WESTERN BUREAU:
FOURTEEN CHILDREN, one from each parish, who are among the top performers in the GSAT examinations, have been awarded scholarships from the Jamaica National Building Society's Scholarship Awards programme.
The award winners will receive $6,000 a year to assist with educational expenses for the first five years of their secondary education. An additional six secondary education scholarships, were presented to children of employees of Jamaica National.
The programme, which was started in 1983, also offers two scholarships and a bursary to the University of Technology (UTech), and three scholarships to students at the University of the West Indies.
At the awards ceremony in Ocho Rios, St. Ann yesterday, Dr. Simon Clarke, Special Adviser to Education Minister Burchell Whiteman, suggested that the exclusion of youngsters from certain places and experiences might be a cause of the crime wave now affecting the country.
"We have to stop pointing fingers and turn inward to find out to what extent we have contributed to situations of exclusions, where many times, youngster are just shut out. There is always a bar preventing them from entering (certain places), and even though we understand the reasons, there are some youngsters who do not understand why this is so," he said.
Dr. Clarke added that crime and violence was not just a Jamaican problem. "The same difficulties of violence and crime are all over the world; it is a human problem, and the solutions will have to be human-based."
Dr. Clarke encouraged the scholarship winners not to look down on other children who were not as successful in their academics. "There is a temptation for those of you who have scholarships, to look down on other youngsters who are not as successful. Don't fall into the trap of feeling that you are better than others in that respect. You have been lucky enough to have received this benefit, you must now find some way for someone else to benefit from your experience."
