Commentary

The question of how Jamaica teaches English in schools, and therefore the place the country affords the island’s Creole, was not a topic of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association’s (JTA) annual conference last month. Hopefully, La Sonja Harrison’s...

In July 2021, I wrote about Haiti at the time of the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. I then gave an overview of the Haitian economy. Since then the situation has worsened. I have been reading a book on Jamaica in 1903, and the negative...

It ought to have long been obvious that the regulatory oversight of Jamaica’s environment is in crisis and urgently in need of overhaul. Last week’s repudiation by the courts of a 2018 decision by the Natural Resources Conservation Authority (...

The Government, through its spinmeister, Robert Nesta Morgan, continues to engage in strategic ambiguities over the use of Jamaica’s arable land for real estate development, rather than declare an end to, or placing a long-term moratorium on, the...

When the brazen and cruel shooting murder of hard-working, mother of two, 31-year-old gas station pump operator Chevelle Lewis happened on Passage Fort Drive, Portmore, it pushed this year’s murder tally to over 1,000. Because there was no obvious...

Over the five months between April and August, foreigners working on Canadian farms under that country’s seasonal employment programme filed more than 2,000 complaints with Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), the government agency that...

He blinks! Just moments ago, a youth brandished a gun and ran. The boy, a 17-year-old with bleached-out face, is trapped in a dead end. Constable Dibble, with the smell of plastic wrap all over him and milk on his mouth, points his weapon on the...

We accept that no Jamaican should be denied access to healthcare because of an inability to pay. Sadly, there are thousands of Jamaicans who cannot afford basic healthcare and have to forego a doctor’s visit or not fill a prescription. These are...

“Every bullet, every bomb, every shell that hits a target in Ukraine, hits our pockets and our economies in Africa.” Those were the words of the President of Ghana, Akufo-Addo, at the UN General Assembly on September 21. The Ghanaian president was...

The colonial education I received was primarily rote and students often got into trouble for raising questions that went against the grain of what we were taught. This goes against the very concept of an educated person as someone who can read,...

IT WOULD have been insensitive for Prime Minister Andrew Holness, in the midst of mourning, to remind King Charles, Jamaica’s recently inherited new sovereign, of the island’s intention of “moving on” from the monarchy. Prince William, the Prince...

Last week, I wrote an article decrying the practice of past student associations and other benefactors spending disproportionately on high-school sports, as opposed to supporting teaching and learning in the classroom. As you can imagine, the hate...