What about parenting?
Published:Tuesday | May 11, 2010 | 12:00 AM
The Editor, Sir:
In response to your editorial 'Defending that which is wrong' published, May 1, I would like to add a few thoughts, which to me are the root cause of the problem. It is a fact of life that as our children are trained, so do they grow up. From our Holy Book it speaks, train your child like the vine so it will grow straight. There are too many whose children have not had the good fortune of good parenting, and this has contributed to the more than 500 murders recorded so far this year.
To me, hypocrisy is a contributing factor - hypocrisy in blaming the Government, teachers and the police. I have yet to see parents mentioned. The Government can do nothing for the most important years in developing an infant between one and eight years old. These are the formative years for emotional and behavioural teaching. If children are allowed to grow like 'leggo beasts', many will grow up to be like that.
The hypocrisy is also reflected in the selective blaming by our newspapers, by the majority of our columnists, with the exception of Esther Tyson, who hardly brings parenting into the equation. In the 1950s and '60s, I had the good fortune to be able to work. At that time, the JIDC was tops, Jamaica was great. At that time, Singapore was just emerging as a developing nation, but many in Jamaica, including me, said "no way", "we are better because although they were growing faster, we are better because we are a free society, had a free press and they were under a dictator".
But has that freedom got us anywhere?
I am, etc.,
A MAHFOOD