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I’m using this opportunity to hail every member of the Reggae Boyz Forum (including the much beleaguered Naminirt and Zeppo).
Now, don’t let the join date above (July 2008) fool you. In a sense this date is incorrect, as I’ve been a daily reader of the Reggae Boyz Forum for some six years now. In addition, I used to post fairly regularly on the forum back in the day when we had regular forum members like the ladies Princess, Karen and Portia, and males such as Matter (who I still remember with much respect), X (at work)Mexxx, and many, many others.
Mosiah will no doubt recall my first post made on this forum, at least five years ago, when I responded to his praise of dancehall music (Mosiah’s favorite statement back then was “Dancehall nice”). My first post on the Reggae Boyz Forum was a detailed essay on why dancehall is actually a detriment to and a dangerous component of Jamaican society and culture. Since then, I am more convinced that I am correct.
Before that first post critiquing Mosiah's views, I had been a fairly regular contributor to the Caribbean Track and Field Forum, as Willi, Karl, MdmeX and others will no doubt recall.
For a couple of years after that first Reggae Boyz Forum post, I made fairly regular contributions here, sometimes passionately as in my detailed rebuttal to Jawge’s and Campeon’s misguided criticism of tourism in general, and the all-inclusive industry in particular. However, after the Reggae Boyz administrators changed the format, I, along with a million others, simply stopped posting.
Why am I back? Well, I’d long ago reached the conclusion that this message board, like Willi’s track and field forum, demonstrates more and more each day why the once beautiful island of Jamaica is in the mess that it’s currently in!! (I’m not joking!) I’ve been silently reading and digesting the daily discussions here for the past several years, the more recent one being the views on the retrograde, wasteful attempt by members of the Jamaican intelligentsia to put aside our genuine developmental problems and, instead, waste time and effort in introducing patois as a separate language in schools.
To be frank, posters such as Willi, Bricktop, Baddaz and Lazie have advanced excellent, thought-provoking reasons why this new patois movement is a waste of time and resources, time and resources which would be better spent in preparing the average Jamaican for participation in a globalized world. In other words, instead of our educators and other decision-makers turning their attention to the introduction of, say, Spanish in primary and high schools as a mandatory subject, they are about to further marginalize the Jamaican child by forcing upon them the added burden of studying a language that nobody else in the world speaks, and that very, very few people understand or even care to understand!
And my attitude here is NOT self-hate!! I am extremely proud to be Jamaican, but at the same time I’m a realist who appreciates the fact that Jamaica forms a tiny, almost unimportant part of our world! The "great importance" of Jamaica is more a figment of our imagination than something that is based in reality!
I love patois very much, and when singers such as Diane King and Tarrus Riley, and genuinely talented DJ’s such as Papa San make use of patois in their recordings, it is the most beautiful thing, in my honest opinion! On the other hand, I’m also cognizant of the fact that the vast majority of our neighbors, who live in South America and Central America and in the North American country of Mexico, are Spanish-speaking people. In fact, the sole exceptions are South America’s Brazil, Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname, and Central America’s Belize. In a tourism-driven economy like Jamaica, wouldn’t it be ideal for our young citizens to be fluent in both English and Spanish, thus making them more relevant to the needs of Jamaica's developing economy in the twenty-first century?
Standardization is an excellent idea and nothing is wrong with this exercise, in my opinion. But to foist on already stressed-out youngsters the teaching of a language which the world does not speak, a language which will most likely NEVER become a dominant language in the world, is idiocy at its highest level.
Now, don’t let the join date above (July 2008) fool you. In a sense this date is incorrect, as I’ve been a daily reader of the Reggae Boyz Forum for some six years now. In addition, I used to post fairly regularly on the forum back in the day when we had regular forum members like the ladies Princess, Karen and Portia, and males such as Matter (who I still remember with much respect), X (at work)Mexxx, and many, many others.
Mosiah will no doubt recall my first post made on this forum, at least five years ago, when I responded to his praise of dancehall music (Mosiah’s favorite statement back then was “Dancehall nice”). My first post on the Reggae Boyz Forum was a detailed essay on why dancehall is actually a detriment to and a dangerous component of Jamaican society and culture. Since then, I am more convinced that I am correct.
Before that first post critiquing Mosiah's views, I had been a fairly regular contributor to the Caribbean Track and Field Forum, as Willi, Karl, MdmeX and others will no doubt recall.
For a couple of years after that first Reggae Boyz Forum post, I made fairly regular contributions here, sometimes passionately as in my detailed rebuttal to Jawge’s and Campeon’s misguided criticism of tourism in general, and the all-inclusive industry in particular. However, after the Reggae Boyz administrators changed the format, I, along with a million others, simply stopped posting.
Why am I back? Well, I’d long ago reached the conclusion that this message board, like Willi’s track and field forum, demonstrates more and more each day why the once beautiful island of Jamaica is in the mess that it’s currently in!! (I’m not joking!) I’ve been silently reading and digesting the daily discussions here for the past several years, the more recent one being the views on the retrograde, wasteful attempt by members of the Jamaican intelligentsia to put aside our genuine developmental problems and, instead, waste time and effort in introducing patois as a separate language in schools.
To be frank, posters such as Willi, Bricktop, Baddaz and Lazie have advanced excellent, thought-provoking reasons why this new patois movement is a waste of time and resources, time and resources which would be better spent in preparing the average Jamaican for participation in a globalized world. In other words, instead of our educators and other decision-makers turning their attention to the introduction of, say, Spanish in primary and high schools as a mandatory subject, they are about to further marginalize the Jamaican child by forcing upon them the added burden of studying a language that nobody else in the world speaks, and that very, very few people understand or even care to understand!
And my attitude here is NOT self-hate!! I am extremely proud to be Jamaican, but at the same time I’m a realist who appreciates the fact that Jamaica forms a tiny, almost unimportant part of our world! The "great importance" of Jamaica is more a figment of our imagination than something that is based in reality!
I love patois very much, and when singers such as Diane King and Tarrus Riley, and genuinely talented DJ’s such as Papa San make use of patois in their recordings, it is the most beautiful thing, in my honest opinion! On the other hand, I’m also cognizant of the fact that the vast majority of our neighbors, who live in South America and Central America and in the North American country of Mexico, are Spanish-speaking people. In fact, the sole exceptions are South America’s Brazil, Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname, and Central America’s Belize. In a tourism-driven economy like Jamaica, wouldn’t it be ideal for our young citizens to be fluent in both English and Spanish, thus making them more relevant to the needs of Jamaica's developing economy in the twenty-first century?
Standardization is an excellent idea and nothing is wrong with this exercise, in my opinion. But to foist on already stressed-out youngsters the teaching of a language which the world does not speak, a language which will most likely NEVER become a dominant language in the world, is idiocy at its highest level.
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