Girls Can We Educate We Dads

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Girls Can We Educate We Dads?

“Girls can we educate we dads” is a poem written by James Berry, a Jamaican poet in the 1900’s which speaks about a girl who criticizes her dad’s stereotypical views about girls’ behavior and thoughts. The main message or theme that the author is trying to send to the reader is that involving stereotyping, generalization, and sexism and how these thoughts are present in many men all around the world yet are not true.

This poem consists of many factors which give the poem its own unique idea such as the mood or feeling the reader gets while reading, the tone or the author’s attitude towards the poem, and the diction or the choice of words the author chose. Diction plays a major role in every poem or story especially this one. Many of these factors contribute to diction greatly, which affects this poem in general.

First of all, the diction in this poem is vernacular. The language that this poem is written in is Creole because the author is in fact a Jamaican. This style of writing or language affects the theme greatly. For it does not only explain how stereotyping is in this culture but it transfers on to other cultures as well. This includes the author’s image of it affecting all the educated and uneducated people of Jamaica. Stereotyping is not only present in Jamaica, or only with the low class or the high class. It is present everywhere and the fact that the words in this poem are Creole inflect this message on the reader.

This poem includes a lot of repetition in more than one occasion. For example when the author constantly repeats phrases such as “a girl is a girl” and “laughy laughy” that alone sends a message to the reader. That message is that when someone has an opinion, especially a stereotypical opinion his mind is set on that opinion and will not change his mind. Also, it helps understand the theme or meaning of the story a lot more.

The author uses simple yet effective devices such as...
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