TWO of Jamaica’s academic minds have suggested that efforts to keep boys and young men – especially those residing in the inner-cities – in school, should be given priority, to help check the island’s worsening problem of violent crimes.

“We have to stop trying to go around it. If we can’t ensure boys are in school, we cannot reduce the pool from which the dons draw their shottas,” said anthropologist Herbert Gayle.

“We have to find other ways of incorporating the marginal males within the educational system, providing more opportunities for them,” argued sociologist Orville Taylor who believes that crime in Jamaica is mostly “a young man phenomenon where the murders are committed by youths in the 18-24 age group”.

“What you have here in Jamaica is a fairly large inner-city type population of that very fragile, marginal and high risk group of young men, ” Taylor said.

Both men, in separate interviews with the Sunday Observer, addressed the chronic problem of the spiralling murder rate which topped 1,400 killings last year for the first time in Jamaica’s history.

Drawing on the findings from Barry Chevannes’ 2003 South St Catherine study titled “Learning to be a Man”, Gayle, who lectures at the University of the West Indies (UWI), pointed out that 11 and 12-year-old boys were involved in shootings, lending urgency to the need for them to be in school rather than in the clutches of their neighbourhood dons.

“It is so very clear why they can do it, they do not attend school. And if they don’t attend school, they are already a part of the pool from which the ‘soldiers’ are going to be created,” he noted. “If the Government provides a system, be it through PATH or whatever it is, that can ensure that boys are in school, that in itself can have an immediate impact.”

PATH is the state-run safety net Programme for Advancement Through Health and Education, spearheaded by state minister for social security, Senator Floyd Morris.

Chevannes study acknowledged that boys in school might engage in violent behaviour, but found evidence that an education gave them choices.

“In ‘Learning to be a Man’, we found boys who are in their school clothes but they still have a gun on them (so) we are not being naïve. But we are saying, if you have a policy that ensures every child gets an education, it does two things,” Gayle reasoned. “Education is recreating the man, and you are robbing the pool of potential shottas because he can’t be in school and, at the same time, have a meeting about how to go over the gully and shoot up the people them.”

Agreeing largely with Gayle, Taylor suggested that the one in four ratio of males to females at tertiary level could not go on because it was the men of college age that are out there performing the crimes. A way must be found to incorporate them, he urged.

Director of communications at the education youth and culture ministry Dorrett Campbell admitted that there was a need to implement initiatives geared at keeping boys in school. She said that the ministry had been making some strides in that regard, the objective being to keep boys engaged and interested in their education.

“What we have been doing is to re-examine the methodologies and teaching strategies used within the schools to make them more student-centred and even more male-centred. Research has shown that our boys don’t like to be talked at. They like to be involved, engaged in discussion, and we need to create that kind of teaching environment,” Campbell said.

At the same time, she said, it was discovered that boys were refusing to attend classes in order to avoid the increased competition posed by their female counterparts.

“What we have discovered is that there are some males who when they perceive that their female counterparts are out-performing them, they use abscondment as a defence mechanism,” she noted. “This is something that our guidance counsellors have been following.

They make an effort to visit homes to find out why the students, particularly the boys, are not going to school and try to find out what their issues are. Sometimes they make a breakthrough, sometimes they don’t.”

“I think we need a psychological transformation. We have to re-examine the way we acculturise our boys into thinking that because they are the traditional breadwinners in the family they must get money fast, and education really is not a fast vehicle for income earning,” said Campbell. “That kind of re-engineering has to be done systematically…”

“If we can tone down some of the role models who uphold the values of quick money, stardom and celebrity, and this is not in condemnation of anybody, then boys can begin to understand that not all of them are going to be deejay stars or even positive area leaders, and that all of them will need a solid education to be much more than just a blazing star that goes out as soon as it lights up,” Campbell said.