GREAT BAY--As the world focuses on literacy this month, Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport Melissa Gumbs, as she has on numerous previous occasions, reiterated her concerns about literacy levels among some of St. Maarten’s young people, warning that weaknesses in basic reading, writing, spelling, grammar and comprehension are not only showing up in schools, but are following young people into the workplace and limiting how far they can advance professionally.
Gumbs said the concern extends beyond students who are still in the education system. She said there are young people at the high school level, and even some who have already graduated, who struggle to construct proper sentences and write letters. “You have a challenge where there are children in high school, high school level, even graduated, who struggle to make proper sentences, write letters,” Gumbs said.
The Minister stressed that her concern is informed not only by her current role in education, but also by her previous experience in the private sector. She recalled receiving the CV and cover letter of a young St. Maartener who was approximately 20 or 21 years old and had misspelled their own address, the district in which they lived and the name of the school they had attended.
For Gumbs, examples such as these highlight a larger problem because literacy remains fundamental to almost every occupation, particularly if St. Maarten wants more of its own people to eventually occupy senior and highly skilled positions.
“If at that age you can’t write a letter, you know, you’re talking about St. Maarteners being in jobs that are critical and important, but literacy is a basic requirement for any job,” she said.
She said literacy should not be understood simply as the ability to read words on a page. It also includes writing, spelling, grammar and, importantly, comprehension. Being able to read something, she noted, does not automatically mean that the reader understood what was written.
Gumbs then delivered one of her strongest assessments of the problem, drawing again from what she experienced while working in the private sector.
“What I’ve seen from a private sector perspective is we’re pumping out a largely unemployable workforce,” she said.
The Minister immediately qualified that statement, explaining that by “unemployable” she meant unemployable “to a certain level.” She said a person may be able to secure an entry-level position and progress to a certain point, but without the necessary fundamentals, further advancement becomes increasingly difficult.
That distinction, she suggested, is important when discussing the long-term development of St. Maarten’s workforce. The objective cannot simply be getting a young person through school and into their first job. The education system should give that person the foundation necessary to continue developing throughout their career.
“You want to be able to say that, even if you came in at ground level, eventually you could work yourself up to manager, CEO or whatever. But that takes the basics, the fundamentals,” Gumbs said.
Her comments come as the Ministry places increased attention on literacy and on reform at the foundation level of the education system. Gumbs said challenges are being seen from the earliest stages of childhood development, including basic fine motor skills that children traditionally developed at home or during their first years of schooling.
She pointed to examples of some seven-year-olds struggling with skills such as properly handling a knife and fork or tying their shoes, describing them as signs that deficiencies can begin long before a student reaches secondary school. She said this reinforces the need to examine education from its foundation rather than waiting until students are preparing to graduate.
The Minister’s comments also put a workforce dimension on the literacy discussion. Employers frequently speak about the difficulty of finding qualified local workers, while government continues to stress the importance of creating opportunities for St. Maarteners. Gumbs’ argument is that access to those opportunities must be matched by the basic skills needed not only to enter the workforce, but to move upward once there.
Her message was therefore not that young St. Maarteners are incapable of succeeding. Rather, she argued that deficiencies in fundamental skills can create a ceiling over their advancement, even after they have earned diplomas and entered employment.
For Gumbs, addressing literacy is consequently about much more than improving grades. It is about whether a young person leaving St. Maarten’s education system can write clearly, understand information, communicate professionally and continue growing from an entry-level employee into a supervisor, manager or eventually the head of an organization.
And, as she put it, that journey begins with “the basics, the fundamentals.”
