THE EDITOR, Sir:

CONGRATULATIONS to our athletes and their supporters for the greatest show of athletic excellence the world has ever seen. Our fine Jamaican traditions and spirit were also on show.

How many of our winning athletes spoke English at home as their first language? And how many spoke Jamaican Patois as their first language? We can see that in the fields of athletics and music, having Patois as our first language does not hold us back.

Enormous handicap

But in other aspects of education, our Patois-speaking children are given an enormous handicap in our schools where the Jamaican dialect is not on the curriculum and all textbooks are in English. This is the root cause of why so many of our children leave school illiterate.

Let us stop blaming teachers, administrators, pupils and parents and recognise that we have created this problem in our educational system by excluding the language which the majority of our children speak.

Let's respect the Jamaican dialect and adopt it as our national language, alongside English, our international language, and utilise both in schools until literacy and numeracy are achieved, leading on to better proficiency in English for higher education.

Big up Jamaica, our athletes and our language.

I am, etc.,

David

yman@liftupjamaica.com