…Cabinet members to also take classes
When the new school term begins in September, Spanish will be a mandatory subject from as early as primary school – in a move intended to ensure the future generation of the country is not left behind in a rapidly-changing economy.
Making the announcement on Wednesday was President Dr Irfaan Ali during a press conference, where he explained that Cabinet members would also be mandated to learn the language.
The Head of State explained that there was enough local capacity to get this initiative started, assuring that over time, that capacity would be increased.
“I’ve been told that we have adequate capability, especially at the secondary level to have this compulsory Spanish taught. We’ve also engaged a lot of bilateral partners to loan us human resource asset in this period of transition, because I want at least from Grade Four/Grade Five, we start the process,” the President stated.
“Technology also gives us an opportunity to build an online platform through the Learning Channel that we can deliver this training also. I think that we have enough capacity and we’re going to build the capacity I think by September to have this introduced, at least to start from Grade Four/Five.”
With Guyana surrounded by Spanish-speaking countries and with the influx of Spanish-speaking persons currently operating in the economy, the Head of State emphasised the importance of all Guyanese learning the language.
“One of my greatest regrets now that I have this responsibility for Guyana is that I dropped Spanish in secondary school and being in a continent…where we celebrate being the only English-speaking country, we have to realise too that we’re part of this continent that speaks Spanish. And I believe we’re gonna do the future young people of this country an injustice if we don’t point them to this direction, because if you want to be competitive internationally, you have to have a second language.
“If you want to land yourself international jobs, if you want to say we’re developing the highly-skilled human resource base, then this becomes necessary.”
President Ali was also encouraging the Private Sector to make the necessary investments to ensure their employees learn Spanish.
He said Government would also explore the possibility of launching an online platform for any Guyanese who wants to learn Spanish to be able to do so.
“If you go on Regent Street today, you would see that in many stores, they actually have someone who speaks Spanish employed. So, it would come upon us, if we don’t get ahead of the curve and get it done.”
Spanish is the official language of 20 countries and is rated as the world’s second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese, and the world’s fourth-most spoken language overall. (G11)
