Amina Blackwood MeeksON THURSDAY, August 24, 2000, a huge portion of the radio talk show Straight Talk on KLAS FM 89 was suspended in order to facilitate the live transmission of the press conference that was being given by Police Commissioner Francis Forbes on crime.
The only telephone call that could be accommodated after the press conference before the programme ended that day came from a man in St. Elizabeth. He had insisted that the summary of the Commissioner's statement be interrupted because he had something desperately urgent to say: "Is not that the discussion about crime is not interesting you know. But I have a problem right now. I have not yet come to a solution with the Ministry of Education about where my child will go to school in September".
On the sidewalk
According to the story that he told, his son had been ordered transferred to another school because he had failed to keep pace with his academic work. He had spent the entire summer pleading for another chance on the basis of his son's exemplary behaviour. He saw very clearly that if the matter was left without a mutually accepted resolution his son was likely to end up on the sidewalk at age 15, sitting on the dreams his father had about ensuring that he had an education. Without an education he was also likely to end up on one side or another of the crime statistics of some future Police Commissioner.
Mr. Francis Forbes' conference on crime could only be "interesting" in the face of his urgent and live reality.
The lesson is one which we too often miss as we focus on exposing this or that "latest scandal" and taking pleasure in the finger-pointing of who is responsible, and making the inevitable comparison to the last occasion on which we suffered a similar ailment. All the while, to the exclusion of what it is that we need to do and to keep doing in order to prevent the paralysis of another scandal. The lesson is also about how we miss those things which are actually happening and form part of the healing process, part of the rescue mission.
Latest carnival
In the midst of the latest carnival of the bizarre of how low we can go, the lamentations about could we really have stooped to that and the almost childish pre-Christmas glee in some quarters about whether we had a wiretapping scandal of the proportions which could bring down governments, a dozen or so writers from across the Caribbean were quietly engaged in the business of how to produce reading materials for our children which would enhance their ability to view themselves in positive ways.
By extension the workshop examined how we could create literature which would encourage our children to become the kinds of human beings whose internal construct and value systems were so strong that they could not be tempted to act against their own better interests or against that of the wider collective.
Responsibility of media
At about the same time the symposium which formed part of the 25th Anniversary celebrations of the Caribbean Institute of Mass Communications raised questions which, among other things, forced the participants to consider the factors involved in shaping the identity and values of Caribbean peoples, the ways in which they defined and perceived their interests and the role and the responsibility of media in the process.
If the best we can do for our children is feed them scare stories about how worthless we have become, how untrustworthy everyone in public office is, how we always need international assistance, read from the First World, to help straighten us out and bring us to our senses, what kind of adults do we really expect them to become? Further, what kinds of adults do we really believe they think we are?
We seem to use every opportunity to point out to our children what miserable failures we have been and then we expect them to treat our leadership with some modicum of respect and seriousness. If we do not practically value what it is that we have created, what it is that we are capable of, then how do we convince those whom we produced that we have anything of worth for them to want to inherit? And why should we argue with the new values they structure around us everyday in order to fill the void between that which we say and that which we manifest?
If we really care about posterity we can take a cue from the CARICOM/ OAS children's writers workshop. We need to rescue self from self-hate, doubts and fears and regain in ourselves the healing values of self-love and self-confidence as the best way to ensure that our grandchildren have fewer scandals from the past for comparative analysis.
Shape and build
We must show them how to believe that they can continue to shape and build this land in ways that redeem national pride from the present assault.
Part of that heritage certainly must be in how we demonstrate an ability to manage and resolve conflict, to solve problems and avoid scandals.
But do we really believe that in spite of what happened yesterday, we can now build another memory, another childhood for the future and other eyes and hands and to see and touch, other dreams to pursue according to our ability to determine that which is in our own best interests? For this much is certain, life goes on. How depends on your answer.
Amina Blackwood Meeks is a communications specialist.
