We are near the end of patois combat season, but the last fruits with maggots are still being hurled; it may end with the “we tree Kings of Orient har, baring gifts we traver safar” fruitcake season. Our problem is English, and experts differ, so we should act.

In the mid-1950s there was a ‘competition’ between Edwin Allen and Florizel Glasspole, both ministers of education, to prove that primary students could sit University of Cambridge General Certificate of Education ordinary level (GCE O’ Level) exams and do as well as Wolmer’s or Jamaica College had done. I was a guinea pig, and the results were extraordinary. The colonial system was upset; 70/30, now all kids freely compete for high school places. Education revolution! Poor black kids are Rhodes scholars now, hooray!

So, 70 years after that “secondary experiment” we need one between two touted methods of teaching English to see which gives best results. Patois is our soul language; let it be! Learning Mandarin is work for adults seeking jobs; will a second language stress kids? No! At Hillel, American International School of Kingston (AISK) infants of many nations commune. The language hurdle is brief, and parents speak French, German, Twi, patois, Spanish, Hindi in the car. A child’s brain holds it all! Language apps are good, and soon no one needs speak Mandarin except for artistic frisson. So how do people learn English, any language? No child goes to school to learn to speak, as by modelling adults, radio, TV, rote they learn at home.

No kid knows why “I am, he is, we are, they are” is correct, but once embedded, it works! Most UK immigrants speak no English on arrival and school is where their kids learn — as no one at home can help. Most Indian, Pakistani, Polish, Jamaican, Romanian parents earn minimum wage; their kids survive two terms, most are competent in English in four terms and mastery soon after. One top-rated school in Brixton has 30 ethnicities. Could they pay staff to teach in these languages? No! Teachers, like all British parents, catch the bus to get home to prepare family dinner in a dark 4:30 pm winter, so extra lessons are not in the culture. Their solution? Employ good English teachers!

In top Silicon Valley schools, kids of computer execs use no tablets, but are taught by humans; so good teachers from Germany, Britain, France are prized. Kids learn several languages up to age eight easily; it’s fun! Kids also swim, dissect frogs, pet lizards — no fear. But one phobic parent says, “A weh yu suh speaky-spokey fah?” or “mine yuh drown”, or “yuh touch dat deh nasty frog deh?” and fears grow in kids!

In Africa kids know three to six languages by playing across country borders, and so African footballers are language diverse; Jamaicans are not. A barmaid in an African shebeen serves migrant farm, mine workers; French, English, Spanish, many tribal languages; and streetwalkers or kids hustling speak them. Here, home, school, rum bar fail poor kids, so non-mastery of English or patois is our norm. No child can read or write them!

So, let’s reprise the ’50s and have a competition between two methods of teaching English. First, English via patois, as argued by The University of the West Indies (UWI) experts, and second English via English. After many column inches, let them go head-to-head — a second education revolution?

The Ministry of Education should set rules, umpire, and keep score. The opposing experts would mentor teachers of their ilk. Let it be at early years level, ages 4 to 6. The goal is to get the highest percentage to age mastery for transition at age six to grade one. The Ministry of Education will select two urban and two rural early childhood institutions (or more) of 30 kids each with a trained teacher and assistant of the tendency they will teach; same resources, etc. Classes will operate normally with unobtrusive embedded tracking, recording technology and control or placebo schools. And they are off!

The experimental classes in the 1950s were State-funded for six years in 10 schools up to O’ Level and costly with nine subject teachers. This early childhood education experiment will be cheap; only incremental costs to equalise resources as these classes exist.

I do not support English via patois as South Africa’s Bantusans taught kids in local languages and killed a black nation’s spirit. Prime Minister Andrew Holness must now declare Spanish official for trade, tourism, medical, scientific, artistic purposes, and we welcome Spanish speakers from our backyard. We are so mean, yet look how America took in some two million of our dross!

Long-serving Member of Parliament Mike Henry’s one million jobs at Aerotropolis may go “poof”, as the Vernamfield DHL hub of a generation ago, if politicians get cold feet about Spanish migrants again. Grow up, Jamaica! The Caribbean alone has 300 million-plus Spanish, 12 million French, and 6.5 million English. Sir, if an AliBaba warehouse needs 500 English pickers, 900 French, and 4,000 Spanish, what then? If you believe what you preach, start recruiting! Make a better offer than to cut cane to the 8,000 Cuban doctors exiting Brazil and bring them here. Do not trouble patios. It is like hundreds of languages in Africa, but English still rules as the poor embrace progress. Some academic jobs may be lost if the annual patois tussle ends. So be it. Stay conscious!

Franklin Johnston, D Phil (Oxon), is a strategist and project manager; Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (UK); and lectures in logistics and supply chain management at Mona School of Business and Management, The University of the West Indies. Send comments to the Observer or franklinjohnstontoo@gmail.com.