Colin Steer, Associate Editor - Opinion
South Korean-born Hye Kyung Moon could not speak a word of English when she came to Jamaica in 2002 as a seven-year-old, The Gleaner reported on June 19. Yet, she managed to out-perform her female counterparts in the 2008 Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) and was given this year's Scotiabank award as the top performing girl in the island.
Why can a seven-year-old who was not born in an English language-based culture do well enough in a mere five years to master the language sufficiently to perform with excellence, yet many to whom the language should be more familiar, continue to struggle?
Many of the country folk of my parents' generation went no further than elementary school, knew nothing about existentialist philosophy and little about scientific laws. But they had a sufficient grasp of English to allow them to read and understand books, newspapers and the old King James version of the Bible.
How then did we come to this stage, that the only way the present generation can learn adequately is to teach them in patois, if our linguists are to be believed?
Mixed-up priorities
This is a slander against our children. The problem may not be in our children's ability to understand and appreciate English as some insist, but may well have a lot to do with the fact that many teachers themselves have but a passing acquaintance with the language and have difficulty teaching it. Others have merely got their cultural priorities all mixed up.
Creole/Patois is neither something to be proud of nor ashamed of - it simply is. We use it as necessary to communicate anger, humour, sarcasm and love. Some of us have taken the struggles against cultural imperialism to extreme lengths and, as a result, we cannot distinguish between the macca bush and the trees.
In response to young Hye Kyung Moon's performance, some would say that she learnt English as a foreign language and the methods used to teach the subject in such a scenario are usually different than for native speakers, and that that is how English should be taught to our students. Perhaps, but in our decades-old patois-usage debate, several arguments have been posited with varying degrees of intensity.
No crusade needed
The first argument is that Jamaican Creole is not just bad or broken English - it is a combination of several languages including some from Africa.
The second - and related to the first - is that it is a part of our cultural heritage; so there is no need to be ashamed of it or hide it. OK, fine. So are stew peas and rice and salt fish fritters. We prepare them; we eat them. No fuss and no crusade needed.
Other subjects in Patois
Second, and more fundamentally, studies have shown that our children are not grasping the structure of the language and so we have to develop new methods of imparting knowledge. And so the argument is gradually moving away from saying we should not be ashamed of Creole to pushing for a greater inclusion in texts and usage in teaching, supposedly to standardise spelling and rules of grammar.
Of course, the patois debate primarily centres on the teaching and use of English language. But since education and teaching in our schools are about more than English, at what point are we going to insist that physics and chemistry, sociology and other subjects be taught in patois as well, because our children simply can't learn any other way?
It is also ironic, isn't it, that among the most passionate advocates of the use of Creole as a main tool of communication, are people who learnt English the old-fashioned way and went on to acquire post-graduate degrees in foreign universities where the language of communication, in the main, has been English. Fi dem brain can 'angle it, but fi we pickney too dunce?
Send feedback to colin.steer@gleanerjm.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.
