NINETEEN of the 162 unmanageable teenaged boys enrolled at a newly-opened government-run truancy camp in Trelawny were expelled Sunday night for fighting.

Adinhair Jones, the acting director of the National Youth Service (NYS), who is directing the camp, yesterday confirmed the expulsions and said the camp authorities had decided to “weed out those who would make the process difficult”.

“We sent home 19 of the set (of boys) that turned up for the camp,” Jones told the Observer.

Jones, who admitted that he had expected that some of the boys would be eliminated, said that the 19 were all from Kingston.

The camp, located at the Baptist Conference Centre in Nutshell, Trelawny, opened last Saturday (See feature story in the TeenAge section) and is to be followed by a similar camp for girls later this month.

Originally, 180 boys were expected to be enrolled at the camp. However, 18 did not turn up at the designated pick-up spots in Montego Bay and Kingston and on Sunday, five of them left after making formal requests, the Observer learned yesterday.

The boys, mostly from inner-city communities, are aged between 15 and 17 and were selected from over 300 submissions from guidance counsellors and parents.

Their problems range from absenteeism and disorderly conduct to basically not performing in school.

“Some of them are considered to be aggressive, violent, defiant of authority, lacking in compliance, (and) hiding from school,” Jones had told journalists at a news conference called by Education Minister Burchell Whiteman last week Tuesday. “Some of them have been expelled (from school).”

Indiscipline and violence in Jamaican schools have been cause for serious concern in the education sector and two years ago, Whiteman announced a pilot programme which would give “time-out” to overly aggressive students who would be taken from school and sent for specialist counselling.

But teachers have complained that the programme has not worked well and some principals have suggested, instead, the establishment of military-type “boot camps” where insubordinate students would undergo stiff discipline and receive professional psychological and sociological help.

But last week, Whiteman made it clear that he was not in favour of that approach and stressed that Camp Nutshell would not be about ‘beating discipline’ into the boys.

“Psychology and modern research suggest that there are some things that you really cannot change by… enforcement without diagnosing the root cause of the problem,” Whiteman said at the news conference. “There has to be some commitment of will, some understanding of the basic factors.

“This is a much more clinically responsible approach than what people describe as the boot camp, and I believe that all of us should give this a chance,” he said.

Yesterday, Jones said that the other boys at the camp had “settled down nicely”.

“Today (Monday) was very good in terms of people going to sessions.”

The boys are scheduled to spend a month at Nutshell, working through a programme modelled roughly off that which the NYS offers its trainees, including courses in creative arts, creative expressions, a core curriculum which deals with behaviour and human development, and sports “to teach them the value of team building”, Jones explained.

At the end of the month, they will be reintegrated into their secondary schools and each assigned an adult mentor who will help track their progress.

During the school year, the boys will also attend ongoing personal development workshops.

Yesterday, Jones said that the 19 expelled boys would be replaced and he expressed hope that “some other opportunity for rehabilitation will be created for them”.