Friday, March 29, 2024

Teaching youth peace

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MY SWEET HOMELAND Barbados is fast becoming the modern day wild west.

It is very common these days to wake up to a news item that some person was the victim of a shooting during the night and it is no longer restricted to certain neighbourhoods but has now began to fester throughout rural as well as urban Barbados.

Some of our young men seem to have no regard for human life and with no training in the use of firearms they continue to shoot and kill at will without any consideration for innocent bystanders.

What has really gone wrong with this society in which I grew up as a baby of the fifties? The guidance which nurtured us as a society back then seems to have been discarded and replaced by a penchant for violence. Mutual respect is no longer the order of the day, words like “sorry” and “excuse me” have been completely erased from not only the lips but the minds of those deviant young men.

I will never become accustomed to the presence of gunplay on our streets, as much as I still do enjoy a good western show on television, then I keep remembering my great aunt’s words, “violence begets violence”.

Corporal punishment

There has been much debate in recent times about the pros and cons of corporal punishment being administered to our children. If my great aunt’s words are to be taken seriously, then to administer corporal punishment as a means of discipline can also be teaching our young people that the way to control and keep our charges in line is by giving them a good whipping.

While I do think that we need to seriously discipline our children the old adage of “spare the rod and spoil the child” seems quite outdated and doomed to failure.

I have to constantly remind persons that there is no one in the confines of our prison walls that as a child was given an abundance of love by their parents. I am sure if you check you will see that those prisoners were most likely the recipient of excessive floggings without the commensurate amount of love and guidance.

Many have expressed fear of going to social gatherings because of the high probability of violent behaviour; young men are attending these events in possession of knives and guns. This state of affairs is certainly not good for our society. No one wants to feel like a prisoner in their own home, not being able to mingle and socialize with kith and kin.

Conflict resolution

We need urgently to start teaching conflict resolution in our schools and within our youth organisations. we have even seen violence rear its ugly head on our football fields and when violent activity invades sport that is not good for its overall development.

There is too much anger and unless we can successfully channel this anger in a positive direction we stand ready to destroy the gains of our forefathers by the destruction of a society which was known for its peaceful stability.

The fundamentals of “conflict resolution” will teach us how to agree to disagree without being disagreeable, how to resolve a serious difference of opinion without letting it get physical.

We must begin somewhere to steer our society from this path of violence and promote a peaceable and “violence-free” society for the enjoyment of all. What better place to begin than with our youth and in our nation’s schools. Peace be upon you.

– FRANK M. GILKES

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