Peter Espeut | Family, school and society

Sunday coming is celebrated in Jamaica as Mother's Day. It always falls within the month of May, which is celebrated as Child Month. Wednesday gone was celebrated as Teachers' Day, which always falls within Education Week. And so this week, this month, the focus is on children and those who nurture them in the home and in school.

Sexual activity can produce human individuals, but bio-logical forces alone cannot produce the human social order, cannot produce persons well-adjusted to relate to others to keep the wheels of the society turning. This is one of the most important functions of the family.

Boys will learn how to be men from their fathers, and girls will learn how to be women from their mothers. Where one or the other is absent, uncles and aunts (or godparents) will have to step in, otherwise gender roles may be imperfectly learnt. Mothers can make valiant efforts to 'father' their children (e.g., to teach boys how to be boys), but for best results, both parents must be present in the lives of their children.

Maybe it is ironic symbolism that Father's Day falls outside of Child Month. If we must celebrate each parent separately, it would be better to celebrate both parents within Child Month, symbolising the mutuality that characterises the raising of children.

Learned behaviour

Children will learn how to relate to persons of the opposite sex from watching how their parents interact. When parents quarrel openly in front of their children, and may even come to blows, the children will learn from this negative behaviour. The fondness of Jamaican parents for beating their children under the guise of discipline normalises violence in the lives of our people from they are very young. Children reproduce this violent behaviour in the classroom and among their peers, and later in life it surfaces as spousal abuse (by both genders) and even violence at the workplace.

It is of the utmost importance to provide guidance to parents on how to relate to each other and how to bring up their children. Holistic sex education must include family-life education, for the two are organically interrelated and interconnected.

Schools were never intended to provide instruction only in academic subjects but from the beginning were designed to inculcate the virtues of self-discipline, diligence, and collaborative effort. We hold clergy to high standards of personal moral behaviour because of what they preach from the pulpit; their lives must match the values they preach. But over the years, we have lowered the high standards to which we hold our teachers.

Teaching is not just another job. It involves the formation and nurturing of young lives, the transmission of norms and values to impressionable boys and girls at a time when they are most vulnerable.

I would like to see the curriculum of teacher-training institutions expanded to include philosophy and ethics; they need these subjects to better perform their functions as teachers. We are not talking about religion here, or the Bible, but natural law and philosophical ethics that are taught in secular institutions all over the world.

Both teaching and parenting (including mothering) are not easy occupations if done well. Those who take them seriously and work hard at them deserve the thanks of the nation. Cakes, cards and flowers - and even perfume - are not enough, even if those are all we can offer as tokens of our appreciation.

To teachers: Happy belated Teachers' Day! And to mothers: Happy Mother's Day on Sunday!

- Peter Espeut is a sociologist and board chairman for two primary schools. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.