We should all take responsibility

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

NO doubt the political debates will add value to the discussion as we approach the December 29 polls.

But as the experience on Saturday night will have shown, we shouldn't expect too much. Truthfully, in-between the fluff and the drive to score political points, it was hard to locate much substance.

The problems afflicting Jamaican youth won't be fixed by way of the blame game. Joblessness, ignorance and illiteracy, crime, an inadequacy of resources to fund educational and vocational training as well as social programmes, etc, are rooted in history going all the way back to slavery 170-odd years ago.

Those problems won't go away in a hurry and will need vision and a fixity of purpose on the part of our leaders and, ultimately, all our people, going forward.

And we shouldn't make the mistake of believing that there has been no progress down the years in uplifting youth.

Education, the universal driver of social upliftment, has been the key element in that progress. There are those among us old enough to recall when only a privileged few had access to high quality education.

We can safely argue that much more should have been done. But the truth is that successive governments of both political parties since self-governance in the 1950s, and more particularly since 1962, have done much to educate and train our youth.

How to close the literacy gap, with 10 per cent or just below of our school leavers said to be illiterate, remains a major difficulty. Hopefully, the A-STEP (Alternative Secondary Transition Education Programme) programme implemented this year by the education ministry under the energetic leadership of Mr Andrew Holness will make a big difference. But the society must work to achieve a day when that programme is not needed.

Sadly too, far too many of our trained young people still end up unemployed because of the society's economic dysfunctionalities. Proposals as to how to go about correcting these imbalances will presumably be glibly outlined in manifestos, which we expect soon from the two main political parties.

Also, it seems to us, those candidates who were nominated yesterday should be required to explain their plans to encourage and facilitate enterprise in their own locale to generate jobs.

Further, it seems to this newspaper, those who were nominated have a responsibility to lead. To lead effectively they must speak the truth; tell people not just what they want to hear, but that they must work to pull themselves up by their own means and address their own problems as individuals and communities.

For it is a weakness of politicians in the quest of votes at election time to behave as if they have the wherewithal to resolve all issues.

In that regard, we would recommend to all Jamaicans a passage from Mr Holness's inaugural speech as prime minister which, in fact, got very little media attention:

"Let us start with fathers taking responsibility for their children, and parents deciding only to have children they can afford to maintain and educate. Let us be responsible for the education of our children, there is no reason why in modern Jamaica a child should leave school illiterate; each parent and teacher must work together to take responsibility for the literacy of our children. Let us take responsibility for how we dispose of our waste and the impact it is having on our natural and built environment. We must take pride in where we live and take responsibility for public space though we may not own it individually..."

Much could be achieved if our politicians from all sides, including the prime minister, were to insist on delivering this and similar messages to all Jamaicans at every opportunity.

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We should all take responsibility