Letter of the Day | Lock them up!
Published:Thursday | April 28, 2022 | 12:06 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
The age of attainment of majority in Jamaica is 18 years and came into effect from April 30, 1979, when the Law Reform (Age of Majority) Act came into effect.
This, therefore, makes it clear that children in Jamaica, enrolled in the early-childhood to secondary education system, up to age 18, are considered minors and remain under the jurisdiction, guidance and care of parents or guardians. Whenever these children are enrolled in the education process, principals and teachers in schools have a duty of care to protect and secure the safety and security of these minors, while on school campuses.
The children are in school to be taught concepts and develop their critical-thinking skills. The business of socialisation is a function of the home, and while schools rightly establish standards of conduct, which define their character and how all their stakeholders must acquit themselves, there are inalienable rights and conventions which are sacrosanct. As a result, principals and teachers cannot remove students from school campuses during the designated hours of contact learning, without the knowledge and involvement of parents.
On the occasions when minors exhibit antisocial behaviours, their parents ought to be summoned to the institutions for engagement. Under NO circumstance, however, is a child to be locked out of a school campus. If he presents a physical danger to other stakeholders on the campus, the principal ought to take control, keep the minor in his presence, engage law enforcement, and involve the parents immediately. You cannot deny children the safety and structure of the campus once their parents have handed them over to the duly constituted authority of the government. And further, this matter of breaching the privacy of children by having their images in the media is incorrect.
Principals and other school administrators guilty of locking children out of school, after their parents have delivered them to the campus, MUST be arrested and placed before the courts. It is time we reshape our society, by treating with respect the weakest and most vulnerable. Let us not transfer the responsibility for the moral decadence in our society to our children; they are living what they have learnt over decades of disregard for order.
That said, the brouhaha about hairstyles in school has its antecedents in Jamaica’s bigoted, plantation reality. Little boys and girls of dominant European and Asian influences in our society are not being subjected to the same discriminatory actions, on the rare occasion that they are enrolled in our public education system.
MARK A. HYLTON