Dear Editor,

I wish to thank columnist Keeble McFarlane for his excellent article on August 25, "English is the only way to keep up with the world". I hope all the teachers, especially those who propose the teaching of English via patois, read his piece.

Keeble, you forgot "big slate" and "little slate". You also forgot how brittle they were and how often they broke. Then we had to use a "half-a-slate", and slate pencils were not always available. We therefore had to use a tiny piece of broken slate as the pencil.

Some of us learned to read and write in "school rooms" with coconut fronds as the walls and the roof. The benches were planks laid down on short stumps placed in the earthen "floor".

As little children we helped to build the "school" by pulling the coconut fronds up to half-a-mile on the gravel "broken stone" road, sometimes suffering the pain from a "buck-toe".

It is always good to remember from whence we came.

Keep up the good work, Keeble.

Louis Hemans

Lahemans@aol.com