Sometime last year a Jamaican businessman and management guru wrote an article in the Gleaner in which he tried to ascertain the reasons why so many Jamaicans succeed abroad and were dismal failures in their homeland.
I responded to his article telling him about the need to promote opportunities that didn’t exist in our homeland and for our leaders who are truly committed to building an Island nation to set the tone and create the environment that would bring out the best in our youngsters. Well you can pretty much guess what his reaction was. He embarked upon a caustic soliloquy about the Jamaican experience being so unique and Jamaicans having no respect for the law while in Jamaica but once they have left its shores they realize that bending the laws of a foreign country came with painful punitive consequences and so they are forced to straighten up and fly right.
After a few emails spent trying to convince him that this phenomenon is more a response to lack of opportunities than an innate desire to be a scofflaw. Jamaican’s disrespect for the law is not an ailment that emanates from the poor or underclass but a trend exhibited by the privileged, and duplicated by the poor man, often with dire consequences. That trend has now become co-opted into our culture because Jamaicans have always felt that their social system should be based on equal privileges. Over the years it has become in-grained in us that if an opportunity is offered to my neighbor, a similar opportunity should be offered to me, and if it isn’t, then I should protest the absence of “Justice”. When that absence of “Justice” is perceived and ignored then widespread protest and acrimony ensues. This I offer as a leading cause of the breakdown in the Jamaican society.
So it goes that the breakdown in our society starts from the home and schools then permeates into the society at large. The breakdown that exists in our schools and our culture has now spawned a sub-culture of crime and destruction. And when one tries to impart to the typical Jamaican the need to come to grips with their environment and reject the culture of “short-cut” work practices, the culture of violence and sub-standard delivery on product and services, they immediately become defensive and view one’s suggestion as disparaging the uniqueness that is Jamaica. Suddenly you’re anti-Jamaican and caught up with making the mistaken comparison between Jamaica and a developed nation on whose shores you are safely ensconced while ripping Jamaica. By the time they are through castigating you as a traitor and a worshipper of all things American, if you’re not careful, you might find yourself exulting the wonderful virtues of corruption and the galling machismo of the “bad man” and even the thrilling satisfaction of sub-standard services.
So before we are shamed into the endorsement of sub-standard services or bullied into accepting mediocrity as a condition for remaining friends with our brothers and sisters in Jamaica lets take one last hard look at the country we all want to call home. If we are to remain true to our upbringing and exhibit any degree of honesty we owe it to our friends and families to tell those in Jamaica that the culture is severely flawed and it must change to guarantee the survival of the Island as we once knew it. Out of sheer love we must tell them that we are uncompromising in our demand that they improve the poor standards to which their values have fallen, and our disdain for their poor ethics is not born out of the virtue of our immigration status, but what we know are the minimum standards to build a modern civil society. We must teach them that all modern societies need help in shaping their values and we are not seeking to replace what is endemic to our culture we are trying to design a blueprint for survival, and being on the outside offers us a unique perspective on the growth trajectory of the culture in our homeland and from where we stand it doesn’t look good. Sure the country will survive, we may end up being another Haiti or god forbid a Somalia, but is this where we want to go?. With the number of learned people that has left our shores and still live on this Island we are expected to demonstrate to the world that we are capable of restoring our nation to the level of civility of which we were once admired. To settle for mediocrity to show we love our country and our people seems like a painful lesson in hypocrisy.
Volunteers
Why should we find it hard to tell our brothers that a school cannot function without working toilets? That children raised under these conditions are going to be more prone to exhibit anti-social behavior as adults and by that time it becomes extremely costly as a society to rehabilitate them. Why are we having such a difficult time telling our family in Jamaica that even though you are inundated with problems, some of your own making, others a product of your deteriorating infrastructure, it is still incumbent upon you to seek help and prioritize and execute your solutions so the ship stays afloat. It is not enough to say the ship has holes in the hull and just bale water. Someone mentioned to me the other day that the schools of which I am so critical are manned in many areas by volunteers who give of their precious time with little reward or compensation. Well let me be stout in my expression of gratitude for their involvement. I fully appreciate the challenges and difficulties that come with these positions of charity, but to save our grand society we must start at these levels and what better place to start than the institutions that gave birth to your success. To those that much is given, much is expected. The true measure of a man is what comes from the heart during times of adversity.
So much of what is great in Jamaicans are directly attributed to our ability to rise against the odds. We are a people who have given the world so much more than our little Island belies. The great ones among us are not remembered for being also-rans. They are remembered for being champions and if we are to continue to uphold this tradition with the pride and audaciousness that sets us apart, then settling for second-class sub-standard education, ethics, morals and expectations are an aberration.
