Need for moral instruction

THE EDITOR: Your editorial on school change, and the problem in homes lacking moral guidance was followed almost immediately by the letter from I Jack, Form Five pupil. My reaction to Jack’s letter was “Oh God!” So, someone kidnaps someone else. The police should kidnap him and tie him up in the forest too? Someone shoots someone else in the mall. The police should get him into a mall situation and ‘accidentally” shoot him? Or accidentally shoot members of his family while on their way to school or work? An older relative rapes a 12-year-old and it is covered up by her parents.

Someone hired by the State, should find this man’s small daughter and rape her too? And demand a cover up? Or, was he/she, could he/she have been advocating that the victim be allowed to do this to the perpetrator? What of the case where some crazed man cuts a woman’s throat, as in the case of Julia Cummings of Princes Town, should we search for a woman capable of publicly slashing him in the throat as he exits a maxi taxi? Would we have to tie his hands behind his back to let this happen? What do we do to get the message out, sell tickets to these staged vengeance scenes? Sell the movie rights to some film-maker specialising in the macabre? We would have to be a deranged society, far lower on the scale than we are now, for any of this to happen.

What we do need is counselling for the victims of crime, and a fund from which we compensate victims, established from the profiteering law that allowed the State to confiscate the property of Dole Chadee and his henchmen. Individuals may seek vengeance, but the society breaks down completely when they want the State to join them in this savagery. If there ever was the need for reforming the education programme, to create thinking caring people, Jack’s letter proves that need. I hope you will allow him to read this as I have written it. As a lifelong educator I cringe at the monstrosity implied in his/her letter, and hope that the writer will rethink the situation and retreat from such a misguided posture. We are bad, we have produced a crime-ridden society. We are not barbarians. The day when King Charles II of England exhumed the dead Oliver Cromwell, beheaded him and hung his body from Tower Bridge in revenge for his own father’s execution is behind us.

LINDA EDWARDS
Port-of-Spain