Bishop Howard Gregory

Indiscipline and the unravelling of the social fabric

Sunday, February 03, 2013Howard Gregory


SEVERAL years ago when the municipal authorities in the city of Montego Bay decided to introduce a system of traffic lights and an accompanying one-way flow of traffic on many streets, I pointed out that it would not create the kind of improvement for which it was intended, if all that was taking place was the addition of technology to a system of indiscipline and disorder without some intentional process of sensitisation and education.
Not surprisingly, the system was brought on stream with minimal public notification and has made little difference to the flow of vehicular and human traffic. The centre of Montego Bay remains one of the most congested and chaotic places in which to do business. Pedestrians do as they like, while taxis set their own rules for the roads daily.

It should not come as a surprise then, that the recent attempt to introduce a technologically controlled pedestrian crossing outside the Half-Way-Tree Transportation Centre should run into problems from the outset. The graphic image carried in the news media of a pedestrian wrestling himself from the grip of a policewoman who was restraining him from crossing at will, should serve as a paradigm for where we are as a society when it comes to matters of discipline.
It seems that over time we have become a people lacking in personal discipline which requires external authorities to enforce the same, and even then, there is defiance of such imposition of discipline.
This did not happen overnight. While each individual must develop a personal sense of discipline, and the home and school should be primary agencies in this regard, it is also true that the institutions of public governance and authority have allowed manifestations of indiscipline to blossom into full-blown chaos before attempting to take corrective steps, usually taking the form of draconian action at that stage.
Many of our homes are failing our children with regard to the inculcation of discipline, and many of us are quick to blame persons from the lower social strata of society for these problems. We quickly point to the teenagers who are becoming parents, and argue that if children are begetting children, then what else can we expect?
I do not give this position the credence which some are quick to attribute to it. The truth is that many of these children still fall under the care of grandmothers and great-grandmothers who have traditionally been the mainstay in the inculcation of values and discipline in our nation's children.
What I see happening is that the breakdown of discipline is at every level of the society, as many better positioned parents in our society believe that they are above enforced codes of discipline, in the belief that these are for the lower placed ones in the society.
The police will tell you about the attitude of many of these persons if they are stopped in any routine operation. The police are somehow to just look at them and know that they do not fall in the category of those who are to be subjected to such an experience.
In the same way, many of these parents believe that their children should not be subjected to discipline by anyone other than themselves, and at times pose a serious challenge for the enforcement of discipline in schools.
Whatever is the cause for this breakdown in discipline, the fact is that all around us there is now the need for institutions to begin to set codes of conduct and discipline for those who would seek to access their services. Hospitals, schools, offices, and restaurants have to insist that persons be appropriately attired to enter public spaces, especially as this relates to matters of public health.
Not to mention the fact that many offices and business places now have a challenge getting their workers to understand that there is an appropriate mode of dress for work, which is different from that for the weekend bashment.
Even more telling is the challenge many schools face in which the administration is seeking to inculcate discipline in the students by way of adherence to the dress code where uniforms are concerned, while some of the teachers are sending a contradictory message by the inappropriateness of their attire and conduct.
On the issue of indiscipline, it is futile for us to spend the time seeking to exonerate ourselves from this social malady and merely to cast blame, because in the culture which has emerged, most of us have slipped into the mode that, if persons are getting by doing it, I may as well try it. Nowhere is this more evident than on our roads.
We cannot, however, resign ourselves to this situation, as it not only makes for social disorder and chaos, but it is also the breeding ground for violence and loss of human lives.
I believe that stemming the tide at this time involves the enforcement of external control. In this regard, I believe that the police need to pay greater attention to acts of indiscipline on the roads and not focus primarily on the ultimate outcome of such behaviour, which is the commisson of crimes.
So, for example, the indiscipline which is evident each weekday morning at a location like Dunrobin Avenue in which motorists deliberately use a left-turn-only lane to create a third lane, thereby creating disorder and risking the safety of motorists who are obeying the law, must be the recipients of traffic tickets without fail. I have no problem with this being the route to filling the Government's coffers.
It is the same manifestation of indiscipline which led to the recent accident involving 18 students of Holmwood Technical High School, at the hands of a driver who only minutes before had been ticketed for dangerous driving. So often motorists are able to engage in various forms of indiscipline and violation of the law, as they know that policing is too predictable, lacking the element of surprise and does not focus sufficiently on these violations which, left unchecked, lead to greater risk-taking with costly consequences.
External enforcement of discipline is only one aspect of social discipline, but constitutes an important aspect of the pursuit of social order. At the same time there are voices within the society who seem to resent any form of external discipline. This, I must point out, is not about the perpetration of social injustice and the abuse of the rights of citizens.
There seems to be still ingrained in our psyche that legacy of slavery which makes us want to conform to rules and to exercise what we know discipline demands of us, when there is an authority figure watching over us. It is for this reason that persons can use as licence the expression, "This is Jamaica," in order to justify some act of indiscipline, while the same persons observed in the United States of America or other nations of the north will act with self-control and discipline.
The more serious challenge confronting us is the matter of personal discipline. I know that there are persons who have given up on the society and the prospect of any return to order and discipline in our social interactions. While the task is a mammoth one, I believe we must begin with the children from the earliest stages of their development.
So alongside the preoccupation with getting the literacy and numeracy right, we must focus on the cultivation of appropriate attitudes and values which provide the foundation for the inculcation of discipline. In addition, we cannot give up on our adults. Our men folk must develop a sense of personal discipline so that every light pole or wall does not become a public urinal.
We need to focus on parenting education through all kinds of channels including the church, parent/teachers associations, the workplace, and civil society.
This will only be possible if we are prepared to acknowledge that the nation is on a slippery slope of chaos and disorder, and that each person cannot simply decide what level of discipline or lack thereof he/she will follow.
There must be some parameters on which we can agree because, without that, the fabric of our society will be irretrievably damaged, and we shall become, not the failed state which economists often highlight, but the disintegrated and ungovernable state in which each does as he/she pleases.

Howard Gregory is the Lord Bishop of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

Dr. Carolyn Cooper

Superpower Jamaican Accent For Super Bowl

Published: Sunday | February 3, 2013 14 Comments


Carolyn Cooper, Contributor

Don't mind the IMF. Thanks to Volkswagen of America, Inc, we're being reminded yet again that Jamaica is a cultural superpower. According to Wikipedia, "A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests."

Of course, the meaning of 'power' in that definition is, essentially, political, economic and military. Superpowers are the big guns of the world. The British Empire in the bad old days of in-your-face colonisation was the first 'modern' superpower. Britannia ruled the waves, captured lands far and wide, and now evades reparations. After all, Britons never, never, never shall be slaves - not even to fundamental principles of natural justice.

Eventually, all across the globe, exploited colonies demanded independence and the sun finally set on the British Empire. The Soviet Union and the United States of America both inherited the superpower mantle and aggressively fought for supremacy in the cold war. These days, China, India, Brazil and the European Union are all ready to claim superpower status.

Clearly, Jamaica is not in this big league. We're not in the 'Group of Eight': Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We're not in the 'Plus Five': Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. We're in no group. We're in a class by ourselves.

Long ago, Marcus Garvey gave us the formula for our greatness: "God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement."

Garvey also wickedly said, "The whole world is run on bluff." But he certainly wasn't bluffing when he conceived the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). Garvey had a grand vision of what black people could achieve. Although he was born on a small island, Garvey was not insular. His consciousness was continental.

PETER PHILLIPS AND MISS MATTIE

Like Garvey, Louise Bennett celebrated the unlimited potential of the Jamaican people. In one of her most amusing poems, 'Independance' - yes, 'dance' - Miss Lou creates a raucous character, Miss Mattie, who gives a most entertaining account of what independence means to her. It's not the song and dance of constitutional arrangements. It's much more primal:

Mattie seh it mean we facety

Stan up pon we dignity.

An we don't allow nobody

Fi teck liberty wid we.


Independence is we nature

Born an bred in all we do

An she glad fi see dat

Government

Tun independant to.

Miss Lou here wittily suggests that so-called 'ordinary' people like Miss Mattie are way ahead of politicians in their understanding of power dynamics. Perhaps Peter Phillips should ask Miss Mattie to come along to the IMF negotiations. She would not be afraid of proposing her own conditionalities.

Indeed, Miss Mattie has a rather expansive view of Jamaica's geopolitical location:

She hope dem caution worl-map

Fi stop draw Jamaica small,

For de lickle speck cyaan show

We independantness at all!


Moresomever we must tell map dat

We don't like we position -

Please kindly tek we out a sea

An draw we in de ocean

TURNING HISTORY UPSIDE DOWN

Miss Mattie shows up in another humorous poem by Miss Lou, 'Colonization in Reverse':

What a joyful news, Miss Mattie

Ah feel like me heart gwine burs -

Jamaica people colonizin

Englan' in reverse

Taking their cultural 'bag an baggage' to the stepmother country, Jamaicans turned history upside down, reversing the flow of influence.

These days, our distinctive Jamaican 'Patwa' is the preferred language of youth culture in England. Last summer, in a moment of deranged grief as the embers of widespread riot died down, the British historian David Starkey lamented the success of Jamaica's reverse colonisation of England: "black and white, boy and girl, operate in this language together, this language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican Patois that's been intruded in England, and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country."

It's not only England that's been colonised by Jamaican culture. It's the whole world, as Miss Mattie would say. Which brings us to the VW Super Bowl ad that had 4.6 million hits by Friday morning. Why does it feature a white man from Minnesota speaking with a stilted Jamaican accent?:

a) The man was born in Jamaica, migrated as a 'yute' and hasn't been back in a very long time. But he tries his best to sound Jamaican.

b) The man was born in the US to Jamaican parents and has never visited Jamaica. But he tries his best to sound Jamaican.

c) The man was born in Minnesota, went to Jamaica on vacation, fell in love with the language, and tries his best to sound Jamaican.

d) The man was born in the US, has never been to Jamaica except on the Internet, fell in love with the culture, and tries his best to sound Jamaican.

e) The man is a pretty good actor who was coached by a Jamaican and tried his best to sound Jamaican.

In an excellent interview with Jamaican blogger Corve DaCosta, the star of the VW ad, Erik Nicolaisen, said, "I have been a lifelong reggae fan, and as a voice actor I have tried to put a little Patois into my repertoire." Jamaican popular music has been a potent medium for spreading our language across the globe. Jamaica is not in the Caribbean Sea; we're in every ocean of the world.

As was to be expected, some very clever Jamaicans have produced a brilliant spoof on the VW ad. It features a happy-go-lucky black man speaking English with a German accent. He dances off-beat and gets everybody in the nightclub to follow suit; he eats jerk chicken with sauerkraut and inspires the jerk man to do the same; he arrives to work seven minutes early and, when he is chided by his boss, cheerfully promises to return in 10 minutes.

The Jamaican dub version of the VW ad slyly mocks German efficiency. It also takes a crack at our own willingness to follow fashion. We often copy others who are copying us. But since the inspiration for the original ad appears to be the perception that Jamaicans set standards that the whole world can imitate - whether it's exceptional happiness or inventive language - it's all in good fun. Jamaica is a superpower. Be happy about it. Yeah, mon!

**Reprinted with Kind Permission from the Jamaica Gleaner Company**

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20130203/cleisure/cleisure3.html

Carolyn Cooper is a professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Visit her bilingual blog at http://carolynjoycooper.wordpress.com/. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and karokupa@gmail.com.