Coming on the heels of World Literacy Day last Thursday, I’m convinced that Barbados is not as literate as we boast, that good education will again become the domain of the rich and that modern means of communication are ironically destroying our use of proper communicative English.
Last week, not only were we encouraged to “drop everything and read” in the buildup to the United Nations-sanctioned day but the Barbados Association of Reading (BAR) noted, in its message, that possible solutions to criminal activity must include efforts to “strengthen the literacy skills of those individuals involved through the provision of structured rehabilitative programmes that provide a strong focus on . . . literacy skills”.
The BAR also highlighted the need to develop the ability to express oneself via language rather than resorting “to the knife and the gun to help . . . solve life’s problems”.
It was a timely reminder, coinciding with the recent crime spike, that while many views are proffered as to what is education and what contributes to the making of a well-rounded student, the skills of good verbal and written communication should be among the basics for daily living.
The other form of communication, body language, while effective for the hearing- or speech-impaired, is also important but can be misconstrued far more easily than a firm verbal or written statement expressing one’s honest view.
Clear communication, if mastered, can alleviate much of the misunderstanding that leads to violent conflict, which is ironically prevalent among a young population taught by teachers better qualified than their predecessors and taught in environments more conducive to learning and communicating than a generation ago.
Yet we’re at a point where any honest, educated Barbadian would refute the 98 per cent literacy boast. We’re at a point where youths, in particular, resolve conflict not by discussion – since “talk is cheap”, according to Hollywood – but by violent confrontation.
Within this scenario we have more college and university graduates per household than ever, but they’re imbibing violent foreign movies and music and applying them to real-life situations – hence the violence across the board.
They are also spelling words like centre, colour and metre wrong, calling mathematics “math”, getting confused with “whose” and “who’s” and encouraging people to step up to “the plate” when hardly anybody on this rock can play or understand baseball.
The average Barbadian’s main sources of daily reading today are Facebook chat, Twitter, texts and BB Messenger where there’s little or no effort to write standard English. Then we wonder why many of us, including educated people who are not so young and can actually use the language well, are no longer communicating effectively?
If BB language is what “generation next” is learning as part of its growing process, it’s no wonder that grades are dropping in English Language at the
11-Plus exam stage and beyond. And once the primary and secondary school standards plummet – as is happening – a vacuum will be created for enterprising educators to fill, thereby offering better 11-Plus results, a disciplined environment fostering articulate expression of proper English and an exclusive domain for those who can afford to pay for the best education.
Unfortunately, as I write this, I’m also unintentionally portraying myself and even the organisation for which I work – which uses words every day – as a bastion of sound language skills and grammatical correctness. We are not!
In fact, anyone who considers himself or herself a language expert should immediately prepare for the day when they will certainly and embarrassingly err; simply because the English language, though firmly rooted in rules that have stood the test of time, is extremely dynamic.
But life is strange! On the one hand, we ideally want Barbadians to read and practise good English so they can articulate well in any situation; and on the other hand, we’re seeing Wikileaks documents which prove that communication, even under the most innocent circumstances, can be extremely dangerous.
The Wikileaks disclosures give another meaning to communication: espionage.
