The Editor, Sir:

The more I read about the noble and unceasing efforts of Education Minister Andrew Holness to tackle the literacy levels of our nation's students, the more I am convinced that the education system will never improve unless and until attention is paid to the education of our children from birth to two years old. Unless we do, children enter the education system at age two in a world of language, objects and ideas totally foreign to them.

The first two years are the most important of a child's intellectual development. It is when the child learns to walk, to talk and to recognise things and people around it. A child will learn to recognise different foods and know what they taste like and if they like to eat them, just from seeing them over and over again. A child will explore a toy to see all that it can do, including how it comes apart. A child will adopt language from what it hears around it.

Yet, 'education' does not formally commence in the important years when a child is learning so much. In that fertile mind should be planted the seeds of education that are expected to flower from basic/pre-school at age two years until graduation from secondary to tertiary halls of learning. I am confident that nothing can make up for the 'lost' two years at the start of a child's learning process. Putting a child in a 'pre/basic school' at an early age only compounds the separation anxiety and confusion that confronts a child competing for attention in a schoolroom of other children. School and education become a punishment, rather than a joy for learning.

I discovered a lot while home schooling my son. In the first three years he learned to read, beginning with recognising letters, small words and then whole sentences in the easy-read books surrounding him. Being read to from a variety of books developed his knowledge of English language and grammar, aiding communication and comprehension of a variety of topics and ideas.

Cartoons

It is revealing to watch cartoons on Jamaican TV with children whose interest is quickly lost by language and scenarios they cannot comprehend. Worse is the torture for the disinterested adult caregiver, who has nevertheless for the past three decades been led to believe that children should watch cartoons on TV every afternoon after school. Why not offer instead educational documentaries about every subject under the sun which are part of the curriculum of every home-schooled child?

I don't think our media - good as they are - do a full service to 'education'. I am surprised there are only soap operas after the news at night. Just as there are resources to showcase our dancing and singing skills, I'd like to have the resources to make a live reality show of mothers from lower, middle and upper classes home-schooling their children. There are many mothers to choose from. For instance, we could follow the Caribbean-born foreign consultant newly arrived in Jamaica with a home-schooled daughter two years ahead of her age group. Unable to find a school that will accept her daughter at her competence level, the mother has mixed her on-the-job hours with a digital home office, and continues home schooling.

There's the inner-city mother who decided not only to follow my example 10 years ago and home school her three children, but also runs a successful small school for children in need. Her eldest daughter of 14 runs her own dressmaking and design business at home and has already graduated from a HEART training course.

I would find an ICI lady in one of the arcades who takes her infant with her to the booth daily, and show her how to use simple books and home-made teaching tools to give that child the basics of letters and numbers. I think a lot of mothers would be interested in anything that could give their children that added 'extra' that the good Minister Holness so urgently and properly seeks.

Most important teachers

I am not advocating home schooling as a replacement for traditional schooling, but as an important addition to introduce children to learning when they are in the care of their most important teachers. Those who want to and can, may continue after the early years. We parents teach children 'please' and 'thank you', hot and cold, night and day, good and bad. We can teach them their first A,B,C and 1,2,3.

I am, etc.,

BARBARA BLAKE-HANNAH

jamediapro@hotmail.com

Kingston 6