Hubert Devonish | ‘Action, not a bag a mout’ – Delivering on bilingual education

Terror Fabulous and Nadine Sutherland’s big tune, Action, can be heard as an anthem for language education reform in Jamaica. The title of a 2016 UNESCO policy paper sums up the plight of most Jamaican primary school children: ‘If you don’t understand, how can you learn?’ Many students arrive in a school where English is the language of teaching and learning. However, English is not the language they know and use at home and in their everyday life. Jamaican (Creole) is their first and only language. Much has been said and written about this problem, but little done.

During the 1970s, Dennis Craig and Don Wilson of the UWI School of Education came up with their version of a solution. Their Language Materials Workshop Programme for primary schools required children to discuss topics in their natural language, Jamaican. This was called ‘Free Talk’. The discussion would then be repeated later in English, in an activity called ‘Controlled Talk’. Here, for the benefit of the children, the teacher would model in speech the forms of the school language, English, that needed to be learnt. Reading and writing were taught only in English. Even this proposal, for a limited use of Jamaican in the classroom, was never carried through. The textbooks to support the teaching method were produced but teachers never trained to use them. Teaching in schools pretty much continued as before. Teachers pretended the children spoke English and that what was needed was to correct their ‘bad’ English.

Fast forward to 2004! The Jamaican Language Unit (JLU) at the University of the West Indies, Mona, pioneered a primary school Bilingual Education Project (BEP). Textbooks in Jamaican paralleled those in English. Teachers in four schools were trained to teach literacy in Jamaican and English. Mathematics, science and social studies were also taught in both languages. The BEP promoted the mental development that comes from learning in the home language. The students also benefited from the brain development and language and literacy skills which result from learning in two languages, rather than one. Their performance in English, for example, was better than that of children who were taught the traditional way. The Jamaican language textbooks, the teaching materials, including Jamaican language alphabet cards, bilingual body part charts, etc., were presented to the Ministry of Education in 2009. So, too, were the research project results. The hope was that the ministry would take the baton and run with it. Disappointment again: More ‘bag a mout’ and no ‘action’!

NO TEACHERS TRAINED

Fast forward, again, to 2018 and the brand-new National Standards Curriculum (NSC) which recognises two languages spoken in Jamaica: Standard Jamaican English and Jamaican. In Grade 1 curriculum guides, we see these attainment targets: “Communicate with confidence and competence for different purposes and audiences, using SJE and JC appropriately and creatively;” and ‘Write sentences which are grammatically accurate and correctly punctuated, using SJE and JC appropriately’. For Grade 4, we get, “Write sentences, paragraphs and extended pieces which are grammatically accurate and correctly punctuated, using SJE and JC appropriately.” For Grade 9, we see that one unit “ . . . seeks to establish a community of language learners who can effectively communicate when speaking and writing in both Standard Jamaican English (SJE) and Jamaican Creole (JC).” The NSC clearly requires the equal use of both Jamaican and English for spoken and written communication, from Grade 1 to Grade 9. This is a bilingual or dual language curriculum, at least on paper.

But, again, we have ‘a bag a mout’ and no ‘action’. Teachers were never trained to deliver the bilingual component of the NSC. Teaching has gone on like before. Most teachers act as if the children speak and understand English and just need their language to be corrected and ‘improved’.

IF ALL GOES WELL

In 2021, Roman Catholic Church representatives approached the JLU at UWI. They wanted the Jamaican language to play a more central role in the education of children in the schools they run at the primary level. The JLU proposed that the way to achieve this was to turn the 2018 bilingual NSC into classroom practice. To do this, the JLU has produced an in-service Master’s degree programme in Dual Language Practice in Education which is at the approval stage. If all goes well, this degree programme would, over five years, train primary level teachers in the Roman Catholic schools to implement the language-related aspects of the national curriculum. Teachers would learn to teach literacy in both languages. Also, both languages would be used to deliver content material. This would produce truly bilingual and biliterate Jamaicans, as is the goal of the 2018 NSC. The Roman Catholic schools represent close to 10 per cent of the schoolchildren and teachers at the primary level. A project like this could pioneer the rollout of a national training programme for all primary schools.

The ‘if all goes well’ component of the project depends on funding. One would expect the Ministry of Education, which put out the national curriculum, to ensure that teachers are trained to implement the radical new bilingual component of the curriculum. However, the 2018 NSC has been around for six years and the ministry has done little to achieve its goals. The JLU and the Roman Catholic schools are poised to break the curse of the implementation deficit expressed in ‘bag a mout’. The ministry can do the right thing, by owning the implementation of this aspect of the national curriculum and funding it. We could then turn 50 years of ‘bag a mout’ into ‘action’ in the Jamaican classroom.

Hubert Devonish, is professor emeritus in linguistics, at The University of the West Indies, Mona. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com