OCHO RIOS, St Ann – Earl Smith, the principal of the Mona High School in Kingston, has called for the banning of songs with lyrical contents that have a negative impact on the youth.

Smith’s call was made Wednesday at the Jamaica Teachers’ Association’s (JTA) conference on classroom behaviour management, being held here in Ocho Rios.

“The question is, ‘what do we do?’ as there is a view which says that anything artistic should not be censored because it is a creative expression, etc. But if it is having that kind of negative impact on our young people, that is something that we are fighting against, the violence and the aggression, then we have to do something about it. And my view is that these things should be censored, banned from the airwaves and the electronic media. I have no qualms about it,” said Smith.

He added that all types of music, whether they be dancehall, hip-hop or rap, should be banned once the lyrics are negative.

The three-day conference, which ended yesterday, was hosted by the JTA, as several schools across the island have been grappling with ways to address violence involving problem students at their institutions.

The issue of gangs in schools and ways of dealing with disruptive behaviour were among the topics discussed Wednesday.

Mona High School, Smith said, was like several other schools across Jamaica being affected by behavioural problems.

“There are students at my school who smoke ganja, and recently we found students on the playfield having sex,” he told colleague educators.

“The school is trying hard to cope and. I see this conference as sort of a saviour because here we can share our views, we can go back to the school with some new ideas as to how to cope because we want to find a way to cope,” said the Mona High principal.

“It’s a great conference and I would like to know that at the end of it we come up with some serious resolution that can impact on society,” he said.

According to Smith, schools were expected to find the solution to the problem as no one was depending on the church, the family, the media or the government for a solution.

“What everybody is saying is that the school will have to find the solution. Well, if the schools will have to find a solution then we must make the society know that they have to have this in place, since they are depending on us. I think we have to take drastic actions to deal with drastic problems,” the school principal said.