Dear Editor,

I would like to offer my thoughts on the column ‘Redesigning the civics curriculum’ published in the Jamaica Observer on January 9, 2023.

In it the columnist stated that, “Jamaica’s woes exist not because civics lessons are absent from our schools but because the family structure has failed.” A true statement. But it might have been useful to acknowledge that the family structure has, ever since the inception of Jamaica, been dysfunctional due to the legacy of brutality and divisions engendered in the country by its colonial overlords.

Now, in general, some may attribute the breakdown in the acceptable norms and values of the society, or what you describe as “the lack of national pride, love, and regard for human life”, as an absence of right living as dictated by the Bible. But this declining level of religiousity may not be the cause of the breakdown in Jamaican society, for Jamaica seems to have as many churches as rum bars.

Poverty and lack of economic opportunities are also cited as the usual suspects for the decline of civic or national pride, and this is so despite the great national and civic contributions that Jamaican sport stars and musical icons have made to Jamaica.

But counterbalancing the undoubted distinguished inputs that Jamaican heroes and heroines make and have made to Jamaica, there is a sore lack of knowledge about Jamaica’s history, and so, when there is a lack of knowledge, the people cannot achieve their full potential.

As Marcus Garvey said: “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.” So this lack of knowledge leads to a race to the bottom, as is seen, for example, in a certain genre of music that glorifies crassness, gangsterism, materialism, and gibberish, and which panders to the worst instincts in our youth.

So, to sum it all up, there needs to be a collective and individual psychological, moral, and historical awakening in the hearts and minds of Jamaicans, especially the impressionable youth.

They are the future of the island, and if Jamaica is to achieve the aims of Marcus Garvey, who proclaimed, “Up you mighty race, you can accomplish what you will,” a civics curriculum is absolutely critical to the inculcation of civic virtue and pride in the nation.

George Garwood

merleneg@yahoo.com