Letters

Our boys are at risk

THE EDITOR MADAM:

The results of the Ministry of Health's research on corporal punishment of boys in Jamaica reveals what has been evident all along (The Gleaner, January 11). Boys are at extreme risk within the education and the home setting. However, caution should be exercised in passing Laws which could criminalise parents without just cause.

The approach to this problem in Jamaica need not follow that of any external organisation. We can learn from others, but ultimately, the decisions taken in Jamaica, as a sovereign country, regarding the welfare, and well-being of children must be settled by Jamaicans.

Suffered abuses

Boys are not only at risk, they have fallen and failed. They've been abused, corrupted and incarcerated. When women wonder why good men are in such short supply, they only have to take a headcount of who's in jail, who's on drugs, who is drunk and who's flat out on the street, and find out what went on in their childhood.

If the situation is so widespread, then it is anyone's guess as to where the system would place children who've suffered abuses. If there aren't enough good homes or state homes, then the children would simply be shifted from one abusive situation to another.

Education and reconciliation is the key to eradicating the abuse of children, but parents who continue to be a threat to a child's well-being will risk losing custody of their children.

Other countries may be quick to incarcerate parents and shuffle children from foster home to foster home; such methods serve to split families, and alienate the child from his own history, resulting in a destruction of the child's knowledge of himself. This is unacceptable at the worst and only tolerable when there is absolutely no other way.

Eliminating corporal punishment at the institutional level is an ideal model for parents. Parents learn what they live.

I am, etc.

A.M. ANSARI

Stop1998@aol.com

'Via Go-Jamaica'