More tests not the answer

If the minister of education was properly quoted as reported that the ministry's solution to literacy is the standardisation of literacy tests, then what is the hope of actually achieving literacy? How can another test improve the levels of literacy?

I think that the emphasis should be on seeing to the basic human needs of many of the students who are coming to school ill-prepared to access the literate moments with which they are presented. The students need proper homes, adequate parenting or mentoring and socialisation skills before they will be able to be literate about anything.

Of course, literacy is important to the advancement of our nation. But surely another test is not the answer.

- Anna Wallacemama_annawallace@hotmail.comKingston 8

Misplaced anger

I am one of those foreigners who comes to Jamaica frequently but not as a tourist. I don't stay on the beaches but travel all over the island and generally meet warm, friendly and helpful people, except when you meet them at work. Suddenly, they change into dull, bored, unmotivated, unqualified problem-makers.

I have often wondered why this is so. Of course, many employers are not really worthy to be called employers. They don't organise the flow of work properly and their pay is lousy. In that world, I'd be dull as well.

So whenever I hear you Jamaicans lamenting about bad times, I suggest you get angry with your bosses. It is they who have given you lousy work to do.

- Thor Bergersthorbergers@hotmail.com

Moral, social erosion

Teachers are witnessing Jamaica's social and moral erosion which started its downwards spiral after we were freed from the 'mother country'. We took it to mean free to break every social and moral established rule, and we did.

It was a trickle in the '60s. By the 1980s, it was a torrent. Today, it's a raging torrent. Today's students are the grandchildren of Jamaica's standard setters of the original social order. These children are not a true reflection of the society that had spawned and nurtured their parents. How do we reverse this trend when speaking the truth is cowardly; honesty is a weakness; deception is honourable; shouting is good dialogue; and any and all forms of intimidation are the only strategies for problem solving?

In my opinion, it will take at least two to three generations of hard slugging to reverse this trend.

- Cosmo PessoaKingswood@shaw.caVictoria, Canada