Fix education bottom up, not top down

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I RECENTLY read a piece by Carolyn Cooper titled ‘Dunce educators failing students’. The headline piqued my interest. I remember the debate that raged at the start of the 2023/2024 school year, about the ‘dunce’ backpacks. For a moment, I wondered if this meant that teachers were now sporting these backpacks instead of their ‘proud’ students.

However, after delving further, it became clear that the column was about the challenges being faced by Jamaican students. Ms. Cooper and I have had an ongoing debate on English versus Jamaican Patois. My contention then, and which continues to be, English is the language of international business. So, it would be in Jamaican – and other Caribbean students’ best interest – to master the English language.

What the article did not do is to delve into the real reason for students’ failures. A big part of this failure rate is their inability to read! Many students, not only in Jamaica, cannot read at their grade level. In the case of mathematics, if you cannot read, you cannot do well in the subject.

Students’ inability to read and the lack of critical thinking are fuelling these poor outcomes in mathematics and other subjects at CXC. The argument about Jamaican Patois versus English will continue unabated. One assertion is that the “abysmal performance of Jamaican students” is the result of the failure of the education system. My contention is that it is the result, in large part, of students’ inability to read and comprehend what they have just read.

All texts are written in English. It would therefore be in the students’ best interest to learn English, in order to do well. Finally, the educational ‘system’ is broken. Every attempt to ‘fix’ the system is being done wrong. The top-down approach will not work. Instead, what is required is a bottom-up approach. Until this is done, we will continue to deal with these ‘dunce’ elements and have poor outcomes. DERRICK NICHOLAS Private Math Tutor