THE EDITOR, Sir:
CLAN CARTHY has scored the hat-trick in the widely acclaimed V-League in High Schools nationwide. The tournament organised by PALS (Pupils Against Learning in Schools) to mark the start of Education Week kicked off at Frome Technical on May 6. The second game got under way at Calabar High on May 16 and on May 20 Clan Carthy scored the third goal in the series of violent matches. I hope to God it is the end of the competition.
Look, can you see it? The wielding of weapons. Listen, can you hear it? The screams of terrified teachers, the shouts of scared students. The frightened frenzy is not fiction; it is fear. A fear that now features in schools of the 21st century.
It makes you want to board a plane and land in the 1970s when there were curious faces, babbling voices, pretty ponytails, toothless smiles and the engine of education was in high gear. But alas! Our schools are under siege.
The mad melee at Frome Technical High exacted varied degrees of analysis: rural rancour, sugar-belt mentality... But, when an academic darling like Calabar falls to a similar fate, the diagnosis must be rerun. Moreover, when the ripple effect is felt at Clan Carthy, the alarm button buzzes. Violence has become a recurring decimal in the educational equation.
It is not a 'Lime Tree Lane' or 'Surburban Bliss' problem. It cuts across social strata and geographic borders.
Why is crime taking the elevator and the curriculum taking the stairs? The reality is frightening. Our schools will turn out more gangsters than governors, more corpses than corporals. Do we turn our schools into boot camps? Must the infrastructure be customised to accommodate police posts?
Hell No! Schools should still be sanctuaries. We need a paradigm shift.
Parents, students and teachers - the stakeholders in this 'business' of education - must share common goals.
Parents can no longer continue to deposit children at the school gate with the hope that they will be trained by the system. It is a long walk from the gate to the classroom. Additionally there are some parents who sentence their children to school and are terrified when the holidays offer them parole. And as is always the case those children who are sent to school get caught in the web.
There has got to be a greater level of accountability and responsibility. Girls must grow with grace not glamour; boys must mature with manners not money. In some instances the 'trouble' children are 'troubled' children. Some take the wrong path for gangs hail them when parents don't hug them.
There is a hollow inside all of us that hungers for happiness and hope. Parents must be the 'Sole Provider' of such soul food. I remember passing a group of boys in the aftermath of 9/11 and was shocked by the exchange.
"Whe 'appen Bin Laden?"
With the grin of a gangster the other replied,
"Easi warrior."
Our values are messed up. How quickly do teenagers hop on the train of terror? Oh how quickly they do a deed poll and become Warrior King, Merciless, Serial Kid, Bounty Killer... Not so long ago it would have been:
"Wha 'appen fatha?"
"Cool son"
The damning realisation is, the family fabric is torn. Students are an essential angle of the educational triangle. They must understand that every choice has a consequence. Good is rewarded and evil is punished, not protected. There is a growing band of 'The Young and Restless' that wield weapons but refuse to hold pens, aim rifles yet will not argue issues, share a prison cell and cannot share a classroom, abuse girls but 'adore' their mothers, sniff cocaine yet cannot smell death. This is the paradox of our times. Our values are anaemic; our society haemorrhages.
Educators form a major angle of the triangle. We cannot continue to look to Piaget while the tremors of violence ricochet. We no longer face gums in the classroom; it's guns in the classroom, it's not magazines in bags but machetes in bags. We are endangered. We were trained as mental developers not metal detectors. The battle is on and books cannot buffer us. We must now clamour for bullet-proof vest, stab guard, and machete mask.
We cannot shuffle the cards in the old deck. We need a new deck of disciplinary measures. The confines of the classroom must become the business of the boardroom. Education Officers cannot continue to 'log in' and 'log out' of schools. They must 'log on' to the education site and stay on-line. Our colleges and universities must revisit, revamp and reconstruct their modules. Training must be tailored to suit the profile of the new generation. There can no longer be a Ministry of Education but Ministering Educators.
The kettle of violence is on high boil and the cup of endurance is running over. Thank God for the deafening silence of Jamaicans for Justice and the JTA (Jamaica Trauma Association). The support is so overwhelming that we have found ourselves by ourselves. After each trauma, like super-humans we don the robe of responsibility and boldly go where angels fear to trod for it's business as usual. While the villains are hunted the victims are haunted. But we must go on... Until we become casualties of continuous crime we must go on. In the words of Paul Laurence Dunbar:
We must wear the mask
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile
Why should the world be overwise?
Nay let them only see us, while
We wear the mask
We smile, but O Great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise
But let the world dream otherwise
We wear the mask
But, all is not lost. We can get past our past for adversity has a unifying element and a changing quality. The school environment must once again be education-friendly. Deviance must be deleted as we save our students. We cannot allow violent viruses to corrupt our system for we dare not crash. "Betta mus com." The bus of action must now depart for the destination of change. Change is a process, not an event.
Still, we cannot expect the fairy to wave the magic wand. Yet there can be no exodus without a genesis. The silent majority must speak out. For, As the World Turns, All our children will develop a Fatal Attraction to the Lethal Weapon and find themselves in General Hospital.
Has each of us found that cause to
live or are we prepared to die?
If we must die - oh let us nobly die....
I am etc.,
WAYDIA CLARKE
Teacher
Frome Technical High School
Westmoreland
