A call to action
AFTER READING my student’s paper, gunshots continue to light up the night and disturb the quiet of the valley. On Wednesday, February 14, 2018, most Jamaicans would have read and seen all the images of the mass school shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people. On social media outlets, most persons expressed disbelief, anger, pain and a call for action to prevent further mass shootings. Since January, there have been more than 200 murders in Jamaica.
Have we in Jamaica become so numb to shootings, violence and murders that we do not demand more? Or is it not in the ‘right ’ backyard? What if this violence occurred in Norbrook or Cherry Gardens?
A lasting solution is a formidable challenge and one that requires a social movement, not just from the people but from organisations like the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, the Council of Churches, and the universities, to name a few: a campaign for #100%Jamaican employment
(not underemployment). As educators, we contemplate our students’ predicament and struggle with how to prepare our l essons for class as we continue to teach in the line of fire. First, I salute the teachers who work daily in educational institutions located within volatile communities, who teach while dodging bullets and provide safety for our children. Beyond my utmost respect for you, I (selfishly) plead with you to continue to protect our children as “The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility” (Hooks, 1994). In that possibility, we need to develop and teach revolutionaries – not those armed with guns, but armed with their minds. Second, our classrooms need to become the spaces of freedom and safety, where we meet our children’s demands to excel and be excellent. Third, within the classrooms, our children should be taught to activate their voices and not silence them – classrooms are sometimes the only space they have in a day to speak.
PUSHING BOUNDARIES FOR CHANGE
Lastly, it is impor tant that as educators we centre the lives of the students within the curriculum and that the classroom pushes the boundaries for societal change. To the teachers, you may think these are lofty requests, given the severity of your working environment, but the student who wrote the paper above is one of many examples of students t hat survived t he gunshots in those very basic and primary schools and labours to change the community, today.
When I asked my students, what is the solution to cease the gunfire, they said the following:
“Doc, they need to be resocialised, consciously educated. They are killing for turf and super ficial power. They need jobs, skills training and basic needs such as food.”
This issue of crime and violence is a multifaceted one, deeply rooted in our culture. Our people cannot continue to live in fear, and at the very least, our children deserve a chance to simply be.
“It’s not the violence of the few that scares me, it’s the silence of the many” – Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
Saran Stewart, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of the West Indies, Mona.