Editor,

Refer to the story, "RSB wants standards to be part of school curricula” (The New Times, January 28). Well, can we ensure our children are literate before we make standardisation a part of their culture? We have people leaving high school who can barely speak English or French, which is definitely a more pressing problem.

Lena

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Did you know that speech and writing skills are the foundations of standardisation? Human speech and writing have an agreed format; otherwise it would be impossible to communicate. That format or style is a standard. Standards are part and parcel of societal organisation and the proposal is absolutely the way to go.

We intend to begin with secondary schools by teaching language writing standards, for example, accurate use of punctuation marks. When wrongly used, the message and the outcome change. So standards allow us to communicate correctly.

Entrepreneurship, measurements (SI Units) in science, standards that add value to the daily experiments that our children do in class will be part of the proposed content. For example, children make soap during their chemistry lesson but they are told that it is not safe to use. Why can’t it be made according to the applicable safety standards and the child takes it home? That would be the beginning of creating a future scientist/entrepreneur.

We are therefore certain that integration of standardisation in school curricula will contribute to the rapid understanding of the child the role of standards in societal and economic development.

Mark Bagabe, RSB Director General