EDITORIAL - Don't waver on school intervention

It hardly requires a formal study, flawed or otherwise, to draw a correlation between inmates in Jamaican prisons and the schools most of them are likely to have attended.

And it doesn't have to do entirely with the pedagogic skills or management talent or the efforts of those who teach in the identified schools.

The fact is that schools exist in communities, which are likely to be the main catchments from which they draw their students.

Further, we have far better than a fair profile of Jamaica's communities, schools and the profiles of the students that are likely to be streamed into them.

The picture that is likely to emerge of many of the identified communities, the schools they host, and the outcomes of their students will, of course, reflect many of the failures of, and attendant flaws thereof, in Jamaican society.

NOT SURPRISED BY LIST OF SCHOOLS

In too many communities, for instance, we will see the result of an overly divisive politics manifested in the zones of political exclusions we call garrisons; high levels of crime and criminality will be obvious, as will be other forms of social dysfunction, including high levels of teenage pregnancy, and single-parent homes. The poverty and other forms of economic privation will be stark. Indeed, these are the conditions that will help to shape many of the students who attend community schools. In these circumstances, it often requires special will and effort on the part of families and other forms of social interventions to prevent children falling through the cracks.

Looked at in that context, this newspaper is not surprised - and we are surprised that anyone is - at the list of schools in the study by the police with the greatest frequency of prison inmates.

What is particularly worrying is that a potentially good spin-off from the report might be undermined because of the superciliousness with which it was greeted by some in the academic elite, and the defensiveness of too many others.

There is likely to be one fact, at least, about the study: that those who did it got the names of the schools right and the frequency with which they cropped up among the schools attended by the inmates they surveyed. We do not need this particular report to have a decent understanding of the reasons why far too many Jamaicans are drawn to crime and may end up in prison.

So, when the education minister, Ronald Thwaites, unveils a package of interventions in the most frequently highlighted schools and buttresses that effort, naming a respected psychiatrist and academic, Professor Fred Hickling, to advance the initiative, he can count on the support of this newspaper. There can be debate about the breadth, depth and quality of Mr Thwaites' proposed intervention, but not that he has not acted.

This does not suggest that Minister Thwaites' action represents a full response to the societal problems that lead to crime and people being jailed.

But the education minister is just that - the education minister, with limited capacity to act. Moreover, the societal crisis in Jamaica has to be attacked on many fronts - schools is one of them.

By the way, whatever the flaws of this study, we are glad that the police are engaged in such an effort rather than confronting every challenge with their guns.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.