Boyne's criminal logic!

Gordon Robinson, Contributor

Last Tuesday, I exposed the lack of reason contained in the January 26 Sunday Gleaner editorial supporting conclusions drawn from a flawed police-sponsored survey to the effect that some schools create criminals.

That editorial was bad enough. In the same edition of The Gleaner, Booklist Boyne delivered absurdity's pin-up disguised as a newspaper column. From the outset, he produced this most imbecilic premise: "What's all this fuss from school principals about their schools being 'maligned' because a research report shows that some criminals come from predominantly non-traditional high schools?"

How pathetic is this? Let me count the ways. First off, NOBODY 'comes from' any school. We ALL 'come from' one creator: God. We travel here via the magic of conception followed by nine months of adjustment to shake off the jet lag. If you don't want to go so deeply into philosophy, most persons answer the question: "Where do you come from?" geographically. I "come from" St Andrew. My father came from Westmoreland. Our characters are shaped at home (where we "come from"), whether we have resident parents or not. Eventually, we attend school where we're supposed to be educated for life, but where any violent nature we may have learned at home is never curbed because of fear of being reported
to the ministry or of reprisal from relatives of a violence-prone
child.

Schools build character from the foundation
laid at home by presenting specific challenges to students. Schools
don't form character. Criminals don't 'come from' schools. Criminals
come from home; attend schools; and usually leave before the school has
had an opportunity to make a significant
impact.

Casting aside any pretence at "civil debate"
in a lengthy section abusing JTA President Mark Nicely for defending the
schools singled out, Booklist delivers himself of the
following:

"What the dickens is Nicely
denying? What all of us already know anecdotally? We all knew that
poverty breeds crime and that most blue-collar criminals come from
inner-city communities and schools nearest those communities.
Duh!"

Duh, indeed. Sounding very much like
Archie's friend Moose, but not as bright, Booklist actually wrote
"poverty breeds crime" as if it was a trite statement of
incontrovertible fact. In reality, it's a shameful, elitist, ignorant
non sequitur with which members of the upper crust
console themselves from the ivory towers of their profligate lives
without a minute to spare on those less
fortunate.

DUDUS ANOMALY

Poverty
breeds crime about as often as Everald Warmington makes sense. Dudus was
born into a wealthy family. He attended Ardenne. It was at home that he
learned criminality was the way to continue building the family
dynasty, NOT at Ardenne. Booklist lambastes school principals for
critiquing his masters' propaganda without reading the report as if he
knows who read it and who didn't. But if reading the report results in
the type of thinking exposed by Booklist's January 26 calamity ('On
school-prison link - Principals in denial'), congratulations to Mr
Nicely if, in fact, he didn't read it.

As a
poverty-stricken son of a teacher man (not 'preacherman'), I knew from
early in life that, if I didn't study my books and pass with flying
colours, my schooling would abruptly end. So I eschewed the parties,
church socials and general gallivanting on the road and did my homework
instead. Consequently, I won a Government Scholarship at the Common
Entrance Exam while many others formed the fool, failed Common Entrance,
and depended on Mummy or Daddy to place them in high school somehow. My
special scholarship also paid for books and gave me weekly pocket
money. Then the great Michael Manley recognised the path to growth for a
poor country lay in the development of its human capital and announced
free education.

So, with the assistance of my own hard
work and flashes of brilliant government policy, I started in poverty
but never once considered turning to crime until I read such dastardly
drivel from a self-styled 'intellectual' like Booklist Boyne about
poverty breeding crime. He has insulted every single Jamaican (and there
are thousands) who has pulled himself/herself out of poverty by grim
determination and hard work and made something of their
lives.

EDUCATION OVERHAUL

In my
April 2013 column on crime reduction, I advocated for a complete revamp
of the education system. This survey is being used to try to limit that
need to ordering police intervention in certain named schools. It's
being used to shift the responsibility for crime reduction from
Government to some schools. This is utterly shameful. In April 2013, I
asked for a new curriculum to be developed based on polls done of
students and teachers in school, NOT of hardened criminals who learned
their criminal trade outside of schools.

I lamented the levels of
violence in our schools and advocated PALS plus compulsory subjects like
music, chess and bridge to help students acquire dispute-resolution
skills. Finally, I advocated for the presence of police liaisons in ALL
schools so that a natural trust of the police could be developed over
time. Additional forces could be added as required by situational
concerns in any school. I DID NOT support the targeting of specific
schools because many current inmates once spent time
there.

While I was at a non-traditional secondary
school, a classmate of mine, a mischievous chap from a very wealthy
family, felt he didn't have to do any academic work. He was regularly
expelled. After each expulsion, he would visit the headmaster. 'Ian',
the headmaster would say (name changed to protect the guilty): "I've
tried my best with you. I can't manage you anymore. Maybe another school
will be able to get you to fulfil your
potential."

Ian replied: "I understand, sir. I'm not
here to quarrel. I only want to arrange a mutually convenient day and
time for my father's workmen to come for his water cooler that he
donated to the school last term." Ian was reinstated and went on to
become a very successful professional, thanks to the out-of-the-box
methods of teaching used at that fine institution. Ian came to school
with an attitude and left with an education. He wasn't a
dropout.

So, don't write hogwash about poverty
breeding crime ("Blessed are the poor for theirs is the Kingdom
of God" Luke 6:20) or schools creating criminals. Criminals
breed criminals and violence begets violence. Persons socialised in
taking advantage of the weak may become criminals, whether poor or rich
and regardless of school attended.

DEFENCE OF THE
DEFENCELESS

Booklist, in full defence of the
defenceless mode: "The JTA president, according to an
Observer
report, talked about the socio-economic environment from which those
students come, the need for social intervention in those communities,
etc. Indeed. BUT THAT'S IRRELEVANT [my emphasis]. The study nowhere
makes the point that it's the schools themselves which are producing
criminals. The study doesn't locate the problem in the schools. The
study simply says that's where we can find and intercept those most
likely to commit crimes.
Commonsensical."

Surely, you jest, Booklist?
Commonsensical? More like common crap. Community intervention
irrelevant? Really? Seriously? How desperate are you to suck up to
whatever the Government of the day says?

If the study
wasn't saying that these schools produced criminals WHY WERE THE SCHOOLS
NAMED? If the study wasn't for the purpose of locating the problem, WHY
WAS IT DONE AT ALL? What did it conclude, according to Booklist? You
show me, Booklist, if you can, where in that study definitively
identified places other than schools are highlighted as where
criminality is bred. Where do you say the study located the
problem?

You present yourself to the public as an
independent and competent analyst. Your responsibility to your readers
is to refrain from inanities like "The study simply says that's
where we can find and intercept those most likely to commit crimes"
without quoting from the study to support that smoke and
mirrors trick.

Since almost everyone attends school at
one time or another, nobody needs a study to tell anybody that
"we can find and intercept those most likely to commit
crimes" in schools, which is a world apart from concluding
they were made into criminals by the school. We can find almost
EVERYBODY in school. Somebody, most likely to do something, will surely
be found in school.

If I took what the study said
literally, I wouldn't be finding and intercepting anybody in schools
since, according to the study, most criminals are dropouts. We don't
need any study to tell us that ALL schools need violence avoidance
interventions. It's time Government mans up and accepts its
responsibilities, including crime reduction. Leave our schools out of
it.

Peace and love.

Gordon Robinson
is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to
columns@gleanerjm.com.