THE EDITOR, Sir:
RAPIDLY DISAPPEARING are the days when older children looked out for the younger ones. Instead, steadily on the rise is the forrestation of 'cruel young trees', where the younger ones are hurt, pushed aside and trampled on.
As a teacher, there are days when I am on my lunch break and I look out into the school yard just in time to see a small child being 'mowed down' and run over by the older ones at hard play. To make matters worse, there's not even a backward glance in that direction to see if the injured has been rescued or firmly back on solid ground.
Cruelty has taken over the hearts of most of our young people today. When a 14-year-old boy on January 26, 2006, can give his five-year-old neighbour rum laced with gramoxone to consume, destroying the organs in his little body totally, rendering him useless, without the use of his bodily functions, daily fighting for his life until he could fight no more and died on February 8, 2006, what can we do? How do we cope? Where, how, when, why do they become so cruel, so early?
Did we not water them enough? Did we not give them enough sunlight? Did we not prune them enough? Or is it then that we took them too early from the well-balanced atmosphere of the 'green house' of life and exposed them to the hot, harsh weather of reality? Jamaica, we need to save our young trees.
I am, etc.,
MICHELLE Y. ELLIOTT-SMITH
michieboo32@yahoo.com
11A Deanery Drive
Vineyard Town
Kingston 3
Via Go-Jamaica
