Our crisis of literacy

By Hazel Thompson Ahye

In a newspaper interview, Paula Lucie-Smith, founder of the Adult Literacy Tutors Association (ALTA), stated that “adult literacy remains one of the most concerning but often overlooked challenges in this country.”

She described our situation as a “persistent literacy crisis.” Support for her view is evident in written, spoken, and electronic form in discourses at every level.

I have had the responsibility, privilege, and joy of teaching students at various stages, from five-year-old infants to primary and secondary school students and even mature second career law school students.

Interestingly, I have found that law students from Guyana, Eastern Caribbean and British Virgin Islands do not evidence as high a degree of the literacy crisis, as I have encountered in students from Trinidad and Tobago and The Bahamas.

Whenever I encountered law students, whose writing left much to be desired, I would tell them that they were causing the late Justice des Iles, a stickler for proper English, to turn in his grave.

I often recall his extreme displeasure with a lawyer, who had dared to present to the Court, an affidavit, replete with grammatical errors. To compound his offence, the lawyer, when chastised, informed the judge that it was the work of his clerk. The judge became even more incensed and made it clear that the responsibility was that of the lawyer.

I asked a senior staff member at the teacher training institute about plans to address this urgent literacy crisis. In despair, she said it was beyond their ability to repair, as, since teachers were among the most poorly paid graduates, the best students did not enter that profession.

I could not understand the reason that rules of Grammar, that I taught primary school students, aeons ago, seem foreign to so many today. She assured me that the Ministry of Education was aware of the problem, as letters written by teacher trainees to that Ministry, evidenced lack of literacy skills.

Some students are aware of their deficiency and are anxious to learn. I once designed a ‘Back to Basics’ English course for law students, using a number of my English Grammar textbooks.

One day, a colleague heard me teaching and protested that my course was too basic for that level. When I shared his comment with the class, they chorused, “We need it, Mrs Ahye. We need it.”

One of the reasons that this literacy problem persists is that not everyone cares about standards.

I recall attending a high-level Caribbean regional meeting. The Minutes were replete with errors. As I am wont to do, I proceeded to suggest corrections. A Trinidadian colleague became very annoyed and suggested I should desist, so we could get on with the meeting. The Chairman, to his credit, disagreed and insisted that they would take every single correction that I proffered.

Some months later, I missed a meeting because of a sprained ankle. Next day, the same member, with a big grin, told me that the meeting the day before had ended at 2 p.m., but had I been present, they would still have been correcting Minutes at 2 p.m.

When I sat in the Senate, a fellow Parliamentarian used to get impatient with me for seeking to correct grammatical errors in Bills. He assured me they would be corrected before publication.

I pointed out that while Caribbean countries have laws regarding the Movement of Skilled Workers, we were the only country that showed the world, by the words used in our law, that we did not know the difference between ‘dependant’ (noun, meaning person) and ‘dependent’ (adjective, signifying status). Thankfully, this has now been corrected.

Recently, Denise Demming, in a letter to the editor, complained of the poor Grammar and pronunciation used by Members of Parliament. Lack of literacy skills in politicians is nothing new.

Decades ago, deceased Parliamentarian Chanka Singh’s famous speech, “The People want bread, B-R-E-D”, was the most widespread political joke. Recently, we have had many more.

Years ago, a Minister, after praising highly an address I had written, at her request, informed me that that she had fixed an error I had made. I apologised and asked the nature of my error. I learnt that my use of the words, “if I were”, had been “corrected” to “if I was”. A newspaper similarly “corrected” one of my letters. Clearly, the subjunctive mood is foreign here.

When the State of Emergency was announced, I listened intently to the newscast. I learnt that the rationale was based on information that “would have” been brought to the attention of the Commissioner of Police. I wondered what were the supervening events which had prevented his receiving such vital information.

His language indicated that he could have but had not actually received the information. Had he received it, he would have said, “I was informed” or “I was told.”

This ‘would have’ disease has afflicted so many, it can be deemed an epidemic. Some intellectuals, like Dr Winford James, have sought, by their writings in the press, to provide a remedy for this disease, but to no avail.

Former Senator Elton Prescott and I have agonised over this.

To stem this literacy crisis, remedial classes should be held in every community centre. Retired teachers could be hired or may even volunteer to assist.

Reading is indispensable to increasing literacy skills. Every school and every community should have libraries. Money spent on establishing community libraries is money well-spent.

Let us act on William Clinton’s words: “Literacy is not a luxury but a right and a responsibility.”