Ronald Thwaites | Living in delusions

We miss the deeper problem behind the Walkerswood tragedy and so many similar child deaths. Of course we are sorry about the absence of electricity and the poor state of the house. And yes, we need to make fire drills habitual in schools and engage more social workers.

These are all necessary things but our discourse bypasses the fact that those three hapless children, fried to death, would most likely be alive today if both of their parents were with them at home at 2 a.m. when the fire blazed up.

Instead, the reports are that the 24-year-old mother of four was sleeping elsewhere in the community while the father of four children, who lived separately, had bucked up his baby-mother in the square earlier, but never spoke about the safety of their children.

Parenting can’t go so.

First of all, the woman and the man created four human beings together, but do not seem to live together. Raising children, especially multiples of them, best requires two cohabiting parents who respectfully and lovingly share family nurturing as the first priority of their lives.

Already I can feel some readers choking with this practical and moral assertion despite its correctness being scientifically established. Two parent families should be promoted as an achievable ideal, counter-cultural as it may be in our historical and present contexts. The mix-up we have now is not working well.

For if fathers do not fully share child-rearing, the buck of child care falls heaviest on the mother, in this instance reportedly just over the age of consent when she bore her first child.

Single parenting is difficult outside of extended family support and creates stress and cramp for parent and child. Early or careless sexual connection is very likely to result in unplanned pregnancy and a split-up of natural parents. Unmanageable material poverty to which the prevailing system of political economy cruelly and unnecessarily consigns at least a third of Jamaicans, aggravates the brittleness of the primary unit of society.

PUBLIC EDUCATION

This nation needs an education campaign encouraging parental faithfulness and commitment with all the sustained verve which the “Two is better than too many” promotion exhibited forty years ago.

Reconstructing the Jamaican family ethos would have positive knock-on effects on educational outcomes, gang prevalence and work productivity. Until we are ready to carry out the fundamental task of raising our offspring together with our spouses, then even “Two is too Many”.

PUBLIC POLICY

Several of us leaders nodded gravely in agreement when, at last week’s prayer breakfast, Pastor Henry identified corruption and fatherlessness as causes of rampant crime.

But where is this concern reflected in public policy? Show me the strong emphasis in schools, in public propaganda and in social legislation which encourages good parenting as the supreme personal and civic labour needed to make this society flourish? Instead we act out the delusion that lawless state activity and extra-judicial killings can stanch violence.

OTHER DELUSIONS

There were more instances of collective delusion last week. One is the discussion of decriminalising consensual sex between minors. Of course such acts by children should not attract the gross penalties which legislators apply to everyone but themselves.

But move beyond the superficial. Why do our young people disrespect themselves by becoming sexually active in their early teens? Instead of teaching and modelling the benefits of self-restraint and counselling them that premature sex is very often the thief of deep love and lasting bonding, we titivate them with contrary values, the practice of which leaves them, and the society, jaded, uncommitted and transactional about sacred things.

And please, this is not about religious belief or an assault on personal agency: it is about practical social utility.

ILLITERACY NORMALISED

Next was the terrifying revelation that scores of adult applicants for public sanitation jobs in Westmoreland, and no doubt elsewhere, are not being employed because their literacy and numeracy levels do not reach Grade 2 standard, that is, the expected standard of a seven year old child! To this monstrous disclosure, there have been two responses. The first from a Parish Councillor who asked if the illiterates could not be given a ‘bly’; the other by the respectable Mr. Gordon of the National Solid Waste Management Authority, saying that these standards should not apply after all. On grounds of sheer practicality, I will agree with him but only on condition that a term of employment for such workers must be that they are enrolled and attend literacy classes – except that JAMAL hardly exists anymore.

What kind of madness makes us think that our society can progress when hundreds of thousands of adults are semi-illiterate, innumerate and poorly socialised, while our primary schools continue to spew legions of others with the same incapacities?

It is pathetic when a people continues to ‘samfi’ themselves.

SOME MORE

How can a member of parliament, whose constitutional function is to make good laws, fail to attend almost all sittings without excuse, but continue to draw salary and perks without sanction from constituents, his own party or the State? Figure what that does to public confidence in governance.

Next, what delusion makes us spend more time being concerned about student hairstyles than about their literacy and numeracy?

Then, listening to the parliamentary committee on constitutional reform this week, the raw truth blurted out. It is sheer political cowardice – not a whit of principle – why the issue of the decolonization of our apex court is not part of this exercise. They are terrified that people may “choke” and reject the ‘package’ and its hawkers.

No doubt. It’s happening before our eyes.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com