WOW!

IT IS FRIGHTENING!
Too many of our brightest, most beautiful and talented Caribbean young women cannot speak sense off the top of their heads for more than two seconds. This is what the Caribbean queen pageants are revealing to me during the question and answer segment- which by the way I don't think should be eliminated-. Our Caribbean young people cannot think or express themselves on their feet; and if you think these beautiful young women, their flowing hair blowing into their eyes by the breeze are bad, just try our boys. It is terrible. The reason is because these young people simply do not read anything sensible, if they read anything at all. The majority of them walk around with these stupid earplugs jammed into their ears, crossing streets in dense traffic and can't even hear the cars coming to mow them down. It is ridiculous. They know all the latest hits by all their favourite artists but cannot string two of their own-brain generated sentences together without the insertions of "aaarrrmmm", "like" or "I don't even know what to say about that ...."; and our education systems in the Caribbean are compounding it all by not insisting on making these young people read.
  Don't let them fool you, Internet "reading" is not "reading" in the true sense of the word. I will settle for calling it "browsing". Few of these young people are exposed to the classics on the Internet. Too many have never heard of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, never mind being able to quote a line of anything from Macbeth. I am sure the response of many of these young people to even the mention of such classical masterpieces would be a dumb-sounding "Huh?" But I don't blame them. I blame the parents, the heads of learning institutions and the pussyfooting leaders we have managing young people across the Caribbean today. Every article is too long to read. At school we tell them to write three paragraphs for an essay  with a tone of regret in our voices, because we won't be able to bear looking at their eyes bulge in shock of emotional deflation if we told them to write four; yet no musical concert headlined by one of their dance-hall stars is ever long enough. We are letting these children have their way and then bow our heads in shock and embarrassment when they cannot answer a simple question on a simple stage.