Desmond Henry
TREASURE BEACH:
IT'S BEEN about two years now that a group of students at Munro College in St. Elizabeth, were saved by the injudicious bell of the Ministry of Education from being expelled from the school after they had premeditatedly violated one of that institution's most fundamental rules. Readers will recall that a handful of misguided boarding students went off campus without permission, bought ganja, returned to campus, lit up the illegal drug and blew the smoke in the face of the school, the Ministry of Education and the people of Jamaica. They were caught red-handed and red-eyed.
SUPPORTING A SHAMEFUL ACT
The school correctly dismissed them. Their parents, who were apparently well connected, got the Ministry of Education to intervene and with the backing of the then Minister, Burchell Whiteman, overturned the decision of the school and its Board. Most members of the Board resigned. The students buoyed by that most disgraceful act of a government ministry, returned to classes as if nothing had happened. The Cabinet backed the shameful act. Many, who stoutly disagreed with the decision, voiced their opinions that this was just another chapter in the volume of wrong messages being sent to our young people, especially the collective groups on school campuses.
Those of us who have been watching the trend have written volumes about the need to drastically curb the many aberrant practices taking place in our schools right across the country. We have heard of school bags that no longer carry books for learning, but weapons and instruments for harm and destruction. Occasional police and security reports have listed the numbers of guns, knives, ice-picks, ratchets and other instruments taken from school bags from time to time. I myself have previously proposed, mainly for its shock value, an islandwide exhibition and display of schoolbag contents of all instruments taken from such bags, for all Jamaica to see and understand.
I have gone even further to suggest that this particular mobile display be titled "A Bazaar of the Bizarre", so as to fully draw attention to its abhorrent contents and origin. It should be displayed in every parish capital, at least. It was hoped that by so doing, most Jamaican parents and guardians would get a fuller understanding of their failing towards their responsibilities to their children and their future. More than that, I had hoped that those in the Ministry who were also a part of that unfortunate Munro doctrine that failed to expel those boys would get a clear picture, from their air-conditioned perches, as to what today's schoolroom realities are. They might even better understand today's pleadings of the teachers.
CENTRES OF DISORDER
What was feared then is now coming to pass. Campuses are becoming clear centres of disorder, threats and unruliness. Successive acts are following the lessons learnt from each preceding ones. They are taking full aim at a system that sanctions mostly everything, and punishes nothing. Students are now recruiting associated street perverts, put them in school uniforms and engage them in activities for the sole purpose of causing disruptive mayhem. That's what our schools are coming to. Social orders and rules of school, it seems, are only for the weak and timid, not for the bold and brazen.
In any event, it's been proven that nothing untoward will happen, even if you get caught. I predict that in a climate like this, the day is not far off when a teacher will either be shot, chopped, stabbed or mauled in a classroom by a group of students intent on showing 'a who rule'. And based on the laws of probability, they have already deduced that they will get away with it. They are part of a society that thinks it is possible to curb crime without punishment. And once again, our teachers will be left to fend for themselves.
FUTURE OF ONSLAUGHT
Our school system and its teachers now face a future of onslaught from a generation of degenerate students, aided and abetted by poor leadership and timid enforcement. There is a numerical limit to which the police can be expected to solve criminal conduct resulting from earlier misguided neglect. This country is fast reaching its limit to solve problems. Our first aim must be to prevent them.
The Bottom Line: The absence of a common morality, usually explains the absence of a common conduct.
Desmond Henry is a marketing strategist based in Treasure Beach, St. Elizabeth.