Whiteman - Rudolph Brown/ Chief Photographer
The following are excerpts from a recently-held Gleaner Editors' Forum on values and attitudes. Particpants were Minister of Information, Burchell Whiteman; head of the National Steering Committee on the Values and Attitudes Programme, Rev. Marjorie Lewis; information
officer in the Office of the Prime Minister, Granville Newell; Family Church on the Rock elder, Franz Fletcher and HEART/NTA's
director of Technical High School Development Project, Loveda Jones.
MINISTER WHITEMAN:
WHAT WE are primarily concerned with is ensuring that the issue remains in the public arena and on people's minds and that we reflect all the small steps which are contributing to a regeneration or an improvement of the values and the attitudes that we display. It is not a
government programme. The
present Prime Minister saw where we were headed 10, 12 years ago and had a national consultation where people vented, came up with constructive ideas. It was initiated by the Prime Minister but it's essentially a national programme in leadership. Churches, people of goodwill, parents, community members, everybody had a stake and had a responsibility, and what we seek to do from the OPM, and through the national Steering Committee, is to always keep that message alive.
In fact, people have said that we in Government and Parliament must set the example, and we recognise that, but so too must people in the church, so too must parents in their homes. What we don't have is a collective vision of what that example should be and how it should be set. There is no
unanimity view around all the
values and all the behaviours we should be displaying, but we settled on some in the National Steering Committee. It's a process, it is by no means a short term activity.
REVEREND LEWIS:
The National Steering Commit-tee has developed the theme "For a better me for a better you, for a better Jamaica" and out of the consultations and other discussions we sought to identify some of the core values that we wanted to look at, like respect, honesty and truthfulness, forgiveness and tolerance, peace and love, fairness and so on. We see our role as four-fold, which will include facilitation, networking, messaging and measuring. We took the theme of respect last year and we made a major focus on this theme and that was based on our experience and on the research that was available. In terms of labour research, people found that if workers felt disrespected that would often create even more problems than perceptions that wages were low. It is part of the language, the greeting of respect, and we know that if people feel 'dissed' serious things will happen.
GOVERNANCE
Another thrust has been to look at the question of governance.
We always talk about 'the Government', 'the Opposition', 'the churches', the everybody else. And whereas we need to demand accountability, values and attitudes really demand all of us having an input. We have had one workshop in Montego Bay that involved people in representational politics, councillors and so on, as well as community leaders, to talk about how good values and attitudes can be promoted through the process of governance. We are currently in conversation with the Speaker of the House and with the President of the Senate to look at ways in which we can look at our parliamentarians and say what are the stresses that they are experiencing, what are the challenges that they face and how together we can promote proper values and attitude through governance. In addition to that all government ministries have been asked to identify one person within the ministry who will be responsible for the promotion of values and attitudes, and that would involve things like customer service, staff relations and all the areas that would go to reflect values and attitudes.
MINISTER WHITEMAN:
We recognise that there is ambivalence in all of us. I recall very early in the campaign, which was revived in 2003, somebody from a media house asking "But how do you expect this to succeed, when if you promote the values of respect and tolerance and discipline and good order and all of these things, how do you expect the promotion of that to resonate with some people who make their living by promoting other values?
How do you expect to resonate with fathers who believe that their responsibility is part of what makes them macho? So it is a very, very challenging process, and I think that we have to find those things around which we can agree and to work on them. The church is dealing with the spiritual dimension which is absolutely important. The Values and Attitudes Programme has to look at the cultural norms, cultural traditions, best practice in terms of customer service and all those other things which rest on the foundation of spirituality, and in fact a respect for the highest authority which is the maker of us all.
MR. FLETCHER:
The world has changed dramatically in the past 25 years and the increase in violence and aggressive behaviour has risen to almost unmanageable proportions. The behaviour of the Palestinian suicide bomber and the Jamaican who murders and prefers violent confrontation, in my mind come from a deep rooted conditioning of the heart and the soul formed in the early stages of his or her life development and continues to be honed as he or she approaches adulthood and beyond. The heart and the soul, in my opinion and the opinion of us at Church on the Rock, is where the problem begins. This inward working, this problem in the heart and soul becomes an outward working of skewed and distorted values and attitudes. Possible causes, the lack of a strong family bond and mentorship of parents.
We find in our experience that you have absentee parents, children are just left alone, and so these kids grow up with no desire to hope or to strive for anything better, and so with that festering vexation of heart, vexation of spirit, that inward person that nobody sees, it causes an acceptance of what is existing as normal activity. So we have a situation where the area leader or the Don assumes the role of a father, sometimes with good effects, but most of the times with negative effects on the fatherless. So the vexed soul or vexed inner man of a person becomes a prey on others and is a time bomb waiting to explode at the slightest hint of confrontation.
