EDITORIAL - Searching for solutions
Barbados has witnessed violence within our schools this past week and many are alarmed at the increasing rate of this violence, particularly among our young people. Officials are searching for solutions to this surge and many are hoping for a speedy resolution.
However, Minister of Education, Ronald Jones, lamented the fact that too much pressure is being placed on teachers to right the wrongs of society; rather, other organisations need to rise to the occasion. He also stressed that “the issue of violence and person’s in possession of sharp implements is symptomatic of deeper issues in the society and communities”.
The breakdown in the relationships of families in Barbados has long been under the microscope and has been the topic of many seminars. This breakdown has been blamed for the decline in the ‘practice of morality’ that is being exhibited in schools, in some cases the workplace, and generally in public. Research has confirmed what many have shied away from admitting – that waning influence of the extended family on the household, the lack of communication between parents and children and the breakdown of the nuclear family unit in many cases (divorce of parents or split in civil partnerships), have all played a part in the state of society today. Hence, it is clear that a situation has been created that must be rectified in the near future for fear that the deterioration of family life in our country might reach the point of no return.
In fact, situations are constantly arising whereas children are actively observing disagreements between their parents or other family members and taking these behaviours into public spaces. As a result, these children are taking ‘grown-up’ behaviour to places where childhood should be the rule.
For some time, these challenges have been discussed among psychologists, sociologists and others and extended through the media to the public with the desired effect of improvement of this state of affairs. Despite the efforts, however, situations still exist where some parents are not aware of their children’s whereabouts, neither do they know or care about who their children’s friends are, so they are constantly roaming freely without any adult supervision or care. It was once believed that the village raised the child, but this system of upbringing does not seem to exist anymore. Some parents are becoming more insular when it comes to the raising of their charges and less trustful of what they deem ‘outsiders’ who have ‘no business’ in what goes on in the family. This begs the question: where are these children going to learn how to become active, contributing members of society if the necessary support is not there?
Many parents, in an effort to fill the gap between themselves and their children, depend on the schools to rectify their situation since communication between parent and child has become so awkward that when the need arises to correct that child, the action seems foreign to both parties involved. Parents in those cases sometimes bring children to their level and treat them as ‘friends’. Hence the disconnect continues.
Entities such as PAREDOS, YMCA, YWCA and others are committed to an improvement in our society and the ultimate reversal of the direction that family life and by extension, society has taken, and they are actively trying to promote this stability that is lacking through youth groups and community groups. This is commendable, but that bond between parent and child is essential. Even the action of watching television or playing video games or spending time on social media can be translated into bonding and learning time if children and parents do this together sometimes.
Therefore parents and guardians need to focus more on rebuilding their relationships with their wards, with the aim of strengthening this generation of young people or the next.