In Focus

As we embark on our 5oth year of Independence, it provides us with an opportunity to reflect on our educational achievement and political leadership.

It is rather surprising that the opinion makers and policy analysts in the Jamaican society appear to have been taken off-guard by the strong, threatening and direct... - Glenda Simms

Politics in the Eastern Caribbean tri-island state of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique is on the boil again.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness, still in waiting to be leader of the JLP, will be keynote speaker at the annual conference of the East Central St James constituency.

Jamaica is at a crossroads.

He is given credit for starting the movement which changed the society and became a father of the nation. This man took a principled position which many saw as not benefiting him personally. He bared his chest defiantly, staking his political future, if not his life, on his bravery.

The sudden decision made by the Ministry of Education to discontinue the Caribbean Certification in Secondary Level Competence (CCSLC) exam is an outrage to the poor masses of this country and our nation's children. This move is the epitome of callousness and reflects a blatant disregard for the education of the children...

One thing we learned attending various all-boy secondary schools was that if you didn't want a nickname to stick, don't protest about it. Boys will be boys, and cruel nicknames, based on peculiar behaviour and 'special' features or shapes, were a daily peril. We soon learned that, if you ignored the nickname, it went away...

Perhaps, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) parliamentarian Ernest Smith neither gathered his thoughts together nor looked about him when, in the company of his government leadership and party stalwarts, he felt emboldened to declare to all Jamaica: "Show me your company, and I'll tell you who you are."

The glaring headline, 'Teen sex slaves', reported by Enterprise Reporter Tyrone Reid in the September 25 edition of The Sunday Gleaner, was both shocking and extremely revealing.

Kudos to Dayton Campbell, Dawn Lindsay, and Hugh Dixon.And just who are these three? Dr Campbell is president of the Jamaica Medical Doctors' Association, Dawn Lindsay is a pharmacist and member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Jamaica, and Hugh Dixon...

As a proud past student of Jamaica College, I have been attending our annual Carlton Alexander Awards for quite some time.