JAMAICA | Tackling School Violence: Helping the Hopeless by Prof Michael Witter

KINGSTON, Jamaica, May 14, 2024 - When I read the article, “Help the Hopeless” in the Gleaner of May 13, 2024, describing the hostile antisocial and even criminal behaviour of students and urging for greater resources to deal with mental health issues of students, I asked myself what I would do if I were the Prime Minister and just learning of the gravity of the situation in our Jamaican schools.  

Instinctively, I would immediately summon my Cabinet to estimate the cost of providing the trained counsellors, not pastors with informal training at best in counselling, to schools, and we would mandate the Minister of Finance to identify the available resources before the meeting ended.

More than likely, he would have to redirect resources from somewhere else that the Cabinet would henceforth deem to be a lower priority than the mental health of our children at least for the foreseeable future.

We would similarly mandate the Minister of Education and her team to immediately draft the advertisement inviting counsellors to apply for attractive jobs, to convene a Zoom meeting with Principals and their counsellors to get high level agreement on the logistics of expanding counselling services, to arrange a meeting with the counselling profession to tap their support and guidance, and together with these stakeholders, articulate an emergency programme to assess the counselling needs of the schools and their students.

Parents would be invited and strongly urged to listen to the Minister’s national broadcast requesting their suggestions and support for tackling the national crisis of mental ill-health among young people.

School Boards and Student Councils would be mobilized to support the sensitization activities to address the taboo around mental ill-health.

By the end of week one, sufficient resources to begin the crisis response would be in place; all stakeholders would be mobilized under the leadership of the Ministry of Education; schools would have adjusted their programmes to accommodate counselling activities; and the process of accepting and processing applications for immediate employment of counsellors and/or the contracting of counselling services would have begun.

One week later, I would re-convene the Cabinet to assess where the government, through the Ministry of Education, had reached in its response, and then pose the question to the Minister: how did the country get here, and why is the Cabinet only now becoming aware of the gravity of the crisis through an exposé in the newspaper? 

Because as Prime Minister, I would have realized that the future of Jamaica was in serious jeopardy and that my government had been blindsided because its priorities had not paid sufficient attention to the youth in general and their education in particular.

There is a tyranny of the immediate that has consumed governments of Jamaica for decades as they lurch from fighting one fire to another. The mental health of our youth requires long run commitments to providing the resources to address the manifestations but more importantly to put in place the developmental processes to transform the circumstances that generate mental ill-health responses as coping mechanisms.

Certainly, this requires reducing crime and violence in the society, which in turn requires addressing at least the fundamental inequities. The economic policies that have paid more attention to the repayment of debts, the profit of investors, the comfort of tourists, and currying favour with voters must be re-assessed with a view to radically improving the economic and life chances of working families and their children.

I would set the example of courageous leadership and summon similar leadership from my Cabinet, and from all the sectors of Jamaican society, and particularly the education sector. 

I would use the same electoral fund-raising techniques to pressure the business community to partner with the government in providing resources to the education system, and to expanding counselling services immediately.

More than that, I would put them on notice to set examples for young people by supporting standards of fair play and respect for public order. The labour unions share the vested interests of their members and their children and have their part to play in a national campaign against crime and violence. 

Negotiation is the central skill of the union movement, and that is at the heart of non-violent conflict resolution. I would canvass Church leadership to be more vocal in promoting civic values, and facilitating the educational reform in those institutions that they control.

Principals and educators must lead the redefinition of an education system and its processes so that the classroom becomes so exciting and interesting that children will be stimulated to learn.

There are so many videos of classrooms and school life in general in countries like China, Japan and Finland that can provide ideas on how to transform our boring, authoritarian, uninspiring instructional processes in our run-down classrooms.

The description of the hostility that students regularly show to their teachers, fellow students and schools in general is chilling and shocking, and one wonders how it reached to this level without triggering the emergency response that the Cabinet should now be charting.

It is clear that much more needs to be done by the family to socialize their children, but we know that the family is struggling for survival and is itself in need of counselling. 

Maybe our focus on IMF tests and indicators that matter to investors, rating agencies and international agencies has distracted the government from the ill-health of the family and the community, and the indicators for that are the anti-social indiscipline, violence-prone behaviour that is tearing the schools apart.

The response in recent times to crime and other forms of social indiscipline has been repression with militaristic tactics. My guess is that studies will show that a brighter and more violent cohort arises to replace each one that is eliminated by the repressive tactics. Bounty Killer pointed this out years ago.

Investing in education will contribute to mitigating the problems of crime and violence, will incline families to wellness behaviour and thereby reduce the incidence of illness, and most importantly will equip tomorrow’s labour force to compete productively in an increasingly demanding high-tech global economy.

My government’s support for more counselling services would be the immediate step in reforming the education system completely and prioritizing human development. 

It may be the most successful economic growth strategy for Jamaica after sacrificing human development for decades for economic growth and debt repayment, to no avail.

In the quiet of my home, set back far from the road, I would ask myself what else am I missing that is right in front of me, and how aware I am of what is not in front of me, but impacts everything around me. More Prime Ministerial musings, anon!

-30-