I agree with the concept that we should make education fun

Jul 15, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
I have read the piece about the advocated/proposed shakeup of Caribbean education system. I agree with the thinking that “we should make education fun”.

That is how we were trained in my primary school (1930s-1940s) days by our teachers encouraging us to ask questions and having those questions answered. Later on in the playground, we tested one another to see how many children knew the answers. When we ran out of games to play, we formed teams and tested each on the correct answers.
Today, at age 86 plus, this technique has served me well in the UK in one of the most popular TV game shows. When one leader could not think of how to spot a leap year instantly, I wrote to the programme what I learnt in “First Standard”, i.e. any year that could be divided exactly by 4.

Later on, when one leader lingered to figure out the number of days in a certain month, I sent the team what I described as “a mnemonic” – Thirty days hath September, April, June and November; all the rest hath 31, excepting February alone, which hath 28 days clear and 29 in each leap year.

I got ‘thank you’ acknowledgments on both occasions; typical old-school British courtesy.
Yes, old-fashioned methods sometimes work. My husband and I always comment on the good manners and capability of our contemporaries brought up by grandparents.

A few days ago I mentioned to him that when my mother got fed up with our wetting the bed at night and made a bed for us on the floor, where ants crawled into our ear, my grandmother advised my older brother and me to put a finger in the other ear, to make the ant crawl out; if not, put some “wee” in the ear. My husband was in stitches – he had not heard of the “wee” solution before! May your Caribbean enterprise thrive!
Geralda Dennison

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