BY FABIAN LEDGISTER, Staff Reporter
THE NATIONAL YOUTH Service (NYS) has released findings that the majority of students labelled as 'bad kids,' are actually suffering from a variety of behavioural disorders.
Not to discredit the integrity of the study, but with the twisted social values that these young minds are exposed to daily, what else did they expect.
Inner-city youths are living in a sub-culture of criminal glorification and absent guardians, leaving their susceptive minds to 'suck in' everything they perceive and draw their own conclusions.
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They may learn at school not to hit women, but when they reach home the 'thugs' on the corner are lauding and giving 'big-ups' to another for doing the same thing. They may learn that killing another will make people look down upon them, but the resident 'shotta' on their street gets the most respect.
Although these influences have always been present, they are more widespread among our youth, as parental guidance has dwindled.
SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT
Aside from the common absentee status of the father in an average Jamaican home, the economic problems have forced both parents and elder siblings to leave the home to 'hustle' some money.
With no parental figure to say, "no, this is wrong," the area 'bad-man' will become their role model.
What we need to accept is that the problem cannot be approa-ched from a psychological standpoint, but attacked from the root of the cause of these problems: the social environment.
The environment we speak of does not 'rule out' schools, however, as although the social crisis may be rooted at the child's neighbourhoods, it is perpetuated ten-fold at these institutions of education.
When a group of these tainted minds come together with tainted values and try to top one another based on these 'bad-man' values, anarchy is imminent. If you follow current news, this is exactly what is happening now in secondary and tertiary schools, with increased student-on-student violence.
Furthermore, the limited set of children who have not been 'tainted,' will see their peers being lauded for their criminal mentality, it won't be long before they will follow.
NEGATIVE VALUES
Even the NYS's finding that most of these 'disruptive' kids are also abusing drugs, stems right back to their social environs.
More programmes for mentorship, such as the Big Brother program, need to be instituted to counter the negative values that are giving our children misperceptions of being a respected person.
A feared person is not a respected person, and when we can affect changes to the social structure that has led our children to think this way, we can save them from themselves.
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