Patwa in the Classroom: A Not So Far-fetched, Counter-intuitive Solution to Improving Literacy in English

There is an education crisis in this country. The Gleaner recently reported that ‘over 40 per cent of the students at grade four fail to master the critical components of literacy and numeracy.’ Surely this situation is not tenable; it must be rectified with the most ambitious overhaul of primary education that we can conceive, and unknowingly, the single biggest change we need is not so far-fetched- the utilization of Jamaican Creole in the classroom.