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[6 March 2008] - Andrew Holness believes the widespread violence in the society is to be blamed on the aggressive and violent forms of corporal punishment administered to children by teachers and parents under the guise of discipline.
Holness, the education minister, told last week's launch of the Portmore chapter of Generation 2000 (G2K) - an affiliate of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party - that Jamaicans have to get a new culture to counteract the recalcitrant child. "And it cannot be that we are going to resort to violence," he said. Said the minister: "We have done that for many years, and do you know what that passes to the students? That the only way to resolve a conflict is through violence, and what is being played out in the society is reinforced everyday by how we as a society imparts disciplinary instruction to our young people," he said. Corporal punishment as a means of imparting of instruction, was not the best way to achieve discipline, he said. "I don't believe that I can open someone's head and place discipline in it, which essentially is what corporal punishment proposes to do. Just like you couldn't open someone's head and put academic instruction in by purporting that you will learn," he told the launch. Holness argued, too, that in addition to teaching the child to be violent, corporal punishment also erodes his self-esteem and self-worth, and that this in turn results in deviant behaviour such as happened with the two students who were recently filmed having sex. The solution, which requires the support of the entire society, is to be respectful of children and their rights; to discard the notion that children have 'mini rights', while adults have 'big rights'; to treat children with the same level of respect with which adults are treated, and to start having high expectations of children. "Here is where I need the help of G2K and organisations like G2K. I need you to start the mindset change. I want G2K members to become the agents of changing the mindsets of our brothers and sisters in society," he said.