CARIMAC Times 2016: The JREAM Edition Journalists Reviving Awareness of what Matters | Page 130

Patois complements this interpretation of masculinity in Jamaica.
Illustration by Greg Bailey

This is problematic because:
“Women’s interest differ for men’s interests… Boys
may be more interested in classifying things,
and girls are more interested in describing
things … If your teacher is female, she is more
likely to pursue a topic using a female line of
interest than to pursue it using a male line of
interest. It is important that at the levels of the
teachers’ colleges, that teachers are trained to
cater to both types of interest.”

“English is not being taught. There is an
assumption that your home language is some
version of English and, therefore, the predominant
strategy for so-called teaching English is really
correction… The problem with that is that it is
pedagogically unsound to correct where there
are no errors. If a child speaks Jamaican creole
error-free and you’re going to treat that as
some kind of English full of errors, then again
we get to this point where it is psychologically
damaging …”

Professor Kouwenberg highlighted the issue of
treating Creole as incorrect English as another
practice that should be discontinued.

She said because English and Creole share
some words, efforts should be made to teach
using both languages in the classroom.

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