Mark Wignall | Many Jamaicans support violent solutions

Most of us from street side to riverside, from gully bank to hilltop, were appalled when we saw audio visual clips of Jamaican school children gone wild. As we were just trying to digest the latest shame in a particular school, another one came up, and another one.

In the end, we were forced to conclude that the behaviour demonstrated by our children in their seemingly open-faced attitude towards their teachers, including violence, told us a lot.

What we saw were the symptoms of what is likely to crop up in the next generation, plus it was also the result of the failures of the last generation. The present generation needs to take a stance and declare its hand for what ought to be taking a step in the right direction.

And if in case you plan to wait around until that time happens I would suggest you move on to other impossible pursuits like colonising Jupiter.

“Mi like di prime minister,” but him talking crap, said a 56 year-old mason to me last Wednesday. He was totally against the PM’s views that teachers’ beating children in school has not and will never solve our societal violence.

He had the usual response for a man in his age group. ‘Me get beating when mi likkle. From mi mada and teacher at school. And mi neva go prison. Me gi my pickney dem some assing, and although mi get likkle trouble, it work fi me.’

I told him that I was flogged as a child. In the home and at school. I told him I hated it to the point that I never applied it in raising my children. Well, that one time.

A few hours later, I was in another troubled community where a promising young man had just been shot dead. ‘Him nuh inna nutten wid nobody, but him have di wrong family connection. So dem come done him. Pure head shot!’ he said as he used one hand to mimic the shooting.

“So Mark, what is di solution to di shooting. State of emergency is a joke ting. Di criminal dem get round it long time.”

I didn’t need any time to think about it. “I honestly don’t know … .”

“Yu fi heng dem!” he shouted. Two other men nearby agreed with him. I decided against telling them about the present justice system and how innocent people can get ensnared in it by those with sinister motives and become convicted for murders not committed. I find that when I say that, I tend to be laughed at.

Top school and no-name school

It was more than a bit of a surprise that Wolmers’ Boy’s School was one of the high schools that featured in abuse of teachers. For years, many of us who could afford to properly educate our children sent them to brand-name prep schools for top money in the certain hope that their passage to top-shelf high schools was guaranteed.

Two objectives were at work. The first was that we wanted them to get the best available education. Second, we wanted them to be as far apart as ­possible from ‘ghetto’ children and the behaviour which many of those communities had attached to them, oftentimes for the worse.

And that creates a problem for many of us where we live, this “education apartheid” day in, day out, and we pretend it does not exist. Wolmer’s just cannot fit into that behaviour.

There are some among those scripting education policy that it is the duty of Government to ­constantly raise the bar of education in this country. Some believe that one way to do this is to introduce more of the academically weak students in the primary school system into schools that would not normally allow them in with a 40 per cent to 60 per cent pass from the primary exit profile.

“I don’t care what you tell me,” said the 40-something street vendor. “Dunce pickney usually have dunce and bad behaviour. Not because I am a street vendor,” she said. “I send my child to prep school because mi nuh want nuh bad behaving pickney spoil my pickney.”

She went on to explain to me that there was something natural in good parents wanting to separate their children from the destructive words and actions of those who would hold back her child.

“When yu trying to put bad pickney wid good, I don’t agree wid dat,” she said. Then she called the names of a few of the so-called non-brand-name schools. “Di poorest mother don’t want dem pickney fi dem dunce-head pickney fi go dem school dey. Let us stop the pretence and di big hypocrisy.”

COVID 19 and Trump a bad mix

Good parents tend to have at least a 75 per cent chance of raising good children. Good ­principals often lead good ­teachers. That combination usually produces top-class outcomes for the student population.

Good political leadership over an extended period usually leads to consistently positive economic outcomes for the people along with similar levels of human development.

COVID-19 is more likely to expand its reach in the US than it is only a possibility. And America needs the best that its political leadership can offer. A looming calamity lies ahead if we allow ourselves to imagine Trump’s leadership and his management of the health crisis as seated in the same basket.

And this ought to give us reason to become more than concerned in Jamaica. Trump still sees the new coronavirus as just another political stumbling block to his campaign for White House 2020. He has long hollowed out most of the health departments that were set up to deal with emergencies such as that facing the globe right now.

One would have expected that the great USA would now be normally standing tall and leading the global fight in the potential pandemic that COVID-19 is. Instead, it doesn’t even seem that Trump recognises the extent of the emergency facing those living in the USA.

Horribly bad leadership.

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