Garth Rattray | Bystanders are not always innocent

There was a fairly recent video showing a group of schoolgirls, from different institutions, engaged in furious fighting in Sam Sharpe Square, downtown Montego Bay, St James. A few adults were valiantly attempting to separate them, but many others were either ignoring the fracas or being entertained by the despicable spectacle. The awful irony is that all this fighting between the girls was taking place under the fixed gaze of the statue of our National Hero Sam Sharpe.

Sam Sharpe was born into slavery. He was a Baptist minister who instigated a peaceful protest that morphed into the 1831 Slave Rebellion. It began at the Kensington Estate (St James) and spread across the island. It contributed to the abolition of slavery. Sharpe was captured, tried, and hanged in 1832. He was only 28 years old. He was famously quoted as saying, “I would rather die on yonder gallows than to live my life in slavery”. All those aggressive and shameless girls, the descendants of the people that he helped liberate, the progeny of the nation for which he gave his life, were disrespecting and dishonouring him and his dream of freedom, peace and unity that he passionately envisioned for us all.

Nowadays, schoolchildren often engage in violent confrontations that sometimes end in serious physical injuries and even homicides. In the ‘good old days’, fights occurred almost entirely in all-male schools, and they were fist fights. It was extremely rare to have noticeable injuries, serious injuries, or deaths. However, in today’s Jamaica the fights are taken to the extreme where deadly weapons are sometimes involved.

PREVENTABLE

What troubles me is that these fights are preventable and they are always recorded on cell phones. The combatants know that they are acting out violence and will be splattered across the Internet. There are numerous on-site witnesses to the school fights, beatings, and even to the killings. The excitement rises to a fever pitch with many spectators cheering and even egging on the combatants. Other children scurry around in a frantic effort to get the best vantage point for their video recording. The shouts of encouragement to do battle only abate or cease when one of the fighters is down or seriously injured and cannot go on.

My brother, a self-defence expert, always warns that no single person should try to end a physical conflict between two people; that is a recipe for disaster. The peacemaker sometimes ends up injured, seriously wounded, or dead. He advises that two, or preferably more individuals stop fights. However, whenever I see school fight videos, it is abundantly clear that there are many more onlookers than there are fighters; therefore, the opportunity to prevent or stop the fight is always there. The callous barbarism of many onlookers always leaves me bewildered.

Cheering for the combatants will only inflame the situation and encouraging them will certainly increase the level of violence. Everyone gets swept up in the fighting fervour, and before you know it, disaster strikes. Even level-headed individuals can ‘lose it’ and engage in violence under those circumstances. In other words, I blame the combatants, but I also blame the spectators who either do nothing or who incite violence with their cheers, shouts, and video recordings.

SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE RULE

I remember when Jesuit priest, Reverend Father Gerald Bowman, was the prefect of discipline at St George’s College, he had a simple but very effective rule. If a few individuals in a class gave enough trouble to warrant his intervention, the entire class paid the price. Every child in that class was kept back in detention and made to walk ‘Bowman’s Boulevard’. It was a long, paved rectangle area in front of the lower forms. Walking Bowman’s Boulevard was demeaning and lasted for what seemed like eternity.

If only a few students were disruptive, Fr Bowman (Gerry B) would appear in the doorway to announce, “This class will walk this afternoon!” Although I was a model student, a class Beadle on multiple occasions, and the recipient of many ‘merits’, I too was forced to walk Bowman’s Boulevard repeatedly. Because the walk was embarrassing and very time-consuming, it didn’t take very long for the students to police themselves.

Thanks to the alacrity and consistency with which recorded school fights are splattered all over the Internet, it is easy to see who the spectators were. It should be a school rule that any child seen egging on the combatants, or cheering gleefully, or simply standing and recording the fight, will be punished by way of detention and [possibly] marching around the playing field for about a half an hour.

Eventually, children will learn that in life, bystanders are not necessarily ‘innocent’. Anything that anybody does impacts us all. They will learn to defuse conflicts and to stop fights because they will impact them on a personal level. Hopefully, over time, this principle will spread from the schools to the homes, from the homes to the communities, and from the communities throughout the entire society. Contrary to popular belief, we should mind other people’s business before their business becomes our business. In fact, anybody’s business is everybody else’s business because we are all in this together.

It’s time to start in our schools and show the children that the actions of a few affect the lives of many.

Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and garthrattray@gmail.com.