On the day that two more young people were murdered on the streets of Nassau, a call has gone out for special ‘conflict’ courses to be compulsory added to the school curriculum throughout The Bahamas.
Several prominent Nassau residents are pushing for the government to have conflict resolution and family planning classes implemented into the educational system as they believe courses of this nature will play a vital role as the country tries to crackdown on crime.
President of the Youth Against Violence organisation Carlos Reid said yesterday that all students in the country should be made to take these courses, as young people seem to be at the heart of the crime circle.
“Our young people are not being trained properly,” he said. “I think that a mandatory conflict resolution course should be implemented in the schools and I think family planning need to be mandatory. They shouldn’t be something that you choose. I believe that as soon as we look at our academic institutions and do a complete remodel of that then we will see better results.”
The former gang member added that for too long, adults have been directly and indirectly teaching children about bad behaviour through domestic fights, arguments and other violent fashions. Making matters worst, he said, pop culture has also added its own effect on the youngsters. Mr Reid believes that education is the only way to combat this trend.
“We can’t sit idly by and hope that it’s going to disappear,” he said. “When it comes to young people they are even getting more influenced by the movies that are coming out and the songs that are being played. What the schools ought to do is to get conflict resolution inside the schools, no ifs, ands or buts about it.”
Noted Bahamian psychiatrist David Allen also believes that these much needed courses should immediately come on stream, but outlined a new approach that should also be adopted. Dr Allen said while education is a good approach to the problem, additional and more personal steps have to be taken to cut down on the crime surge.
“The best approach to this is what we call collective efficiency,” he explained. “That is a term coined by an international professor and it’s a process where you overcome crime when the people recognise that it’s a problem and they come together to fight it.
“Instead of being afraid to go out at night because of criminals, collective efficiency would bring people of the community together and hang out where they feel, regardless if criminals will be there. If someone is afraid to walk the beach, people will walk the beach with you. This approach is saying, the public is the police and the police is the public.”
Dr Allen added that the country’s biggest challenge is that “we have to decide in our hearts that we do not want crime in The Bahamas.”
He also said that nowadays Bahamians are becoming “disconnected” and they need to cooperate with the police and contact them when the argument is going on not when somebody gets injured.
“This means that we are becoming more self-absorbed,” he said. “But collective efficiency means what happens to you happens to me.” Just yesterday two young men were killed in New Providence, taking the murder count for 2006, to to 21. Crime analysts believe that the inability to properly solve arguments is playing a vital role in this murder trend. Today, The Guardian highlights the huge problem faced by the police, the government and the community in dealing with the escalating problem.
By: IANTHIA SMITH, The Nassau Guardian
