On Jamaican Hair and Language

I don’t normally write on what’s trending, but my interest was sparked by the debate on the ‘hair’ issue, particularly the question of the right to self-expression. The case in question relates to a child whose mother was told in 2018 that she must undo the locks or cut her daughter's hair or she would not be allowed to return to Kensington Primary School in September. The parents took the matter to court on the grounds that the school had breached the child’s constitutional rights. An injunction was taken out preventing the school from barring the child. She has in fact been attending the school since September 2018. However, on Friday, July 31, 2020 the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the school. This led to widespread condemnation of the court and a vigorous discussion about the ruling and about hair. I listened to some of this on RJR's Beyond the Headlines hosted by Dionne Jackson Miller. Much of it was in legal language which left me confused. 

         Following this, on Friday, August 7, 2020, on RJR's Hotline, hosted by Emily Shields, the eminent constitutional lawyer,  Dr. Lloyd Barnett’s  responded to her questions.  I understood him to say that no argument was presented by the parents to counter the school’s reason for not allowing locked hair i.e. that it is not properly washed and leads to outbreaks of lice. They could have, but they did not, argue against this reason with facts about hair washing and lice. I understood him to say that had they done so, the case might have gone differently.

       Incidentally, head lice do not discriminate against any kind of hair.

They thrive in all kinds of hair, clean or dirty, curly or straight, long or short, locked or plaited. Like the corona virus,  they simply need to get from one human being to another. Children in close proximity in schools assist in their transmission. 

I don’t have a problem with how children wear their hair, provided that it is kept clean. In relation to self expression, I’m not sure that in the case of children it is theirs or that of their parents. I know of girls who have wanted to cut their hair, but have been prevented from doing so by their fathers. It would be hard to gauge the effect of being told to change their hairstyle would have on their self-esteem.

How do children express themselves apart from hairstyle and dress? In many ways including art, music, movement, speech and writing. The right to self-expression seems to me to be breached far more in every school in relation to written language.  Children are taught that their mother tongue, Jamaican Creole or ‘patwa’ is their home language which they speak among friends and family, but they are not taught to read it or write it. They are allowed to play roles, sing and express themselves orally in patwa, while at the same time being encouraged to speak Standard Jamaican English. This is the language they are taught to read and write. In order to read and write in patwa, a child must first learn to read and write in the English Language. The injustice meted out by this system is not so much that it’s harder to learn in a language that is not of your thoughts, but the implication that this language is superior to yours and by extension, those who have command of this language are superior to you. This surely must affect your self-esteem.

The ineffectiveness of this system is shown, not by the large numbers of Jamaicans whose command of the English Language both orally and in writing is better than that of many native speakers of this language, but by the large numbers of children who don’t learn to read, and those who have difficulty expressing themselves in their own words both orally and in writing. They can learn swathes of text by rote, but struggle to write a description, explain a process or recount an event.

Another way in which schools damage children’s self-esteem is by the system of assessment – testing and grading and failing children. It’s not entirely the school’s intention – parents and the whole society are programmed to judge children’s performance in relation to one another. But that is a topic for a future blog post.