Happy 2022 to you all. Despite the uncertainties, we look forward to a better year.

Upon entering a tertiary institution, one of the tenets preached to freshmen is that they need to read for their degrees. While many students graduate university without truly understanding this notion, in basic terms, whether explicit or implicit, it suggests that students have to spend more time than average researching scholarly materials and dissecting information by themselves or with little scaffolding from their lecturers.

Indubitably, higher education demands greater levels of communication skills (both oral and written), reasoning abilities, and problem-solving techniques, among others. However, as lecturers, we continue to observe a deficit in students’ production, and it is partly because many of them do not read extensively. They cannot present solid arguments for assignment pieces (writing courses) because they are disconnected from the realities of the world. They hardly read the newspaper, listen to the radio, or engage other news media. They do not keep abreast of what is happening locally or internationally. Some of them are also unaware of the trends in their own areas of expertise. Yet, according to Marc Prensky, author of Teaching Digital Natives, most of today’s college students are digital natives. They have devices and access to the Internet which allows them to have information at their fingertips in real time.

English-based courses, such as academic writing and developmental English (the titles very across institutions), continue to experience high failure rates across campuses. There are students who continue to fail these courses even after three attempts. For some, this is the only course that is preventing them from obtaining their degree.

As language educators we know that the deficit in communication skills is largely due to the linguistic battle between standard Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole. Given our sociolinguistic context, most of our students are not required to use formal English outside of the academic context; thus, there is hardly any practice. And, yes, mastering a language requires practice and repetition.

Language teachers and linguists have expressed on numerous occasions the need to take a second-language approach to teaching English, given that most of the Jamaican population is bilingual, with Jamaican Patois being the more dominant primary language. We know that our poor performance in English language starts from the early childhood level.

As educators we sometimes assume that our students know what we think they ought to have already known. However, students come to university with different experiences and at different levels on the cognitive scale. Some high schools manage to cover the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) syllabus, while others struggle to do the same. Some students have international experience, while others do not. Some come with work experience, while others have none. It means, therefore, that lecturers have to find a way to bridge the gap with such a diverse group of students.

I underscored earlier the need for students to read broadly; however, lecturers have a responsibility to teach or facilitate, whichever of these words is more appropriate in higher education.

Tertiary education fees are too exorbitant for lecturers to just come online and read from an outdated PowerPoint presentation, or they just upload the materials to the platform and are absent during most of the semester. There is no thorough explanation or feedback. What are we being paid to do?

Some colleagues also take this condescending attitude with their students. They behave as if they are the saviours of knowledge, and instead of helping to build their students, they trample on their confidence by making them seem stupid. What, then, is the role of education?

In this era of mostly virtual learning, colleagues need to get more innovative to reach their students. Yes, it is a tough challenge, but wherever there is a difficulty, we have to become more creative and innovative.

Too many teachers operate as though there is only one learning style that exists among the student population. On the contrary, we have to be flexible and diversify our pedagogical and andragogical techniques. We cannot teach the way we were taught decades ago.

Of importance, also, is having not only qualified but competent lecturers. Many colleagues have the required certification, but that does not gaurantee that they know their content well and that they can deliver a lesson. It is commendable when students can give valuable input in a class, but it is certainly not a good look when students end up teaching the majority of a course, given the incompetence of their teacher.

It is an injustice for students to be asked to find hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition fees yearly, but they do not receive value for their money, and discover shortly after they start working that some of the fundamental concepts that they should have explored were never covered in their studies.

Colleagues, let us get it right.

Oneil Madden is a PhD candidate in didactics and linguistics at the Université Clermont Auvergne, France, and president of the Association of Jamaican Nationals in France (JAMINFRANCE). Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or oneil.madden@uca.fr.