“Churches here are starting to wake up to the fact that the major support base for Christian teaching in primary-level schools has been significantly eroded.”

Helping Jamaica’s children understand
the Bible

KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Rev Courtney A Stewart, General Secretary of the Bible Society in the West Indies (BSWI), has described the launch of an O-21 project that will make Bible reading easier for primary school children as “divine intervention.”

The launch of the project, to replace the King James Version (KJV) Bible, traditionally used in Bible knowledge classes in primary schools, with the Good News Bible (GNB), came just before an announcement by the Ministry of Education of a radical change to the way in which the Bible is taught in schools.

Less time for Bible

Under the new curriculum the Bible will be only one of the sacred texts that children will be exposed to because they will also be learning about Islam, Buddhism and Judaism. Teachers will therefore have less time to focus on the Bible. Also, the traditional 30-minute daily devotions at the beginning of the school day will be reduced to 15 minutes.

“With less time being dedicated to Bible study it is vital that children have Bibles that are attractively designed and easy to understand,” said Mr Stewart. “Our O-21 project to replace the KJV Bible with the GNB among the 500,000 primary school children has therefore come at a critical time – in fact, it can be described as divine intervention!”

The new Bibles, which are currently in production, will have a colourful cover and large print and will contain drawings that appeal to children and help them understand what they are reading. They will be available in September.

Speaking at the launch of the project on January 21, the Minister of Education, the Honourable Burchell Whiteman, congratulated the Bible Society on their initiative, while teachers across the island, who were asked to evaluate the GNB text, have said that it will make Bible teaching much easier.

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