Operation Heal the Nation

Trevor Gardner, Guest Editor

Jamaica's situation is not irreversible. We are a resilient people. Since Independence, we have had economic and other challenges but despite these, we boast one of the strongest democracies in the world. The pathway to healing our nation demands strong wills, invincible determination, and a course fixed without retreat.

The pathway will not be found merely in intellectual shrewdness, politically motivated sound bites or short-term economic growth and development.

We must set our sails towards a preferred future and stay the course. We may start by destroying the tendencies towards political balkanisation that continue to haunt us a people. Talk-show hosts must desist from demonising the national heroes because of political differences. University professors must resist the temptation to teach their skewed beliefs about our rich heritage and history and seek, as best they can, to be objective.

We must stop singing 'Jamaica, land we love' only to depart from our national and community events to denigrate the national leaders because of opposing political views. We must build in the youth respect for the police. Despite the 'bad eggs', some of which are present in every profession, the police are generally people of integrity serving this country with pride and devotion.

If our land must be healed, our intellectuals, who are often the harshest critics of public servants such as the police, would do better to initiate solutions or recommendations towards the ideal.

The leaders of the nation should, therefore, convene a forum through which can be charted a philosophy that would guide the actions of all Jamaicans in order to realise this country as the place to live, work and raise families.

Announcements of new construction, financial deals, the logistics hub and athletic prowess are good, but they will not heal the nation. These are merely events. They will not rid us of the hopelessness that seems to drive us deeper into despair and predisposes us to two societies: the haves and the have-nots.

Jamaica must again find its heart. Our current political and business leaders must resume speaking more to the hearts of the people. There is too much smoke about national economic development and too little talk about what individual citizens can, and must, do.

People must believe that other people care about their well-being. The true test of the relevant, modern university is not how many degrees it issues, but how many lives it transforms. Neglecting to integrate positive values and attitudes into the curriculum will continue to facilitate a downward spiral.

The country has talked about rural development, but have we done sufficient to invest seriously in it? We may have ensured that certain basic infrastructure is in place - light, water system, roads - yet the youth keep moving to urban areas (such as Kingston and Montego Bay) or overseas. Why? The effect of the brain drain is plain for all to see.

Is there a demonstrable national consciousness about the real value of rural Jamaica? It seems at times that we need food from the farm, but we do not need the farmer. If he does not have the acreage, irrigation, market, skills and other resources to make him wealthy, he still feels second-class in the nation he feeds. So are we surprised when his children leave for the city?

There is pain in this nation because of the wounds of slavery, elitism, pretensions, classism and abandonment to urbanisation. We have swallowed everything American and some of it has stuck in our proverbial throats. Education, taxation and lifestyle in Jamaica are fast becoming a copycat agenda of America. This elitist attitude has impacted how educational institutions are handled. Private, not-for-profit schools do not receive similar benefits as traditional schools, to avert double taxation. This is a painful truth. It is another wound.

If we are to become serious reformers in the funding of schools, for instance, another wound could be healed. There are more than 65 per cent of Jamaican youth who are qualified for tertiary education but who are not in any of our schools. There are schools that could reduce their tuition to accommodate thousands of these students. Another generation would be saved and another wound healed.

The nation's youth stand in need of spiritual values. Crimes of increasing savagery demonstrate lack of spiritual values. This lack emanates from pop psychology. That may be the fatal wound to this nation.

If each of us could realise our individual value, Jamaica would again be a piece of paradise, among the wealthiest nations and the 'land we love'.

Trevor G. Gardner is president of NCU. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.