When Youth, Sports and Culture Minister, the Honorable Peter Bethel introduced the concept of Junior Junkanoo into the school system, it was to ensure that a future generation of proud Bahamians to develop and promote the national culture of the Bahamas. By exposing them to this unique cultural art at such an early age, they would appreciate the significance of Junkanoo and safeguard it with a passion. By working together, they would learn the importance of discipline and teamwork while tapping the vast artistic talents that exist in the Bahamas. Once provided with the proper guidance, at the end of parade day, the ethics of hard work should pay off and those who have gone the extra mile by making an extra effort should be rewarded in kind by fair judges who are aware of the correlation between effort and achievement. Not only by winning a parade or a particular category be intrinsically rewarding, but such bold approach will help mold the character of our school; children and thus provide them with the proper directives to be good nation builders.
With deep regrets, this well intended vision to positively impact the youth in recent years has been violated and compromised with the children being the victims of the system. In the name of winning at all cost, negative values are being implanted in the minds of our youth as it is emphasized that the end will justify the means, Hard work is not being rewarded in kind and most children no longer participate in the creative and performing aspect of the production of their Junkanoo costume. What should have been a lesson in creativity, dedication, loyalty and a labour of love has now been replaced by senior professional individuals who for a fee will mass produce the costumes for a school without any effort or involvement on the part of the students. This is so wrong!!
How does one expect a child to feel when his group wins an award for best costume(s) when he knows that he had absolutely nothing to assist in the constructions of such costumes and is being rewarded on the efforts of others. School principals who encourage or turn a blind eye to this kind of dishonesty should hang their heads in shame, as they are guilty of corrupting the morals of our children. The academic equivalent of this would be a child who turns in a paper that he copied directly from the internet or some other source and receives an excellent grade. Clearly, this is plagiarism!
On Grand Bahama, this disgraceful situation has taken a turn for the worst. Some schools are now spending vast sums of money to pay for the production of their costumes. Even when students may have difficulty raising monies for books, uniform, etc, some schools are formally requesting parents to help raise funds for Junkanoo via donations, sponsorship, walkathons, sponsor sheets, etc. In fact, some parents are asked for as much as one hundred dollars/child. This is a scandalous outrage and the Minister of Education needs to immediately step in to address this situation that is now out of hand. Some of these schools are public schools where parents in today’s economy may be unemployed, disadvantaged or lack economic means. Now they are being asked to come up with another $100.00 on something which in the long run will have no benefit towards the educational development of their child.
A simple mathematical calculation would indicate that to prepare one hundred costumes, the cost would b e 100 x 100=$10,000.00. For a school where there may be two or three hundred students parading, the cost will now be a whopping 20-30 thousand dollars. This is absolutely incredible and this kind of money is now approaching the budget of a senior group on the New Years Day Parade. Furthermore, Local government has always provided funds for the purchase of the basic materials such as crepe paper, glue, brushes, instruments, etc. This year, the Freeport City Council to the tune of $25,000.00 is donating a record amount. In addition, the government also provides seed money of one thousand dollars to each school. With this incredible demand for funds, these schools are now actually competing with the senior groups for sponsorship in an already economically depressed business environment. This certainly will adverse affect the senior parade. Even the Ministry of Tourism who traditionally hire senior groups when they are putting on functions are now hiring junior school groups as they did at the McClean’s Town Conch Cracking on All Hero’s day.
The Minister of Education/Culture needs to step in and curtail these unethical practices here on Grand Bahama. Failure to do so will produce future generations of Bahamians ignorant in the production of their cultural art. Junior Junkanoo is now fast becoming a farce. All a student has to do now is show up at the parade and put on an already fabricated costume. No labour of love here! The Bahamas will loose what was set out to be achieved with junior Junkanoo. This exploitation of our children in the name of competition lacks integrity and it only serves to satisfy the selfish egos of those promoting such a corrupt system. At the end of the day, the schools will not benefit financially as only trophies and not cash prizes that are awarded to the schools. The schools with the most money will be able to buy a parade. Sadly, the word integrity in the Bahamian vocabulary is as rare as the word “xzvrpowktijlwtysp”. Is this the message that our educators want to send to the young people? I don’t think so! It is not being suggested that senior professional be excluded from benefiting from Junior Junkanoo, as there are an increasing number of Bahamians who are making a living exclusively from Junkanoo. However, their role should be one of supervising or directing production, and certainly not doing the children’s work.
Dr. Leatendore Percentie
