the children assessed under PEP in 2019 couldn’t extract basic information from simple English sentences.” The Ministry of Education needs to wake up and smell the coffee. The old system of language education is certainly not working. Teaching English as a compulsory second language must become a priority.

This will ensure that the next generation of primary school students will become fluent in an international language that is spoken by more than half of the world’s population. Learning English will open up great opportunities for economic advancement for these students and their families. They will gain access to jobs and careers for which competence in English is essential. As The Gleaner editorial concluded, “The real need is for better education.”

WINSTON BARRETT