‘Never give up on love’ - Education ministry official warns against child-beating

In an emotional address that was rich with regret and recovery, acting Chief Education Officer Dr Kasan Troupe has called for parents to exercise restraint in disciplining their children because of the risk of damage to their personhood.

Drawing on her roots as an inner-city girl who grew up in Greenwich Town, southwest St Andrew, she admitted to struggling with not reprising her experience from an abusive home.

“I grew up in a single-parent home, and my mother was very abusive. I got some good licks, but that was what she knew.

“Even now as a mother, I struggle to not exercise and not replicate what I experienced as a child. My husband helps me with that,” Troupe said while addressing congregants at Kencot Christian Fellowship church in Kingston on Sunday.

Jamaica’s education ministry has long inveighed against the use of corporal punishment in schools, but beatings, whether by ruler, hand, or the strap, are still widely used by teachers and principals as a disciplinary measure.

The country’s allowance of child-beating has often been cited as a breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Jamaica is a signatory.

Troupe charged parents to take deliberate actions that would benefit their children, urging that they adjust the portrayal of negative attitudes, particularly in single-parent settings where the mother is the head of the household. She warned parents against physically abusing children out of frustration.

Love was the dominant theme of her charge to parents.

“I have to choose to correct my children with love, but it is not my natural instinct because of the experiences I would have had as a child.

“... We must never give up on love. We must utilise a soft answer and use positive rhetoric and words over our children ... ,” the acting chief education officer said.

Troupe also highlighted the socio-cultural effects of fatherlessness, conceding that her dad’s absence had left a vacuum in her life. He died before she was born, Troupe said.

“I would have loved to know him because every little girl wants to know daddy,” she told the congregation.

Sunday’s service honoured six primary-school students who missed out on graduation because their schools did not host exit ceremonies after they received placements in traditional high schools following the very first sitting of the Primary Exit Profile because of COVID-19 restrictions.

Kencot decided to acknowledge the students’ brilliance and hard work.

Those honoured were Danique Roberts, who is heading to Meadowbrook High; Jhae-Ann Gillespie, to St Andrew High; Abrianna Gordon, Meadowbrook; Tisha Wallace, Queen’s; Davion Ricketts, Mona; and Renae Chung, Wolmer’s Girls.

jason.cross@gleanerjm.