Silvia Kouwenberg | English in schools and case for reparatory justice – Part I

Caribbean territories, with rare exceptions, recognise only one official language, which inevitably is that of their current or most recent former coloniser. For Jamaica, that language is English, and being the largest English-speaking country in the Caribbean is seen as an international advantage. What remains unrecognised is that this comes at huge cost to those whose dominant language is not English.

The Jamaican Creole-speaking majority face disastrously poor educational prospects and do not have access to the opportunities for socioeconomic advancement that a command of English opens up.

CULTURAL LOSS

The call for reparations has largely focused on the economic value of the loss of life and the general underdevelopment of societies on both sides of the Atlantic. I argue that that call must also consider the cost of cultural loss and its ramifications. The enforced displacement of enslaved Africans to the Caribbean meant the severing of connections with ancestral cultures. In Caribbean slave societies, colonial masters imposed European names on the enslaved, ridiculed African cultures as inferior, and generally attempted to control the expression of African traditions, going as far as banning and even outlawing certain drumming, dancing, religious, and medicinal practices. (It is worth noting that the Obeah Act is still in effect in Jamaica.) Despite the repression, enslaved Africans succeeded in rebuilding entire cultures from the ground up, constructing new hybrid culinary, musical, religious, medicinal, and linguistic practices. In several Caribbean territories, these have come to be referred to as “creole” – often with positive connotations, as in kushina krioyo (Creole cuisine) in Curaçao, Jounen Kweyol (Creole Day, a national celebration) in St Lucia, and mizik kreyol (Creole music) in Haiti, all of which are sources of national pride.

In sharp contrast, Caribbean Creole languages, such as Jamaican Creole, fashioned from a combination of European forms and the remains of African linguistic practices whose full expressions are long lost to the descendants of the enslaved, are not generally seen as assets to their speakers. The prevailing belief is that creole languages are nothing but redundant “broken” versions of European languages and obstacles to development which well-thinking people with access to education and social mobility will surely be moved to abandon. Fortunately, this destruction of cultural capital has not come to pass. Not only have Caribbean populations not shed the “burden” of their Creole languages, but we have witnessed an expansion of their usage in Caribbean societies. We have seen also how they have found new communities of speakers in Caribbean diasporas and have even gained the recognition of global audiences desirous to connect with the cultures they embody. Nevertheless, most Caribbean polities continue to resist recognising Creoles as languages in their own right.

FAILURE OF BILINGUALISM

What this means is that a draft policy on language in education, which recognises Jamaica as a bilingual country, has been languishing without approval. For Jamaican Creole-speaking children entering the educational system, it means that their native language is merely tolerated in classrooms, where it is not a legitimate presence. It also means that teachers in schools that serve Creole-dominant communities are trained in instructional methods that presume children to be English speakers.

Teachers are not equipped with methodologies for the teaching of English proficiency in a Creole-speaking environment. It is no surprise then, as pointed out in the Jamaica Education Transformation Commission 2021’s report (better known as the Patterson report), that despite good access to primary and secondary schooling, “a majority of students at the end of primary school remain illiterate and innumerate and most leave secondary school with no marketable skills” (p.25). That this dismal state of affairs has existed over so many decades strongly suggests that we live in a society tolerant of, even comfortable with, an educational system that perpetuates pervasive inequities.

‘WA GWAAN JAMAICA!’

Who does not remember the enthusiastic use of this phrase by US President Barack Obama on his visit to the Mona Campus in 2015 and the use of Jamaican Creole by one of the student leaders who spoke at the event? Is this not testimony to the now near-universal acceptance of Jamaican Creole and, therefore, its implicit recognition as “language”? Furthermore, Jamaicans of all walks of life, not only the poor and uneducated, now seem comfortable using it in public domains.

However, the increasing presence of Creole in the public sphere and the gushing expressions of love for it by all and sundry hide its exclusion from the places where it really counts: in healthcare institutions, in courtrooms, in public-information campaigns, at Companies Office, at customer-service desks. As a consequence of the lack of formal recognition of Jamaican Creole, English is also not recognised as an imperfectly acquired second language. Hence, Creole speakers can expect to receive little or no interpretable information (including life-saving information), can expect to have little or no understanding of proceedings (including proceedings that can lead to harmful outcomes), and should expect to receive less polite service. In the classroom, Creole-speaking children can expect their error-free use of Creole to be treated as error-laden English, subject to constant and utterly confusing correction.

In effect then, the rights of Creole speakers to quality services provided by the State are continually abrogated. How is this to be addressed under a reparatory agenda? More on this in Part II.

Silvia Kouwenberg is professor of linguistics and dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education, The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. Send feedback to reparation.research@uwimona.edu.jm.