Letters

Need more discipline in our society

THE EDITOR, MADAM:

Having read your feature article 'Reality Bus Ride' (Thursday STAR, March 3, 2005) chronicling the daily experience of misbehaviour on certain buses in Kingston by some corporate area school children against the background of music from the buses, the lyrical content of which depicts profanity, sex and lewd language, I am compelled to lend my voice to the call for all well meaning Jamaicans to become seconded to the task of cleaning up our country.

The article shocked me into realising how much we have allowed certain things to happen in our country that we should never have tolerated. I feel it is time to return to our core values with a vengeance. It is time to get back to basics, to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting responsibility for oneself and one's family.

I am fully aware, as are most Jamaicans, that the feeling of belonging to a social group which shares a common destiny has weakened rapidly in our society, and that people now rely far more on themselves than on others to improve their situation in life or even just to hold their own. So much for free market triumphalism.

But in these difficult times, if we hope to clean up our country, our attention should turn not exclusively to "juggling" or getting by, but to the values that we have to defend. What we urgently need is a new consensus around a set of common values, because much as things have changed on the surface, underneath we are still the same people. Old values, neighbourliness, decency and courtesy ­ all these are still alive in Jamaica. What this society needs, therefore, in going forwards is the actualisation of more of these values.

How else, short of concentration "boot" camps or an outright authoritarian response, can we hope to save our school children, such as those depicted in your article, from themselves and a future blighted by ignorance, hopelessness and despair?

I am etc,

EVERTON PRYCE