Several years ago I visited a high school in south-west St Andrew. I waited until I out of patience to the see the principal, who later explained that earlier he had to send home a misbehaving student. He advised that her aggressive mother later gained access to the school and both mother and child had to be counselled. The head of the school then pointed me to a filing cabinet with two of the four drawers filled with logbooks on a history of similar parental misbehaviour.

In recent months the issue of disorder and violence in schools has reached a state of emergency proportion. The matter is now  beyond the boundary of the school and education. Clearly it has to do with breakdowns and crises in the family and community. No amount education and classroom management can treat this malady.

In recent weeks some policymakers and educational professionals have been speaking on this crisis. Central to the examination of the tragedy of disasters in the nation’s family and community life. There must be an investigation of the new and dangerous values of the politics of the 1980s ‘new world order’ which was imposed on countries such as Jamaica by the triumph of democracy and capitalism.

Has the system of education and schooling failed us? If the role of the system of education is to prepare the young for their future, and also to prepare them for personal development with a view that this capacity will contribute in the long run to the development of society, then the system has failed.

The issue of personal development is related to the schooling of young people in moral and ethical issues. This would include definitions of about good and bad, moreso good behaviour and bad behaviour.

Schooling has not successful in instilling in the thinking of our students, in general, an internal compass that can direct them away from the “isms, fads, and frills” of both the internal and external settings.

Permit me to share two historical moments reflecting on similar conditions: Between 1838 and 1879 there was the emergence of a large roaming army of what we call today unattached youth. They were neglected as they evolved into a huge group of criminals and an overflowing population in the prisons. In fact, Augier and Gordon, in Sources of West Indian History, give the account of the colonial Government in 1865 being blamed for keeping the masses ignorant; hence, high levels of youth crime and imprisonment followed.

In recent decades I experienced a situation of crime and violence in society carried out by a large group of neglected youth in Brooklyn. Families had been torn apart, poverty raged, and opportunities for the black youth, especially the uneducated black youth, had become scarce and very far apart. The city’s Government developed programmes in community reconstruction and legal and social reforms in response to matters concerning violence and disorder in schools and the community. Some reflections of the occurrence of disorder and violence in schools and the community point to a root of defective families and community relations.

As we listen to the voices of the policymakers and leaders, it is important that we bear in mind the nature of some of the families and communities from which these children originate. Many observers are ready to lay the blame of the crisis squarely on Jamaican popular culture, with emphasis on dancehall music, but there is the larger cultural sphere with powerful influence on the values and attitudes arising from the thrust of the new world order, globalisation, deregulation, and liberalisation of the 1980s.

These new ways of thinking have displaced traditional values and attitudes, imposing new principles grounded in rabid individualism and greed. This also is supported by the emergence of new forms of mass culture, such as the cellphone and the electronic games; the commercialisation of popular music; the fashion explosion; and developments in advertising — all have contributed to the creation of an order in which respect does not reside.

In search of solutions

The international regimes constructed laws to prevent the country from banning certain violent and lewd types of movies and advertisements. These are treated as commodities in free trade. The previous standard of decency has all but been erased. Of course, much about our dancehall culture, with its powerful cultural influence among the young, has deteriorated into an abyss. Many parts of our inner cities, where most of the offenders reside, are products of major disorders, drugs, violence, lewd fashion, bleaching, tattooing, among other previously unacceptable ways of living. Many children become exposed to these unfit ways of life. While some escape it, others are being apprenticed by parents and some members of their communities into the  wayward life. These parents, more often than not, are the ones fighting or threatening schools administrators and teachers.

In the past months and weeks we have witnessed some darks days of violence and disorder in our school system. In response to this ‘state of emergency in education’ there have been calls for soldiers to be placed in some schools designated as war zones. And, the Ministry of Education vigorously opposed the call for the reintroduction of caning — a ridiculous idea from Owen Speid, president of Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA).

Against the background of the disorders and violence caused by some parents in the schools, the prime minister called for the use of laws to nab parents of misbehaving kids. In colonial times the laws were advanced to solve problems like these, but today we need to go look to laws, but also to look beyond punishment in the quest to seek change.

In a recent speech Attorney General Marlene Malahoo Forte expressed that the Government is taking seriously the reports of hostility towards teachers and, by extension, the violence and disorder in schools. At the same time, she complained that community welfare is sidelining the job of the Member of Parliament, who ought to be a lawmaker. It is my thinking that the Members of Parliament’s first responsibility has to do with the constituency. There needs to be a redefinition of the role of the Member of Parliament in order to ensure that the representatives lead change in their constituencies.

Curricular response and classroom management alone cannot solve the problem, political leaders must be deployed to their constituencies to lead the country out of this crisis. It is time for Members of Parliament to be sent into their constituencies to deal with this social problem. The solution is to be found in social, curricular, and cultural responses. Many parents know that they must send their children to school, but they know not the reasons. Many do not know much about the world outside of their area of living. Many are the greatest influence on their children’s qualities of poor behaviour and the attendant poor academic performance. There are those in the same communities who try to succeed. These are usually the students who ‘live’ in their homes as opposed to on the streets, and are under control of their parents, and more often are exposed to some kind of religious/spiritual leadership.

There is a dangerous subculture that exists in that setting. This often the source from which some expressions in the popular dancehall music find content — and articulate it without due artistic consideration. As such, any ingress into the communities ought to be accompanied by a campaign in educational literacy. It will be a long journey, but we must start now.

In the end, the question leads back to the issue about the overarching philosophy of education in Jamaica and its failed mission 58 years after Independence in Jamaica.

Louis E A Moyston, PhD, is a university lecturer. Send comments to the Observer or thearchives01@yahoo.com.