Published On:Tuesday, August 25, 2009

"SUCCESS in English, success in life" is the message on a large billboard -- written in both Chinese and English -- on the side of a wall in a small country town off the Li river in the shadow of the famous Sugarloaf mountains in Guilin, China.

It was a billboard to encourage Chinese students to study English at the Omedia Language College in that province.

Mr Ronnie Lightbourn, who with his wife, Joan, took a boat tour down China's Li River about four months ago was so impressed by the message that he took a photograph of it and forwarded it to us. Here was an Asian country that fully understood the importance of speaking not only English, but good English, while in the Bahamas, where English is the mother tongue, Bahamian children are yet to recognise its importance. Not only have many Bahamians failed to master English, but they do not seem to understand the importance of speaking the language well.

Many years ago, shortly after the PLP became the government, some bright sparks got the idea that the Bahamian dialect should be taught in the schools -- both written and spoken. Fortunately, the majority of our people were wise enough to realise that speaking in the "dis", "dat", "dees" and "dose" lingo would not carry them very far. However, it would certainly move them very quickly from the front to the back door. Eventually the matter was dropped and standard English continued in the schools.

French has always been recognised as the language of diplomats, but today English is the lingua franca of the world. As Carla Power wrote in Newsweek International's magazine in March, 2008, India is on the "front lines of a global revolution in which hundreds of millions of people are learning English, the planet's language for commerce, technology--and, increasingly, empowerment.

"Within a decade, 2 billion people will be studying English and about half the world--some 3 billion people--will speak it, according to a recent report from the British Council.

"From Caracas to Karachi, parents keen for their children to achieve are forking over tuition for English-language schools. China's English fever-- elevated to epidemic proportions by the country's recent accession to the World Trade Organization and the 2008 Olympics--even has its own Mandarin term, Yingwen re. And governments from Tunisia to Turkey are pushing English, recognizing that along with computers and mass migration, the language is the turbine engine of globalization. As one 12-year-old self-taught English-speaker from China's southwestern Sichuan province says, "If you can't speak English, it's like you're deaf and dumb."

Is that how Bahamian students are to be classified?

The second report produced by the Coalition for Education Reform, released earlier this year, revealed that in 2006, 55 per cent of Bahamian students in public schools failed the BGCSE English Language examination.

There is an alarming shortage of Bahamians with the necessary English and mathematics skills to compete in today's industries, framers of the report concluded.

The report was compiled by the Chamber of Commerce, Employers Confederation, National Congress of Trade Unions, Hotel Employers Association and the Nassau Tourism and Development Board. In other words leaders of the industry that turns the engine of this economy.

The shortage of qualified Bahamians with a command of the English language, the report said, "is critical to tourism because the skills of its employees dealing with its clients directly affects the latter's view of the Bahamas."

Time has not shown any improvement in these results. If there is no turnaround in both English and Mathematics, Bahamians will soon find that they will be pushed to the sidelines because they are not qualified to compete, even in their own language in their own country. Will the day ever come when foreigners, speaking English better than our own people, will be called upon to fill essential positions in this country?

Today, according to the Newsweek report, non-native English speakers now outnumber native ones by three to one.

David Crystal, English-language expert and author of "English as a Global Language" has suggested that there could be a "tri-English world, one in which you could speak a local English-based dialect at home, a national variety at work or school, and international Standard English to talk to foreigners."

Bahamian students would be wise to apply themselves to their studies and master their language and mathematics. They certainly have been given every opportunity to prepare themselves to take their place in their country. If they fail to qualify, they cannot blame anyone but themselves for becoming strangers in their own land.