THE EDITOR, Sir:

THIS IS an open letter to the Hon Bruce Golding, prime minister, on the issue of producing a Patois version of the Bible.

Dear Prime Minister,

In your intervention in the debate on the desirability of a Patois translation of the Bible as reported in The Gleaner of June 30, you mistakenly blame the education system for its failure to "impart to society the accepted language". The blame should be laid instead with society itself, which has failed to show its members that real benefits can be derived from a knowledge of English.

According to The Gleaner report, you ask, furthermore, how Patois might help our students to learn and understand history and the sciences - on the mistaken assumption that learning and understanding can take place only in languages of international currency. I personally benefited from education in my native language, from basic school through to university - a language which has no currency whatsoever outside of the small populations of The Netherlands and Suriname.

In my country of origin, second languages such as English and French are taught in high school - where they are allotted not more than three hours per week - by teachers who are usually not native speakers of those languages. Despite this seemingly minimal effort, the Dutch have gained an international reputation for their ability to speak several foreign languages. The secret is not so much in the quality of Dutch education and the efforts of Dutch teachers, as it is in the receptiveness of the students, who consider knowledge of English to be highly desirable, and in the fact that a proper foundation for learning and understanding is laid in those students' first language.

A frustrating experience

In contrast to the late introduction of English in Dutch schools, Jamaican children are expected to learn in English from the day they enter school. For most of these children, English can be considered a foreign language, but it is treated as if it is a superior version of their home language. As a result, these children's error-free Patois is constantly subject to completely arbitrary 'correction'. Surely, this must be a bewildering and frustrating experience for them!

Moreover, it is a pedagogically unsound approach to teaching since it fails to use the children's knowledge base, indeed, discredits that knowledge base. The results can be seen in dismal perfor-mances in all subjects, and in particular, in the failure, as you put it, "to impart our accepted language, English".

I am, etc.,

DR SILVIA KOUWENBERG

silvia.kouwenberg@uwimona.edu.jm

Department of Language,

Linguistics and Philosophy

University of the West Indies

Mona, Kingston 7, Jamaica