SOS: Save Our Society!

by Paula-Anne Moore

This is the second of a two-part attempt to offer views on the issues which result in so many of our children becoming at-risk and focuses on our boys.

Our leaders post-independence have endeavoured, with significant success, to provide significant opportunities for individual and national development.  Barbados has become an impressive model of a developing nation, with an enviable standard of living for many of us.  We enjoy social services which many people in larger wealthier countries do not.

Still, while we may not have as much visible abject poverty as obtains in some of our Caribbean neighbours, poverty is real.  The increased number of homeless people is one disturbing indicator.  Poor education outcomes and resultant limited income, high cost of living, and desperation to put food on the table result in a vicious cycle to which too many fall victim. COVID has exacerbated these challenges.

There are many Bajans who work hard. But many are still effectively the working poor, and the side hustles still are not enough. Our middle class is drowning.

What can we do differently?

‘Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’

The Ministry of People Empowerment has launched the impressive One Family programme, seeking to raise 1 000 families out of poverty. The mandate of the new minister in the Ministry of Education focusing on vocational training hopefully will reap long-term dividends.  Micro-financing and business education opportunities are limited, which severely restricts entrepreneurship.  The current government had touted the revival of constituency councils during prior election cycles -what is the status of these? Perhaps such councils could act as entrepreneurship hubs targeting at-risk communities.

Messaging and leadership

We also need political and community leaders to influence and lift up our people with better messaging.

The foregoing can be acknowledged compassionately while still communicating the reality that life is inherently unfair and can be hard (note: our forefathers know about hardship and poverty far more than most of us ever could). Too often, the importance of self-reliance, ‘by the sweat of your brow’ is not emphasised. The relatively poor work ethic of Bajan workers (compared to our Caribbean brothers and sisters, even in the Canadian Farm Labour Programme) is a frequent complaint of employers in the construction, farm and other sectors. The prevailing cultural imperative is a distracting focus on bashment, appearance, and conspicuous spending – often by any means necessary. This is the new ‘opiate of the masses’.

Decades of promoting ‘nation language’ is related to families having limited proficiency in Standard English, which disadvantages education, work and social interaction.

Additionally, ‘Pride and Industry’ currently seems to have a different meaning than originally intended. Yes, we are all products of an unjust colonial past, yes. But that does not mean a grievance mentality should be encouraged, as James Paul said so emphatically on Brass Tacks recently.  We are not entitled to what other people have, whether they have inherited or earned it. There seems to be a focus more on an arrogant Pride and less promotion of self-respect. Some people seem to be encouraged to show the type of entitlement for handouts displayed, in a recent video, by the grandmother in her 50s who demanded better accommodation for her grandchildren and adult children. The type of Industry drive that was applied to our nation-building immediately post-independence is lacking in too many.

A cohesive, multi-pronged, simultaneous communication strategy, promoting self-respect and industrious self-reliance, targeting the community, the family, and the child at school, is needed. Leaders respected by the community need to be mobilised to reach out within the community: to talk, to listen, and to act as a conduit to help as needed.

Religious leaders and institutions do wonderful community work.  But it is too simplistic to lament that the lives of families no longer revolve around the church. That is the modern reality — many feel that formal religion is not relevant to their lives. If the family structure is at risk, values, morality and other standards that were reinforced in church, need to be taught in other fora simultaneously with specifically targeted family support being provided.

Community reform is education reform

Education reform is crucial, starting first at the primary level as championed by the BUT and the DLP but its effectiveness is limited without simultaneous social welfare support. Inequities in education reflect societal inequities.

A successful education reform strategy must be an integral part of a national strategy of social welfare reform.  It must be recognised that children are shaped long before, during and after they start school. It must address and incorporate, with adequate resource allocation, family, community, and social support.  Pressure is added on the public health system to provide sufficient trained child psychologists/guidance counsellors in primary and secondary school, earliest neuro-divergent and learning testing and remediation. Rethinking school discipline and security which may require separate school(s) for children with significant behavioural challenges may be needed. To do otherwise will make it almost impossible to achieve not just education reform, but also a truly successful national development strategy.

O. S.

As we reexamine our national education system, we must focus on and acknowledge that our boys are uniquely struggling, especially when we compare their academic outcomes to those of girls.  As a mother of three boys and as a concerned citizen, this worries me deeply. The public is not blessed with annual 11+ and CXC statistics of pass rates per school (an international best practice and norm) but based on the annual Barbados Scholarship and Exhibitions, law school and medical school graduating classes, the latter two often reflect approximately 80–90 per cent female graduates, the 70 per cent UWI Cave Hill female enrollment, something is going very wrong with our boys.  Education professionals tell us that boys mature and develop later and differently from girls.  They tend to be more boisterous than girls. I know from personal experience that sometimes boys are chastised in class for behaviour that is intrinsic to their nature and compared negatively to their fellow female classmates.  What does that do to their self-esteem at a key developmental age, to feel that ‘something is wrong with them’?  It also does not help that the paucity of positive male role models is exacerbated when caring but firm male teachers such as Jeff Broomes and Ralph Jemmott are few and far between. Some female teachers – somewhat understandably as they try to instil discipline in large classes so they can focus on teaching – do not have the patience or understanding of boys and cannot, lacking resources, or won’t tailor their teaching to accommodate how boys learn.

Whatever happened to the experimental single-sex forms at Queen’s College? Why were the academic outcomes not publicly released?

It also does not help that our culture is a very sexually explicit one, perhaps more so than other cultures. Our music, dancing and dress, often encouraged at very young age, can encourage sexual interaction even at primary school age.  This can only further distract boys battling with raging hormones. Pop culture further glorifies ‘thug life’. Perhaps that is why co-education has placed our boys at an added disadvantage, compared to our girls?

Finally, not enough public attention is given to the widespread use of ganja by young people, even in primary school.  Some promote weed as beneficial and ‘all natural’; but globally recognised child rights experts such as Faith Marshall-Harris and substance abuse experts such as Tessa Chadderton-Shaw have noted the deleterious physiological effect of ganja on young developing brains especially, and the negative effects of the culture that surrounds pervasive daily ganja use.

Any combination of these factors only compounds any socio-economic family or community disadvantages which the boys bring into the classroom.

These clearly complex, multifaceted, overlapping challenges require the implementation and investment of long-term, realistic strategies and significant financial and specialist human resources. Perhaps these suggestions are pipe dreams and unrealistic for a small poor country.

We ignore the ‘Two Barbadoses’ at our peril. We can bury our heads in the sand for only so long. If we do not wake up as a society, and provide more help at the community level, that sand will become quicksand for us all.

We are our brothers’ keepers.

We must Save Our Sons, before it’s too late: for them, for us all!

Paula-Anne Moore is spokesperson/coordinator of the Group of Concerned Parents, Barbados