Education Minister Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon on Sunday urged the Church community to rally behind educators to help rescue Jamaican students who she contends are displaying troubling behaviour because of the absence of religious values from their upbringing resulting from broken homes.

Morris-Dixon, in lamenting that “too many” Jamaican children do not attend church services and are not taught to value same, said it was no doubt a contributing factor to the issues now being experienced with maladaptive behaviour.

“Our environment has changed. Our homes have changed. Our communities have changed. The values we used to teach our children are not the same…our children need to know God. Our children need to encounter God,” said the education minister during a service put on by the Jamaica Teaching Council to commemorate World Teachers’ Day 2025 at the Queen Street Baptist Church in downtown Kingston.

Noting that she was speaking not only as the Minister of Education but also as a Christian who has experienced the positive impact of Christian values in her own upbringing, Morris Dixon stressed that it was an imperative that “God is in our schools”.

“And so on World Teachers’ Day, and I’m standing here in church, I’m not talking about the statistics. I’m talking about God and the need for God in our schools and our need for God to sustain our teachers because it’s hard going. There are a lot of dark forces that are after our children. They’re after our children and we have to do all we can to protect them. It means we need to pray hard every single day for our teachers because they are going through a lot in our classrooms. It’s not easy,” Morris Dixon stated.

“On World Teachers’ Day I ask all those who are listening — whether you’re here or at home listening — to pray for our teachers and our schools. I believe that we can achieve the goals we want to achieve. Our children need us to achieve it. But we’re only going to achieve it if our teachers are happy. If our teachers feel fulfilled. If our teachers feel like they have the support of the entire community. They can’t do it alone,” added Morris Dixon.

The education minister argued that teachers “cannot be asked to deliver the results that we want when our families have basically neglected their role in raising our children and when communities have neglected their roles”.

In calling for the support of the Church, Morris Dixon said, “Teaching is not just the role of the teacher, it’s the role of all of us. And so we come here in church and we sing all these wonderful hymns of praise to God and we listen to God’s word. But it cannot end there. It means when we come to church you really come to church to fortify yourself, to fill yourself with God’s grace so that you can leave here and do his work.

“What we’re being asked to do when we leave here is to truly be collaborators in this education endeavour. It is not the teachers alone. And I say it all the time, the Church is absolutely important. The Church has to be a part of this entire process of education. It cannot be left to the Ministry of Education”.

In emphasising that the leadership of the education ministry includes committed Christians, Morris Dixon said, “The Church has to be central to this role.”

“And so my charge to the Church is: What are you doing? Our children are in danger. Our children are under a lot of stress. You hear it. You see it in the media all the time. We cannot sit down and say, ‘Woe is me,’ and ‘Look how bad the children are now.’

“No, they have not been given what I was given. What I was given was a community that supported me, a church community that always prayed for me, was always there for me. Our children don’t have that at home.There’s nobody at home at night saying, ‘Let’s pray before we go to bed.’ They don’t have it. There’s no one in the community stopping them and saying, ‘You know, I’m praying for you.’ And that’s where the Church comes in. We have to play a bigger part because these children need you and our teachers need your support in the school system. We cannot get the outcomes we want without the Church taking its rightful place in raising our children in our schools,” she contended.

World Teachers’ Day was observed globally on Sunday, October 5 under the theme ‘Recasting Teaching as a Collaborative Profession’.