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Kendal Crash and family life
Michael Burke
Thursday, August 30, 2007
There has been a lot of talk about education in this election campaign. Very little has been said about addressing family life as a part of education. Come this Saturday, September 1, it will be 50 years since the Kendal Crash, which was the worst train crash in our history. It was an excursion train. The St Anne's Roman Catholic Church in West Kingston had an outing in Montego Bay and on the return journey the tragedy occurred at Kendal in Manchester. Were it not for vandals that interfered with the train's mechanical parts, it would not have happened.
What? Vandals in Jamaica 50 years ago? This must be hard for the young people to grasp, especially as they keep hearing that they are the worst-behaved and that we were the best. The truth is that our generation and the ones before were just as bad or worse, except that there are more guns today, and therefore more gun-related deaths.
Were these vandals the children of those who had gone to England on the Empire Windrush after the Second World War? Would teenagers with parents at home be likely to behave in this manner? When I went to school in the 1950s and '60s, many of my classmates were waiting for their parents abroad to send for them. Many of them never joined their parents and are still here. Those children gave the most trouble at school because they were pining for their parents.
Please understand that a 20-year-old vandal 50 years ago is 70 years old today. An 18-year-old vandal 50 years ago is 68 and a 15-year-old vandal 50 years ago is 65. In other words, the vandals of yesteryear are now grandfathers or great-grandfathers. The point I am making here is that we have had a lot of talk over the years, but we have not really addressed the parlous state of family life which really goes back to the days of slavery.
We have applied the wrong sort of education. In some respects we have mis-educated our youth. But even when we have given the right sort of education, we have not dealt with certain basics like changing dysfunctional children into functional ones. In a sense, it is like sweeping dirt under a carpet. The dirt is still there. And the "dirt" comes out when the finished product of our education system that we call "graduate" is socially insecure, maladjusted and dysfunctional, even if that graduate has a doctorate.
To the very poor in Western Kingston in 1957, a trip to Montego Bay was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, whether or not they could afford tickets. And even today, when either political party has an election rally in Montego Bay, there are many that have no intention of missing such an event. And they will definitely go, even if they have to wear the cap and T-shirt of a party that they do not support.
And the same behaviour in buses on their way to political rallies might be how the vandals behaved on that fateful return journey from that church excursion in 1957. The behaviour on that 1957 excursion train, however, was evidently worse. It is a crying shame that given our social ills, and given the fact that we are now 45 years independent, our major political parties, while making education an issue of the campaign, will speak of it in such vague terms.
This is not some other country where family life is fairly good (it is not perfect in any country on earth), and it is understood that school serves a completely different function from the home. In Jamaica, school and family life education should be combined in a meaningful way, Indeed, Jamaica should by now have fully adopted the African principle that it takes a village to raise a child.
But our politicians do not find such things politically marketable. Indeed, the whole business of instilling discipline is not marketable, so it is simply not addressed in election campaigns. When the dust settles after the election on Monday, we should get a hold of ourselves, and assist the government, no matter who wins, in addressing this serious problem. One area that must be addressed is the mentoring of fatherless boys.
We should use what I call the "Taino hurricane principle" in dealing with some of our social ills. Please remember that we know today that the people Columbus saw upon his arrival in Jamaica were not Arawaks but Tainos. That academic distinction aside, the history books report that the Tainos hardened their heads as the defence of a non-violent people against the bow-and-arrow attacks of the warlike Caribs.
Incidentally, the word hurricane is a Taino word. And just as we brace for a hurricane in buying foodstuff and "battening down", we have to brace for the negative influences of Cable TV and the Internet. We should teach the children how to choose the right things. Do we have enough adults prepared to mentor children? If we do not, this problem of poor family life, which manifested itself in the Kendal Crash of 1957, will not go away in a hurry.
Michael Burke
Thursday, August 30, 2007
There has been a lot of talk about education in this election campaign. Very little has been said about addressing family life as a part of education. Come this Saturday, September 1, it will be 50 years since the Kendal Crash, which was the worst train crash in our history. It was an excursion train. The St Anne's Roman Catholic Church in West Kingston had an outing in Montego Bay and on the return journey the tragedy occurred at Kendal in Manchester. Were it not for vandals that interfered with the train's mechanical parts, it would not have happened.
What? Vandals in Jamaica 50 years ago? This must be hard for the young people to grasp, especially as they keep hearing that they are the worst-behaved and that we were the best. The truth is that our generation and the ones before were just as bad or worse, except that there are more guns today, and therefore more gun-related deaths.
Were these vandals the children of those who had gone to England on the Empire Windrush after the Second World War? Would teenagers with parents at home be likely to behave in this manner? When I went to school in the 1950s and '60s, many of my classmates were waiting for their parents abroad to send for them. Many of them never joined their parents and are still here. Those children gave the most trouble at school because they were pining for their parents.
Please understand that a 20-year-old vandal 50 years ago is 70 years old today. An 18-year-old vandal 50 years ago is 68 and a 15-year-old vandal 50 years ago is 65. In other words, the vandals of yesteryear are now grandfathers or great-grandfathers. The point I am making here is that we have had a lot of talk over the years, but we have not really addressed the parlous state of family life which really goes back to the days of slavery.
We have applied the wrong sort of education. In some respects we have mis-educated our youth. But even when we have given the right sort of education, we have not dealt with certain basics like changing dysfunctional children into functional ones. In a sense, it is like sweeping dirt under a carpet. The dirt is still there. And the "dirt" comes out when the finished product of our education system that we call "graduate" is socially insecure, maladjusted and dysfunctional, even if that graduate has a doctorate.
To the very poor in Western Kingston in 1957, a trip to Montego Bay was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, whether or not they could afford tickets. And even today, when either political party has an election rally in Montego Bay, there are many that have no intention of missing such an event. And they will definitely go, even if they have to wear the cap and T-shirt of a party that they do not support.
And the same behaviour in buses on their way to political rallies might be how the vandals behaved on that fateful return journey from that church excursion in 1957. The behaviour on that 1957 excursion train, however, was evidently worse. It is a crying shame that given our social ills, and given the fact that we are now 45 years independent, our major political parties, while making education an issue of the campaign, will speak of it in such vague terms.
This is not some other country where family life is fairly good (it is not perfect in any country on earth), and it is understood that school serves a completely different function from the home. In Jamaica, school and family life education should be combined in a meaningful way, Indeed, Jamaica should by now have fully adopted the African principle that it takes a village to raise a child.
But our politicians do not find such things politically marketable. Indeed, the whole business of instilling discipline is not marketable, so it is simply not addressed in election campaigns. When the dust settles after the election on Monday, we should get a hold of ourselves, and assist the government, no matter who wins, in addressing this serious problem. One area that must be addressed is the mentoring of fatherless boys.
We should use what I call the "Taino hurricane principle" in dealing with some of our social ills. Please remember that we know today that the people Columbus saw upon his arrival in Jamaica were not Arawaks but Tainos. That academic distinction aside, the history books report that the Tainos hardened their heads as the defence of a non-violent people against the bow-and-arrow attacks of the warlike Caribs.
Incidentally, the word hurricane is a Taino word. And just as we brace for a hurricane in buying foodstuff and "battening down", we have to brace for the negative influences of Cable TV and the Internet. We should teach the children how to choose the right things. Do we have enough adults prepared to mentor children? If we do not, this problem of poor family life, which manifested itself in the Kendal Crash of 1957, will not go away in a hurry.
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