On Tuesday of this week, the Gleaner newspaper carried
photos and videos of students standing outside the closed main gates of the 2a
North Street, Kingston campus of Kingston College. According to the published
report, these students had been locked out of the institution for failure to
comply with the school’s grooming and general deportment regulations. Principal
Dave Myrie even penned a letter which has been circulated among the Old Boys community,
explaining that this has been a long-standing issue and the myriad of approaches
applied to not only address that issue but also the problem of the general
indiscipline that the institution faces daily.
Let me state that I do not support the practice of locking
students out of school for any reason. I believer that as challenging as it is,
schools must find more appropriate approaches to deal with issues of
indiscipline as sending kids home must be the very last resort. Let me also point
out that this is the second such reported incident involving Myrie, the first
being in 2012 under a similar heading. That event prompted much discussion
among educators while exposing the non-existence of protocols from the Ministy
of Education (MoE) with respect to dealing with discipline and grooming issues
in schools. Ten years later, the MoE has the same vacuous approach. While they
have a 29-page document entitled “Student Dress & Grooming Policy
Guidelines” the document provides neither guidelines nor recommendations but
sets out broad statements on the issue while leaving it up to the School Boards
and Administrators to write/determine the actual policy at each school.
I believe that it is important to note that the Ministry of Education
has no definitive policy for dealing with discipline issues at these schools. Yet,
that same Ministry in its generally reactive approach, is always quick to
respond to the sensationalism generated by these incidents with press
conferences and releases but no concrete policy proposal that redounds to a
correcting of the status quo or provides meaningful help to the affected
schools. Look at the number of cases of student-on-student violence, many times
resulting in death. Beyond talk the indiscipline continues, with the
participants ultimately becoming grist for the criminal mill or cannon fodder
for the security forces.
Speaking from the perspective as a Kingston College Old Boy,
I am extremely mindful of the current situation in Jamaica with respect to
crime and violence and its companion relationship to the galloping indiscipline
that strafes the Jamaican society. For starters, the current Jamaica is devoid
of any kind of positive Leadership and what we now have is a "free for
all" society where anything goes. It is against such a background that
Kingston College hosts more than 2000 young men aging from 11 -19 years and
from disparate home environments and at a time when they are most
impressionable.
As an inner-city youth myself albeit from a different era, I
am fully aware of the plethora of negative influences that exist out there. I
am also intimately aware of the gang culture and the way its tentacles are
immersed and intertwined within the country's social fabric, especially throughout
the school system. Kingston College is certainly not immune to this, and I am
aware of the major challenge this provides for the school's administrators.
They have the unenviable task of providing and maintaining safe and inviting environments
for all the students and administration personnel at Kingston College daily. On
top of all that, the administrators have the larger task of preparing these
young men to become useful well-adjusted men fit to lead our country into an
unknown future. Against a background of the current dysfunctional state that
Jamaica finds itself in, Kingston College must deliver that mandate that it embraced
97 years ago.
For his part, Principal Dave Myrie has been serving Kingston
College for just over a decade and in that time, we have seen the impact of his
transformative leadership. We have seen the improvement in the school’s
academic results, the quality of teachers and pedagogy. We have seen the
transfer of those disciplines onto the schoolboy playing fields where we are now
reaping much success. These results did not come from wishy-washy approaches
but by demonstrating firm principled management. School after all is the
Secondary agent of socialization for kids. This is where disciplines normally
taught at home are made operational and where correction principles are
introduced and reinforced. If a parent and their child, on entry, accepts those
rules, that becomes the blueprint to follow until graduation. It is my view
that any parent or child who chooses not to be bound by those rules, then they
should find an institution that is more amenable and transfer there. My support
therefore is for Principal Myrie.
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