Uttering nonsense
By Ian Mc Donald
The outpouring of gibberish, the daily fracturing of the English language, which goes on all about us makes me return yet again to a favourite theme – the need to rescue language from the barbarians who are taking over the world. Standards of literacy in Guyana continue to decline. This is an especially pernicious aspect of an inferior educational system. Schools are not teaching the basic skills of reading and writing as well as they used to do. At the same time children in their homes are less and less exposed to books and more and more exposed to video games and to television which focuses almost exclusively on adults and entertainment and very little on children and education.
More and more of our children are growing up with little ability and practice in reading or writing. This will be a handicap all their lives. The capacity to learn and understand any subject increases or languishes to the extent that you can or cannot read properly and express yourself clearly. This is fundamental and it is astonishing that our top educators are not doing more to close this gaping breach in the educational system which lets in such floods of ignorance and incomprehension in the society.
However, I do not intend to write yet again about functional illiteracy. God knows, I have written often enough about that desperately important subject and will, I am sure, do so again. But now I want to consider a kind of semi-literacy which is as appalling as illiteracy itself.