Dear Editor,
Prime Minister Andrew Holness seems to make utterances without checking or consulting with those knowledgeable or educated.
His call to make Spanish a second language sounds idiotic. For one whom I and many others gave the vote in the last general election, we have started to see so much demonstration of ignorance.
First, many students in high school are not even proficient in the English language. While English was handed to us by the colonisers , it continues to baffle many whose first language is our patois.
The prime minister needs to get first-hand information on the exceedingly poor use of English. I can tell him there are so many challenges as students attempt to grasp grammar and word meanings is pathethic. We have a lost generation not exposed to disciplines such as geography, and they lack knowledge.
It is not alarming to discover that, at grade 11, some children would laugh if asked to give more than one meaning for the word ‘bank’. Their upbringing would only alert them to bank being used in financial circles. They would not or hardly would know that bank could refer to the land beside a river or body of water .
It is therefore preposterous for Andrew Holness to think Spanish could become a second language. His desire may be noble, but impractical and unlikely to succeed.
Politicians love to talk, but the talk, as we know it in Jamaica, is rarely backed up with action.
Spanish is a great language, one of the romance languages, and one which all of us should learn. Spanish, however, will be always in the back alleys of important languages because our people are still grappling between the bipolar English/patois.
Maurice Christie
christiemaurice@yahoo.com
Prime Minister Andrew Holness seems to make utterances without checking or consulting with those knowledgeable or educated.
His call to make Spanish a second language sounds idiotic. For one whom I and many others gave the vote in the last general election, we have started to see so much demonstration of ignorance.
First, many students in high school are not even proficient in the English language. While English was handed to us by the colonisers , it continues to baffle many whose first language is our patois.
The prime minister needs to get first-hand information on the exceedingly poor use of English. I can tell him there are so many challenges as students attempt to grasp grammar and word meanings is pathethic. We have a lost generation not exposed to disciplines such as geography, and they lack knowledge.
It is not alarming to discover that, at grade 11, some children would laugh if asked to give more than one meaning for the word ‘bank’. Their upbringing would only alert them to bank being used in financial circles. They would not or hardly would know that bank could refer to the land beside a river or body of water .
It is therefore preposterous for Andrew Holness to think Spanish could become a second language. His desire may be noble, but impractical and unlikely to succeed.
Politicians love to talk, but the talk, as we know it in Jamaica, is rarely backed up with action.
Spanish is a great language, one of the romance languages, and one which all of us should learn. Spanish, however, will be always in the back alleys of important languages because our people are still grappling between the bipolar English/patois.
Maurice Christie
christiemaurice@yahoo.com