Youth reform IN RECENT weeks we have seen the results of just what a little love, support and discipline can do for our males, if only someone took the time to show them how to tap into their buried potential and channel it productively. Last week, five inmates at the St. Catherine Adult Correctional Centre received certificates for successfully completing the first ever GCE O'Level programme to be offered in that prison. Some of the inmates were able to achieve Bs under the supervision of the prison's psychiatrist Dr. George Leveridge and social worker Jerine Singh after only a year of rigorous application in Biology, Mathematics and English Language. A few weeks earlier, 31 teenaged boys, several of whom lived for extended periods on the streets of the Corporate Area, received passing grades in May's sitting of the Grade Nine Achievement Test. All were slated to start classes in traditional and technical high schools. In accepting his certificate at the prison chapel last Thursday one of the inmates, speaking on behalf of his colleagues thanked "all the people who have shown us trust and believed in us and see the positive side in us; that we never see for ourselves and showing us the way...". Similarly one of the street boys in the YMCA programme had expressed shock at his own performance. Both reactions point to deficiencies in the socialisation of our males which has led them to ignore their own potential. These recent successes are but samples of what can be achieved if the grand schemes of rehabilitation of a lost generation of Jamaican youth do indeed come to pass. The easy part of announcing the intention has been done both in relation to the street children and in the projected reform of prison policy. It is past time to move to the next stage of comprehensive change on a national level. The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner.
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