Martin Henry
SOME SMALL things can be very important. Although 15 hectares of land is really not that small, that's the area of land replanted in hardwood trees in the Wallenford/Silver Hill area up in those spectacular St. Andrew hills in a project led by the city-based Lions Club of Mona.
Members of the club, working with the Forestry Department and persons from the area in a project funded by the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica (EFJ), have reforested the degraded area. Since last April, some 9,300 seedlings have been planted on just over 15 hectares of degraded hillside.
When I saw Lion Denise Forrest in one of the pictures accompanying the advertorial in the Monday Gleaner I could immediately see why a city club would tackle an environmental project out in the bushes.
Denise has spent a good chunk of her working life engaged with the environment and has worked with the alternative energy and environmental programme of the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica. That's when I got to know her.
Jamaica was once covered with hardwood forests right down to the water's edge. That's what Columbus saw when he sailed into a north coast harbour and named the land Santa Gloria, the fairest isle that eyes have ever beheld.
Jamaica was an exporter of hardwood and world renowned for its fine mahogany. There is virtually none of that left. We cannot continue to reap indefinitely where we have not sown. The 'resowing' effort of the Lions, backed by the EFJ created back in 1993 when I helped to write its funding criteria, and by the Forestry Department and involving members of the community is a commendable step for more to follow.
MAGIC IN READING
Reading Week is on, and The Gleaner gave big pictorial space and a prominent little story on page three on Monday to the launch of the week.
There is magic in reading. The human imagination is fired up and made to run by stories in print which have to be visualised in the mind.
The president of the Jamaica Reading Association, Joan Hay, is encouraging parents and other adult caregivers to read to children.
She is standing on solid research ground. When children are read to, they develop an insatiable desire to learn to read, too. They bond with the reader. And their creative imagination is set free to soar, especially if they are asked questions which pull them into the story.
Years ago, I wrote a column, 'First, teach them to read', which turned out to be a hit. Its basic point was to cut all the fluff and song and dance in early education and just get children really literate and in love with books, with language and ideas [and competent in basic numeracy] and the rest of education will be easy and fun.
Speaking from personal engagement, the majority of students battering their way through tertiary education are really not competent readers.
Even at the base level of word recognition, there are problems. At the higher level of cultural and metaphorical understanding, drawing inferences and making evaluations by reading between and beyond the lines, and appreciating style, there is a full-blown disaster.
At the other end of education, last week the Ministry of Education and Youth held two days of consultative round table discussions on a draft strategic plan for tertiary education which I attended.
As usual, I found Education Minister Henry-Wilson, in her from-the-heart remarks, both lucid and forceful. I often wonder why such clear visions are so slow in implementation.
But thinking and talking through the issues is a good move.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
