By Daniel Thwaites,
Contributor
WITH THE tragic slaying of Gary Edwards, we once again have to face the depressing fact that a culture of violence is pervading all of the institutions of the country. A promising youth is now dead and there is no reason why it should have happened at all. It is important to keep the problem in perspective and to resist the temptation to say that all is lost when this sort of thing happens. But there is a dreadful repetitiousness to the stories of violent gore, and when it spreads directly to children and students it becomes even more frightening and disheartening.
Unfortunately, there is an extraordinary amount of conflict in daily negotiations in Jamaica and there will soon be need for a war-manual on how to enter the National Stadium when a football match is on. This is something visitors to the island have noticed and remarked upon, and it can even be quite shocking to someone who has been abroad for a long time. A high level of aggression seems to be part of the psycho-social constitution of the society.
For instance, when people meet it is often not clear whether they are greeting each other or about to enter into full-scale battle. Really, the only way to tell is by looking to see if there is a knife, gun, or other blunt object involved in the interchange.
Meanwhile, CNN is telling me that "road-rage" is a major problem in Los Angeles. But just in terms of the raw volume of bad-words discharged on a daily basis Jamaicans must be ahead of the competition by miles. And it seems to me that a fascination with violence can take some weird forms, like when there is an accident on the road and people screech to halt, not to offer help, but just to ask, "Is who dead?" Or when there is a fight and people run towards it instead of away from it. Does that happen anywhere else? I wonder.
There is a deeper, more alarming aspect to the progressive coarsening of the society having to do with the free-for-all. For it is not that the students are aberrant and disobedient, but rather that they have learned too well from the entertainers and politicians. On one version, the dispute that led to the death of Gary Edwards escalated with accusations and counter-accusations of each other as "chi chi men". One simply notes how it is that with consummate ease the politically endorsed crudity had made one more fight that much more likely.
Most recently there has been much focus on the far-too-frequent violent exchanges between agents of the state and citizens. But when students from fine schools take to murderously attacking each other it must give us pause to think about justice issues as between citizen and citizen.
People will be quick to point out that there is a long sordid history of violence and upheaval and discord in our society, but that is no consolation. People can be agents of change, regardless of the history, and too few have taken up the cudgels of peacemaking.
In fact, the Prime Minister's values and attitudes campaign, an attempt to address these sorts of issues, was ignored or ridiculed. But it is increasingly clear that some such programme has to inform a societal re-dedication to peacefulness and co-operation.
While schools generally try to insulate students from the violence that surrounds them, it is quite impossible to do that completely. The institution is just one influence, and perhaps not as strong an influence as the tons of junk absorbed through the television, some of the popular music, and elsewhere. And schools have never been able to keep their students entirely away from violent confrontation.
Karl Marx was charged with carrying a prohibited weapon while he was a student. In fact, he got into a duel and could have been killed. A classmate used a knife to wound Winston Churchill in the chest, but he recovered to do some pretty awesome works. Those fellows lived. Who knows what Gary Edwards might have become had his life not been foolishly wasted.
It is important not to romanticise some mythical past in which everyone lived together peacefully, but we don't need to be doing that to know that something has gone very wrong when students from premier schools take to street-fighting as extra-curricular activity. It reminds us most graphically that a country's development is not only measured by economic data, as so many of our tin-head gurus persist in believing, but also in the quality and texture of relationships between people.
Daniel Thwaites is involved in teaching and writing.
