Do you know?

But I also met there a friend of my Barbados primary school days, someone whom I had not seen for the past 77 years.

You can imagine the “ole talk” (that is Trinidadianese, which I have learnt and use appropriately) that followed.

Her name is Dolly Blackman, and she was related to Miss Jasmine Gill, the Headmistress of St John’s Girls’ School at the time of our growing up.

I made reference to Miss Gill in my autobiography I REMEMBER which was published last year.

On page 21 this is what I wrote:

“Miss Jasmine Gill, as I mentioned earlier, was the Headmistress of St John’s Girls.’

“If, throughout my subsequent teaching career, I gained the reputation of being a first-rate teacher, although I subscribe to the view that ‘good teachers are born, not made,’ yet I am willing to give some of the credit to Miss Gill. She was thorough in everything she did. As children we had to dot our ‘i’s’ and cross our ‘t’s’ and carry up the hands of our letters.

“As teachers, which Hartley Graham, one of my classmates, and I became, we had to ensure that our pupils, right there at St John’s Girls’, dotted their ‘i’s’, and crossed their ‘t’s’, and carried up the hands of their letters.”

Thoroughness! Miss Gill believed in it, and I do still. I regret, however, that thoroughness is not one of the standards demanded by present-day teaching.

This struck me forcibly as I just read an advertisement in one of our daily newspapers. I shall quote for you the relevant part of it.

There is a picture of a man, and in large letters below his picture are the words “vi-sion-ar-y adj” followed by “characterised by unusually acute foresight and imagination.” (There should have been a dash after “visionary”, or “adj” should have been in brackets.)

So far, so good! An adjective is a word which describes a person or thing. Later, however, follows this: “...has a special knack for envisioning things. He is a visionary at heart-” I repeat: “He is a visionary...”

He is a “something”, and every word that represents a “something” or a “person” is a noun. Is the word “visionary” a noun or an adjective? It is both.

Why then should the writer have stated that it was an adjective, but used it as a noun?

Lack of thoroughness! And that pervades our entire teaching system.

The advertisement should have read, in the same large letters:

“vi-sion-ar-y (adj/noun)” and the writer could have used it as either without giving cause for being accused of “lack of thoroughness.”

Making a mountain out of a molehill? Perhaps, but I am one of those old-fashioned teachers (like Miss Gill) who believe (not “believes”, the relative pronoun “who” refers to “teachers”, not “one” of them) that “Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.”