In the early decades of the 19th century, the French journalist Alexis de Tocquevillle traversed the United States, then about the same age as Jamaica is now.
Fresh from the chaos of the revolution in his own country, he chronicled the idealism and determination of those who were forging a new vision of social relations . He concluded that America was more than a country. It was an idea – one so powerful that it would bend the arc of history; its radical departure from the necrotic hierarchies of Europe, transforming into a society of freedom, dignity and opportunity would be within the reach of all Americans and could become a template for the world.
Those ideals have been striven for, tested, twisted, eroded, then vindicated over the two-century span since Tocqueville’s writing. He would be appalled at the ‘dip and fall back’, the irreconcilable divisions, evident there nowadays, in this era of a resurrected Saladin (or is he Louis XIV?). Not since the Civil War struggle over the institution of slavery until now have the foundations of the United States been so tested. Jamaica has been founded on similar liberal ideals, now also under great stress and assault.
Notwithstanding this current demoralising peril, I celebrate the spirituality, the philosophy and derivative institutions of the great American people, in whose slipstream we lodge.
There is a personal debt too. Many of their citizens came here and gave me and thousands of others the finest secondary schooling to be found anywhere. More, they donated to me, entirely free of obligation, a rich liberal university education; fulsome respect and unquestioned freedom of expression, and an offer to become one among them.
For all this and more, I celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States even as I rue the lurch backwards to the liberalism from which they were once the antidote.
OUR RESPONSIBILITY
And, as we prepare for the 64th anniversary of our yet-to-be understood, appreciated and sacralised independence next month, before the fireworks, jump-up and circus, despite our smallness, or maybe because of our smallness, I want us to aspire, ever more intentionally, to creating and cherishing the institutions and behaviours of freedom, discipline and flourishing which Alexis de Tocqueville identified as cornerstones of real-not mouth-water democracy. What else could be worthwhile?
Several times recently, Andrew has been calling for culture change. “Institutions change culture”, he says. He is right. Before even governmental activity, institutions provide structure, values and order around which people configure their lives. They are hard to establish: easy to destroy, even harder to repair :sustained even if they sometimes look chaotic.
In the run-up to ‘Augus’ mawnin’, it is useful to examine some of those institutions whichever define our collectivity; provide what Tocqueville called the “electric current” of national identity.
Ask ourselves what are those bonds, those places, those ideas, that connection which add up in a sum never finally tallied of “ deep feeling…a loftiness of purpose which speaks to the heart “. In short, the ingredients of that national spirit and energy which NW Manley (serendipitously born also on July 4) lived and died for.
BRITTLE FAMILIES
First up has to be the family. Every study consulted, every observation I have made during years of intense involvement in education, witness to the huge advantage of child-upbringing by two committed parents. Jamaican behaviour does not reflect such commitment. Every encouragement for this foundational pillar of culture must become our objective.
Deliberate impoverishment, thoughtless urbanization and migration have destroyed our blessed, creole alternative of the extended family. As we mature, there can be no longer reluctance to discuss, define and correct the texture of family life. Simple precept. Don’t breed without a commitment to raise the child as partners. Treasure the conceived life even if carelessly wrought.
This is a statement based on religious orthodoxy and equally of political and social economy. I keep reminding myself- and you, of the 22-year-old grandmother I met in Central Kingston. Such incidents need correction but more so, support.
When is the discourse on the norms of functional, happy Jamaican family life going to reach our media, schools and increasingly useless legislature?
LESSONS FROM GRADUATIONS
During the last two weeks I have attended several school graduation ceremonies. At Campion College, as with similar spaces of quality, there is optimism and confidence. Backbones are straight no slouch; all graduates will matriculate to tertiary studies.
Parents pay for what they know to be valuable, and their contributions fully support those of meagre means. They do not afflict themselves with the poisoned deceit that government sends enough money to afford quality education. Theirs is a model not for ‘red-eye’ but a template for what should be, must be, can be, for all high schools – if 64-year-old democratic and humanistic (?) Jamaica is to prosper as Tocqueville and Manley envisioned.
Then there was Jessie Ripoll Primary, a different demographic,but where every student is leaving with adequate capacity to read, compute and a sense of self-worth. Nurtured, like Campion and almost half of Jamaican schools by religious principles, supported strongly but yet not universally by parents (plenty proud fathers) and zealous, not time-serving teachers; school assessed as exceptional by the ministry, graduands well-dressed in their school uniforms, celebrating the high achievers while encouraging and never humiliating the weak achievers: but not dressing up failure in gowns or equating it with success.
Tocqueville’s ‘electric current’ of diverse but united national purpose was evident at Jessie. Without it, education is mechanistic and boring. Orlando Patterson’s ignored plea for a philosophy of Jamaican education needs to shock us all into revamping the hundreds of primary institutions to produce like this one. Why not?
I sat beside an equally elderly grandfather at the celebrations of St Hugh’s Preparatory. Weakened by age, exertion and limited resources, all he had was happily and sacredly invested in his offspring, to help fulfill the greatest benefit which any family, every school, this nation, can contribute to the enrichment of individuals, of the “changed Jamaican culture” and the coming of God’s kingdom.
Way to go!
Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.
