As part of efforts to instill needed skills in Guyanese students, President Dr. Irfaan Ali on Wednesday announced his intentions to explore making Spanish a compulsory subject in secondary schools across Guyana.
The Head of State, while addressing the opening of the new Good Hope Secondary School, said learning this language would be an asset to any student given Guyana’s geographic location.
According to him, not seriously studying a foreign language while attending the St. Stanislaus High School is one of his regrets.
And since becoming Head of State, Dr. Ali said his appreciation for the language has grown tremendously, so much so that he believes students should be required to learn Spanish.
“We now have to move towards making Spanish compulsory in our school system because it is vitally important for young people coming up in this country,” he said.
Furthermore, Dr. Ali said learning a foreign language will help to make students more marketable when they enter the world of work.
With these benefits, the President said he will ask the relevant authorities to fully examine the steps needed to push language learning in Guyana.
And even though he spoke extensively on the value of learning Spanish, Dr. Ali did not discount the value of learning other foreign languages. He said learning Spanish should be the minimum foreign language requirement in schools.
Aside from the emphasis placed on learning a foreign language, President Ali was keen on noting that his government will be focusing on skills training too. This, he said, will complement the more traditional focus on academic studies culminating in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE).
We should learn to speak Portuguese, French, Dutch and Spanish. We are interacting with all these neighbouring countries.
Why you can’t make Hindi available in school? All over the globe Indian indentured people have retained the command of Hindi except for a few places, notably among them the English speaking Caribbean. The Indians of Guyana are tired of singing songs they don’t understand and singing 80% wrong words. We can only see movies with English subtitles. At a jhandi the pandit can speak gibberish for all we know. When we go to western countries many Indians from India mock us for not knowing the language. This nonsense should stop by making Hindi available in schools. It will be retained more than Spanish after students left school because it is an integral part of many Guyanese lives. I took Spanish in Guyana high school for 5 years, I think. Ask me how much I know now- nada, zilch, nothing. I know much more Hindi than I know Spanish. Because Hindi is a part of my day to day life, unlike Spanish. Make Spanish compulsory if you want to but introduce Hindi as an elective. I hope my words don’t go to waste. Honestly, I think we have a better shot of getting a PNC govt to introduce Hindi in schools than a PPP govt and this is shocking that the PPP can make me feel this way- me who has voted only PPP all my life.