Having a decent employer does not mean that anything goes

Aug 27, 2015 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
What is happening with education in the 21st Century is cause for concern. People hardly read anymore. Technological advancement is important for development, but smart televisions, smart phones, and other technological stuff are robbing us of our ability to reason. They are convenient things, but they can take all of our time and attention.
I remember once, a former student telling me that my approach to the course I was teaching was causing her inconvenience; causing her to have to use the library and to read. She was proud to let me know that ‘I doan (don’t) use the library Miss. I Google’; and by Googling, she did not mean reading academic articles online that come up in a Google search, but rather cutting and pasting stuff into her assignments. She was not alone in that respect.
Another student once told me that I was causing them to reason, as if reasoning was such a bad thing at a university. Some of our youths (and older folks too) tend to have a passing acquaintance with the English language. (I admit it is a difficult language, but the less one reads, the harder it gets). I myself am guilty of not reading enough.
Many of us have a distant relationship with reading material. Only through the expansion of our vocabulary can we use the English language appropriately. Our vocabulary has become quite limited, as we depend more on our gadgets and our shorthand writing to communicate. Consequently, words that are hostile and can cause acrimony where none was probably intended, are used.
Those who claim to be journalists should ensure that their vocabulary is extensive. When one checks on a word in the English dictionary, it is amazing to see how often there are other words that can be substituted for that word. Only if one is well read can one know which would be more appropriate to use in the given context.
A word like ‘blunder’ has so many negative connotations, meaning for example, a gross, stupid, or careless mistake; while the word ‘oversight’, one of its synonyms, for example, is a much kinder word to use in describing the action of one’s employer. ‘Error’ is not too bad a word either.
Having a decent employer does not mean that anything goes. It means that one has more flexibility to do a good job, but one still has to have discretion in relation to what one says and does. It is called being ‘tactful’, which means ‘having the knack for saying (writing) the right thing at the right time’. The ‘tactful person is appropriate and sensitive, never rude or careless’. The tactful person avoids blunders, avoids being careless with his/her words.
One can become over-enthusiastic and move from one extreme end of the spectrum where nothing unfavourable to the government was allowed in the state media, to indiscriminately going to the other end of the spectrum, because we now have a government that actually promotes freedom of speech, and we may be inclined to think that it means that we can say anything in the state media without having discretion. Both are extreme positions.
The new government will blunder if they continue to allow the opposition and their henchmen to manipulate them with words such as ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘witch-hunting’ into keeping inept individuals, blindly loyal to the opposition, in certain strategic positions that such persons should have had the decency to vacate when the government changed. Those who are not professional will advise or avoid advising and feign innocence, while quietly sabotaging the work of the government.
Rosemarie Terborg-Davis

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