WHAT will Jamaica be like in 2035? Should we expect greater deterioration in the social and environmental conditions and their repercussion such as serious decline in tourism and increased human and capital flight? Quantitatively or qualitatively, are the trends pointing toward a brighter day or toward the dystopian failed state?

Never mind Vision 2030, our national development plan. I doubt it was ever meant to be taken seriously. I have been pondering these questions after a week filled with extraordinary pain and loss: three children burnt alive in a place wishfully named Hopeful Village; a 14-year-old schoolgirl, also the victim of sexual abuse, viciously killed in St Thomas as she prepared for school at a time when she should have been safely in her bed; a mother and toddler murdered in St James; a seven-year-old boy sodomised in Clarendon; and, in Manchester, my classmate from primary school cheated death after a murderous boyfriend attacked her with a machete and a pickaxe.

These events are not unusual. It is precisely for this reason that they triggered a deep existential sadness — a recognition that savagery is an increasing part of who we are, and worse, that those who bear responsibility for finding solutions are more like overdressed bobble heads spewing mindless psychobabble.

The predictable rejoinder to people like me is that bad things happen in the United States too. I know, but this is a silly response for several reasons. First, the fact that it happens in the US does not make it acceptable anywhere. Second, Jamaica and the United States are so dissimilar in physical and population size that, serious crimes — though always regrettable — do not have the same impact. The difference is comparable to pouring a tablespoon of salt each in a swimming pool and a teacup. The first would not affect the taste at all, but in the second case, it would do so quite intensely. In other words, the frequency of these incidents in a concentrated space makes crime a much bigger problem in Jamaica than in the US. Finally, when something untoward happens in the US, one generally gets the sense that there are competent people in charge, working intensely to get to the root of the problem regardless of who the victim is.

The opposite is true in Jamaica. Too many aspects of the country feels like a runaway train with our most vulnerable citizens as hapless victims. There is little sense that critical areas impacting people’s well-being are being given the attention they deserve, or that they are being addressed with consistency and urgency.

In our high-pressure environment, there is a need for responsive health care focused on physical and mental health, for example, but the system is antiquated, lacking both infrastructure and training and expertise at multiple levels, including management of resources and especially management of processes. Why can’t the Government design a modern health care system? Why can’t we develop formulae to determine who can pay, how much, and for what and let them pay?

National Security Minister Peter Bunting is testing new approaches and one gets the feeling sometimes that if he continues, he will eventually get the crime rates down. However, we are nowhere close and will not be for a long time. In the meantime, his over reliance on statistics often seems out of touch, as if he is completely ignorant of the fact that security is a qualitative issue. It is not just the absence of mayhem and murder, but much more the relative freedom from it. For us, that sense of freedom will come from a completely different kind of social environment — one that is disciplined and educated with low levels of unemployment and social deviance. That will take years of concerted effort and intense collaboration with ministries like education, a sensible culture ministry, and the intensely high-functioning human services ministry that we need.

The high school graduate of 2035 is unborn. The processes we are putting in place now should be to engineer the kind of citizen we want that graduate to be. Just as there is a need to recognise that the complex problems we face today were decades in the making, we must recognise that the solutions also need to be deliberate and long-term, even as we try to control the symptoms. I have said before that there is a need for an overarching philosophical framework to give form, direction and meaning to education. This should be a given at any other time, but more so as we battle the confusion of globalisation and the prevalence of communication technology, which themselves need to be understood and used in context.

I also questioned the thinking behind giving tablets to schoolchildren now; whether it would have made sense to focus on elementary issues like safe transportation. Specifically, I asked: What educational goals do we wish to achieve? What are the guidelines governing their use and how are they evaluated? These were pertinent questions since we are prone to taking useful concepts, bastardising them and ending up with net negative results.

Last week, I heard that the tablets were given to students at a cost of more than $1.4 billion, with no foolproof provision to block inappropriate conten, and Minister of Science and Technology Phillip Paulwell reportedly told Parliament that it cannot be blocked. Barring the revelation on Cliff Hughes Online, I have heard no outcry — not from Parliament or the JTA or the plethora of organisations posing as child welfare agencies.

It is embarrassing and incomprehensible that, between the ministry of science and technology and the ministry of education, no one did due diligence to ensure that the tablets are retrofitted for educational purposes only. In fact, neither ministry seems to understand the concept very well.

So we put children in long skirts and mandate Christian devotions and then we hand them unending access to pornography in a country where unhealthy attitude towards sex and sexuality, including objectification, paedophilia and voyeurism are major problems.

I wonder what will happen when this generation come of age?

Grace Virtue, PhD, is a social justice advocate