MONTEGO BAY, St James

As the society grapples with a turbulent wave of crime and violence, Cornwall College’s dean of discipline, Robertino Gordon, is calling on Government to establish a policy to hold parents accountable for their children’s upbringing.

“There has to be a national position, a governmental position on parenting, because it is a part of the foundation of the problem,” said a passionate Gordon.

“If the Government does not do something it’s not going to happen by accident, it has to be a national position, it is not going to happen haphazardly.”

Gordon, who has been an educator for over three decades, lamented that educators now have to spend half of their time teaching, and the other half parenting and policing, arguing that parents are reinforcing bad behaviour of their offsprings.

“If we can’t change that equation we are in serious trouble!” he bemoaned.

“The other part of the home/school relationship is this, parents reinforce the bad behaviour. Parents will call me when I express concerns about a boy’s uniform and ask, ‘what does a uniform have to do about education?’ When a parent asks you that, it tells you the type of situation with which we are confronted.”

Noting that some parents have to work late, he, however, called on them to make sacrifices, such as ensuring that their children are punctual at school.

“When a child comes to my school late and I ask, ‘why are you late? and he says he woke up late, I cannot accept that. They [parents], have to make the sacrifice,” the dean of discipline argued.

Meanwhile, head of the Crime Investigation Branch (CIB), Assistant Commissioner of Police Ealan Powell, stressed that parents, no matter how poor, need to prioritise.

“I take the point about people being poor, but it is not an excuse for bad behaviour. Sometimes we use that to show our lack of appreciation for prioritising, for doing the right thing. We have the latest Mexican hair, but our children going to school don’t have the books. The parents have their priorities upside down,” ACP Powell, a Cornwall College past student, charged.

He was speaking at Cornwall College during the recent Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) ‘Youth Leaders Power Lunches’, series, which saw members of the High Command and assistant commissioners of police host lunchtime mini-forums with select students from their alma maters.

Approximately 20 students, chosen based on their present leadership roles within their schools, participated at each installment.

Meanwhile, ACP Powell invited suggestions from the students on how to resolve the crime issue in the parish of St James, which recorded 268 murders last year.

Headboy, Mikail Clarke, posited that “cultural retention” is the answer.

“In order to address crime, we have to as a nation, acknowledge the simplest things that have gone wrong. We are so focused on moving forward that we have forgotten what we have lost in the process. And I believe that is where it started,” said Clarke a former junior mayor of Montego Bay.

ACP Powell, who hammered home the point that education is the escape route from poverty, discouraged the glorification of people with ill-gotten gains, such as scammers and drug pushers.

“…what we have seen now is, the scammers, the drugs man who can’t read and write, who don’t wish to be able to read and write, has no education, but he has wealth; we so glorify wealth and he is the person that we respect most. So don’t respect people because of wealth and the power that they have, because of their wealth. That is the wrong thing!” ACP Powell stressed.