Dominica: An educator is urging the authorities to meet with the perpetrators of crime on the island to help more effectively tackle the problem, instead of holding meetings around the country talking about these perpetrators and their negative actions, the Dominica News Online reported.
Education Officer Simeon Joseph made the appeal at a symposium on violence held by CariMan – the Caribbean Male Action Network, which describes itself as a community of caring men omitted to partnering with women to create a just world where all people achieve their fullest potential, the DNO report said.
“In recent times we are meeting around the country to look at crime and violence, I would like to politely suggest that instead of meeting to talk about the violent ones, we meet with the violent ones,” Joseph said, drawing applause from some of the participants at the symposium.
In what turned out to be a lengthy but well thought out feature address, he warned it could be argued that violence was being imposed on young men who were being turned away from jobs that they apply for, according to the DNO report.
“Our almost benign neglect of our youth, especially our males has begun to haunt us, and if immediate action is not taken now to correct the socialization of our young males, then we will see daily occurrences of the very things we fear the most,” the education officer said.
A former secondary school principal, Joseph suggested that the market for the illegal drug trade “has added ferocity to violence”.
The DNO said he also argued that “cultural and ethnic rootlessness” was today making young Afro-Carib males “vulnerable to violence, drug addiction, alcoholism and other death-dealing habits”.
“I do not believe we are doing well with our young men,” Joseph said, urging that they be made a priority.
The public servant, in the presence of three Government Ministers and two leading opposition politicians, also warned that political systems promising but not delivering on those promises were contributing to the kind of situation that lent itself to promoting acts of violence, the DNO report continued.
“Violence is a consequence of dreams that have been denied, and that have been deferred and snuffed out,” he said.
Articulating a whole list of factors he said were impacting on an individual’s decision to engage in acts of violence, the education officer also blasted an education system he described as designed to prepare the “privileged few for a world that no longer exists”.
“Where we send out young people who are not functionally prepared for the positions that are available for them or into lower level positions,” he said citing the example of a student leaving the State College with appropriate qualifications having to end up packing bags at a supermarket, the DNO report concluded.
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