Carolyn Cooper | Bilingual education put to the test

Devmarie Blake-Brown, the outstanding teacher whose 12-year-old students recently passed the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) English examination, has certainly made history. The achievement of Khyreice Gordon and Andrene Morgan is truly remarkable. CSEC exams are usually taken by students in their fourth or fifth year of high school. And approximately 20 per cent of them fail the English exam each year. Even some tertiary-level students need remedial English classes because our educational system has done such an abysmal job of teaching the language.

I had to speak with Blake-Brown to find out how, exactly, she tutored the girls for their spectacular success. The Ministry of Education, Youth and Information gave me the number of the principal of the Morant Bay Primary School, Mrs Esther McGowan. After 37 years at the school, she’s on pre-retirement leave. She happily put me in touch with her celebrity teacher who is now acting vice-principal.

Blake-Brown had her first success teaching CXC English when she was only 15. One of her church sisters in her late 40s needed the subject to secure a job. Devmarie’s mother, Marcia Ingram-Blake, knew she was good at English and suggested that she tutor the much older woman. Devmarie enjoyed the challenge and was so happy when her student excelled.

This exceptional educator has also been quite efficient at teaching the Jamaican language. Last year, she was asked to give English lessons to a recently arrived Vietnamese immigrant who was going to work in the family business. When she realised that the woman would be interacting with customers who spoke mostly Jamaican she decided to teach her that language instead. Within about four months, her student was able to hold her own.

LITERACY IN JAMAICAN

“Bizarre!” That’s how Blake-Brown describes her journey into language education. In 1997, she graduated from the Morant Bay High School. She wanted to go to the Mico Teachers’ College to study English. But the minimum age for entry was 18 and she was only 16. By the grace of God, let’s put it that way, she was accepted to do Food and Nutrition. After graduating in 2000, she got a job at Seaforth Primary School where she taught grades four and six. In 2007, she moved to the Morant Bay Primary School.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that Blake-Brown has been teaching in both English and Jamaican for twenty years. She recognised quite early in her career that bilingual education was essential. Students whose first language is Jamaican would be excluded if she taught only in English. So she constantly translated from one language to the next.

In 2017, Blake-Brown enrolled part-time at The University of the West Indies, Mona, to do a Masters in Linguistics. There she learned the theory she had been intuitively practising. She took courses in Creole linguistics, phonology, syntax and so much more. One of her teachers was Professor Hubert Devonish whose vision propelled the establishment of the University’s Jamaican Language Unit in 2002.

The unit conducted a pilot project in bilingual education for primary school students enrolled in grades one to four. Its aim was to discover the best way to implement full bilingualism in both English and Jamaican. The project was a definite success. Children in the lower grades became literate in both English and Jamaican and were able to easily recognise the differences between the two languages in both their oral and written forms. It’s such a pity that the full bilingual programme has not been adopted in more schools.

PERPETUATING PREJUDICE

The Ministry of Education, Youth & Information does support a bilingual programme of sorts. The 2001 Language Education Policy “recognises Jamaica as a bilingual country. It retains SJE [Standard Jamaican English] as the official language and advocates the policy option which promotes oral use of the home language in schools, while facilitating the development of skills in SJE”. The ministry’s failure to teach literacy in Jamaican perpetuates the prejudice that this ‘oral tongue’ is not a proper language.

Furthermore, primary school students are losing the benefits of being systematically taught in their home language. Carolyn Savage, an educator who writes a regular column for the Huffington Post, summarises current research findings: “When children develop their mother tongue, they are simultaneously fostering a whole host of other essential skills, such as critical thinking and literacy skills. It is this skill set that they take with them into formal education, and research tells us that any skills and concepts gained in the learner’s home language don’t need to be retaught when they transfer to a second language.

“For example, if a child has developed the ability to guess the meaning of a word through its context or to infer meaning by reading between the lines, these skills are easily transferred when they begin studying in a second language. It is much harder, however, to teach these abstract skills directly through a second language.”

If we could just set aside our prejudice and accept the fact that Jamaican is indeed a language! We would enable children to enjoy the pleasures of learning. Instead of being told that dem chat bad, they would be encouraged to express themselves freely. And develop their intellect! Then, we wouldn’t be so surprised when a skilful teacher motivates talented bilingual primary school students to excel beyond our limited expectations.

- Carolyn Cooper, PhD, is a specialist on culture and development. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and karokupa@gmail.com.