I recently was introduced to a private school operating in Jamaica that only serves the most needed at no cost whatsoever. This institution, named Christel House Jamaica, is part of an international chain of schools that operate in environments that require fully funded assistance for segments of the populous in several countries across the world.

This includes free tuition, free books, free uniforms, free lunches and breakfast and free transport from home to school. I honestly couldn’t believe it. It is funded by a now deceased billionaire from North America, who has left a foundation to fund this enterprise.

Many years ago, this was a model I had in mind, except that my model would have the students away from their community for far longer hours. You see, I had an academic theory that it was the community that was creating the criminals, particularly the gang members.

I have since altered that theory to one that dictates that it is small space influence more often seen in homes that is creating the criminal.

I still, however, acknowledge the contribution of the community to provide the environment that allows the criminal mind to develop.

For example, if Lester Lloyd Coke had raised his family in Sweden, it is unlikely you would have created a ‘Dudus’ (Christopher Coke).

Illiteracy and barely functional literacy is another factor that is feeding into gang creation and growth. This is being created, not by bad schools, but by bad parents who are either sending them to school when they feel like, offering no support whatsoever, and simply not putting any real interest into the child’s education.

There is also still that element that is created by poverty, which simply can’t afford to provide lunch, uniform and bus fare. Unfortunately, the rabid nature of poverty also encourages, and sometimes disallows the parent from stealing the subsidy that is issued by Government to send a child to school because their needs are just so desperate. This same theft occurs when the parent is just so bad at the job of parenting that the subsidy is allocated to other wants long before it is received.

So Christel House Jamaica has essentially cut the parent out of the equation that necessitates them playing a functional role. They have, however, not blocked the parent from participating.

If you want to fight illiteracy, non-functioning students and stem their contribution to crime, you have to find a way where we are not reliant on parents in the equation. This sounds really bad. I know. The harsh reality is that they are just too many seriously poor parents, and really bad parents. Not saying that every bad parent is poor, or every poor parent is bad. Some of Jamaica‘s greatest citizens were parented by very poor people and there are wealthy people who are terrible parents. We need to remove though, a reliance on the parents because it is a part of the equation that can destroy the entire effort of our educational programme.

The Government already provides free primary and secondary education. The educators are barred from preventing students from attending school because of unpaid bills or uniform deficiencies. All the parents have to do is ensure they show up. There are school feeding programmes available.

But what if they don’t do their part? What if they send them occasionally, randomly, or when they choose to, or even only when they can afford it? Once they don’t play their part, the whole effort is a waste of money. With the degree of poverty in Jamaica, it is quite likely that many can’t afford to do their part and ensure they attend. Some can barely afford tea.

Then there is that segment of the society who are criminals, hooligans, or just plain irresponsible. We just can’t allow them to determine if the programme is going to fail.

The Christel House model, although welcoming their participation, does not need it to provide a sound education for their students. They actually pick up the students at their homes, they feed them upon arrival at school, they provide everything.

My father hated the freeness mentality. I have been accused of encouraging it in sports programmes that I operate. I agree that freeness mentality doesn’t create the most responsible people. The difference though, is the people who are benefiting from the educational process would and should have been funded by their parents.

I am not trying to raise their parents. Nor am I trying to educate them. I just believe that the process to ending the problem that was recently publicised at Pembroke Hall High School begins with the Government being totally responsible for educating the future adult citizens.

It’s really quite easy to enter high school and have the educational level of a first grader. I missed far too many chemistry classes because I was acting in the school play in third form. It was the most important thing in my life at the time because it gave me access to The Queen’s High School for Girls, which partnered in the schools drama festival with Calabar High.

It was great fun, but at the end of the period allocated, the only thing I knew about chemistry was how to spell it. I simply couldn’t catch up. This is actually what happens when you are six years old and attend school twice weekly, or missed it for a period of weeks. Once you go through a sustained period of missing school, you fall so far behind that you are simply just sitting down in a room.

Many of these schools will promote you class to class. You can barely write on your external examination sheets and you will be granted a place at non-traditional or traditional high schools.

If you are a male and live in southern St Catherine, there is a good chance that a gang will find use for the illiterate final product you have become. That’s when my colleagues and I ‘enter the chat’. Which is unfortunate, because I really wish I could intervene before I have to duck when I meet you.

There is literally nothing more you can do to improve the educational sector if you don’t fix the ‘parenting problem’, and to be frank, you can’t realistically fix the parent problem. Those people who simply don’t care about their children or care more about themselves than the future of their children were created by their parents. That person who is so poor that they steal the Government subsidy so they can eat food on a Sunday has been created by generational poverty.

There does need to be an effort to fix our parents. The minorities who are bad and the large number who are poor because of their history, that, however, is a bigger picture that requires a far longer plan.

A rethinking of the educational reality can be addressed by an acceptance that the only model that is going to work is one that can function both with good parents, bad parents, poor parents and parents with resources.

The current model only works with good parents, or parents who are not cursed with abject poverty.

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