Johns Hopkins University Specialists to Assist in Research on Learning Disabilities … says PM

Prime Minister Bruce Golding has noted that while Government has been emphasizing the importance of ensuring that students are able to read and write before they are allowed to sit the GSAT examine, efforts must also be made to identify whether students are facing deficiencies which could be preventing them from learning to read and write properly.
He said it is important that these deficiencies be identified and that remedial action be put in place to get students over the difficulties they may be facing. He said oftentimes deficiencies such as hearing and sight problems have been overlooked. Mr. Golding made these observations this morning (April 9) when he dropped in on students at the Denham Town Primary School to make his contribution to the Western Union sponsored reading week now underway throughout the island’s primary schools.
Mr. Golding noted that a programme to try to determine whether some of these students are in fact challenged is being developed by his daughter Ann-Merita Golding who has just completed a degree from Howard University where she specialized in audiology. He disclosed that through her efforts, a team of specialists from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, will be coming to Jamaica to screen children at the primary level to determine whether they may be having hearing or sight problems. He said this team will also be helping to train Jamaicans to identify these problems.
‘Government is committed to addressing the need for spectacles, hearing aids or medical treatment. So as we observe reading week, let us focus on the need to improve the quality of our school environment and provide the support our children need. Let us do everything to help them achieve and maximize their enormous potential which we have a responsibility to help them to develop’, Mr. Golding told visitors, teachers and students.
Also attending and making their contribution to reading week at Denham Town Primary this morning were the Mayor of Kingston, Councillor Desmond McKenzie, representatives from Grace Kennedy Remittance Services, Western Union, USAID, Expanding Educational Horizons and Kingston Bookshop.