Dr Grace Kelly, chairman of the Behavioural Sciences Department at the Northern Caribbean University. - file
The problem of poor parenting skills and a lack of concern for the well-being of the nation's children has been put forward as part of the reasons for the apparent breakdown of moral values and respect in the country's educational institutions.
Dr Grace Kelly, chairman of the Behavioural Sciences Department at the Northern Caribbean University, said on the weekend that poor socialisation practices and a lack of proper parenting is having an adverse effect on children.
She was reacting to recent recordings involving under-aged students participating in sex acts and the spate of violence that has erupted in schools across the nation.
"Our children have been marred," Kelly told The Gleaner. "The strangers on the streets are the ones socialising our children, not the parents or teachers. Parents, teachers and counsellors are facing a serious challenge."
Kelly said she was amazed at recent incidents in which students appear to have taken over their schools.
What is happening?
"I don't know what is happening because teachers are supposed to have authority and autonomy, a child should not feel that they have overcome and that they have control," she said.
Just last month, it was reported that two girls at Christiana High School in Manchester assaulted a vice-principal after one was reprimanded for wearing make-up to school.
It was also recently reported that a Kingston College student was beaten unconscious on the school's compound after he was involved in a tussle with a student who had taken away his cellphone.
Kelly said the problem also has a lot to do with the media, the type of music and movies that children are being fed. The easy access of pornographic material via the Internet and cable television, she said, is a matter of great concern.
"We need a values change," she said. "We need what we call in psychology a cognitive reconstruction. We need to reconstruct the whole mindset of our parents and our people and, if we don't get to the core of it, we're not going to have change."
Dr Donna Hope, lecturer at the University of the West Indies (UWI), agreed that many Jamaican parents are lax in their responsibility as guardians and instructors in regard to children gaining free access to certain material.
Sylvester Anderson, president of the National Parent-Teachers Association of Jamaica, said that, to assist with this problem, his organisation will be planning a series of parenting seminars in the final weeks of March.
"Essentially we'll be targeting the parents through the Parent-Teachers Association to bring some order to the whole situation," he said. "We have to start from the foundation."