We believe that it is high time for the country to take note of what is a major problem in The Bahamas.
Teachers and other education workers are often baffled and troubled by a transformation they observe year in and year out. The scenario they witness goes something like this:
an infant enters school at the kindergarten level, progresses through primary school, is graduated, sometimes with honors, and goes on to secondary school at the age of eleven or twelve. Then – as if out of the blue – the child begins to change, sometimes in a wonderful way. In an increasing number of other cases, the pubescent child goes awry, much to the amazement of teachers, parents and other caregivers.
The road to ruin is sometimes disastrously sudden. Promise is turned to challenge and the now adolescent is faced with a number of life changing developments. For many young women, this is the moment of truth for them as they struggle with any number of life choices. Some of them are force-marched into a kind of mock-maturity as they try to cope with issues involving sexually transmitted diseases, statutory rape and unwanted pregnancies.
Adolescent males face their own incipient crises. Some of them gravitate towards gangs, while others run afoul of authority figures in their communities and schools. Again, as in the instance of their female counterparts, many young men are acutely challenged by the turbulence in their lives as they make the transition from childhood to responsible adulthood. Regrettably, many of them do not make it. Gun violence, trauma, sexually transmitted diseases and any number of distresses together conspire to challenge them and the wider society. What we are getting at is the fact that so many of our schools are demonstrably failing in their duty to assist many young Bahamians in their transition years.
Convinced as we are that the health of a nation is the wealth of that nation, we decry the squandering of so much of this nation's patrimony. When schools fail to properly nurture, educate, socialize and civilize the nation's youthful population, everyone pays a frightfully high price for this neglect. We see evidence for this in the statistics which speak to the fact that more and more young people are coming up on charges relating to drug use, alcohol consumption, an assortment of beastly crimes, HIV and AIDS infection. While these speak to individual misfortune and calamity, they also speak to the bigger issues of community neglect and policy failure. When are hauled before the courts, their arrival is evidence of multiple failures, multiple delinquencies and multiple derelictions of duty.
Since society has a direct stake in its own health and well being, it has – we are convinced -a commensurate responsibility to ensure the health and well being of its citizens. There is a direct correlation between school effectiveness and responsible citizenship. When schools fail in their mission, everyone is obliged to pay dearly. While successive governments have made much of their efforts to shore up the nation's physical infrastructure, they have done little to build up this country's social infrastructure. In one area after the other, vital social services have been allowed to drift into a state of decline and incipient collapse. Take for example, the specific case of public policy towards education. Despite the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars, this nation's school systems are demonstrably failing. Here we are not referring to the number of teachers hired nor to the number of students graduated, but to the fact that so many of this nation's youth are 'falling through the cracks'.
Indeed, it is pathetically heart-breaking to see manacled and chained young men shuffling to and from court to face the consequences of their crimes against the community. Some of these youthful offenders end up in prison where they are further coarsened and brutalized. While these young people are obliged to face the music, the schools and the teachers with which and with whom they were involved for most of their short and miserable lives go unremarked and almost totally forgotten.
Our focus is on teachers and schools because it is the educational system, moreso than any other social institution which is responsible for the molding of character and the discipline of primitive appetites. When schools fail society, poorly socialized and sometimes extremely violent predators are the result. While it would be true to suggest that the home environment is also vitally important, the fact remains that schools and teachers are equally important, comprising as they do the country's major investment in its own health and wealth creation program.
As a consequence, therefore, we reiterate that when schools and teachers fail in their work, the wider society pays dearly. Something can and should be done about this matter.
Editorial, The Bahama Journal
