The Tribune

FRONT PORCH by Simon

CULTURABLE habits and practices showcase the lived values of a given society. The mouthing of values is not the same as adhering to them. By example, while we adhere to the concept of monogamy in law and in Christian rituals, sociologically, we are a de facto polygamous society.

While clerics will judge the morality of such a discrepancy between words and practices, the sociologist is more interested in understanding the social realities and habits involved in such a gap, or chasm, depending on the society.

There are positive and negative social mores and norms, the study and analyses of which are critical in areas ranging from public health to marketing products to addressing criminal behaviour.

Human habits are a complex matter, rooted as they are in the collaboration of biology and moral imagination. 12-Step programmes speak to this collaboration and what it takes to arrest addictions and reform habits. Virtues and vices are essentially habits.

We are creatures of habit, and at the heart of our culture of violent crime are various crises of culture, fuelling, reinforcing and arming mostly young men in a conveyor belt of successive cohorts ready to take up the drug trade, gang membership and weapons for many years to come.

Social and cultural change, for good or ill, concern habits and patterns of behaviour which flow from value-sets. Gang members and members of the Boy Scouts both have sets of values, rites of passage, rituals, group leaders and norms, shared objectives and an esprit de corps.

During the Carifta Games, some years ago, a number of complimentary ticketholders were placed in seats for which others had paid. An overabundance of complimentary tickets was given out. Some ushers faced the dilemma of reseating those occupying reserved seats.

Quite a number of those asked to move, refused to do so. They were belligerent and unyielding. Even when asked to move by a police officer, they refused. Imagine the attitude if such individuals were occupying a seat for which they had paid good money.

In our behaviour in public spaces and public gatherings we often exhibit a culture of entitlement and slackness sometimes accompanied by rudeness and disrespect for authority.

One cannot imagine what happened at the National Stadium that day occurring in a country such as Japan or even in The Bahamas when the QE II Sports Centre first opened in the 1960s.

Consider the foul mouths and vulgar cursing by many school kids in public with easy references to the genitalia of another’s mother, and language many adults would never utter. Whereof were such habits formed?

Consider also the shameless ease with which some Bahamians invade the private spaces of others, take advantage of courtesies not meant for them, or intrude at private events to which they have not been invited.

For decades, many straw vendors refused to pay certain fees, contributing to the Straw Market becoming run down and derelict, while gleefully selling counterfeit goods, even while clinging to a Bible.

The upcoming prom season will showcase a sort of fashion extravaganza. It will also highlight various cultural and social values.

High school leavers should enjoy this rite of passage, celebrating the completion of years of schooling and adolescent discovery. But, for most school proms, the line between celebration and materialistic excess was crossed many prom nights ago.

Rites of passage, with the guidance of the adult community, are meant to cultivate within our youth some of the values and responsibilities of emerging adulthood.

This is why the prom and related events are planned by students, with prom night akin to a quasi-adult stepping-out, with fancy dress and some of the usual parental restrictions on nights-out relaxed, but not abandoned.

Proms also reflect prevailing social attitudes and mores. Most of us have seen stories chronicling racially segregated proms at high schools in the United States and attempts to jettison these lingering vestiges of Jim Crow decades after the legal structures supporting segregation were dismantled.

Proms here at home have tracked and mirrored our social and economic mobility, including how our values are shaping and have been shaped by the twin fortunes of success and prosperity.

In the 1970s, an expanding upwardly mobile middle class who could now afford to give their children a private high school education they themselves did not enjoy, produced a new generation, who along with their new status adopted a variety of status symbols, including importing prom night from the U.S.

Eventually, with the spread of access to education and professional and economic opportunities for most Bahamians, the benefits and trappings of prosperity also spread, with the number of proms increasing, including among public schools.

The evolution of the prom from a celebratory rite of passage to a carnival of excess was captured in a series of telling events, including the decision by various schools to withdraw their official support from a prom experience that was getting out of hand, with regards its original purpose and costs – financially and morally.

This is not to gainsay the decisions of these schools. But one of the unintended consequences was granting greater oversight of this event to adolescent impulses, those of the students, and far too often, their parents.

Many adults, by commission and omission, cooperated in allowing the prom to become a rite of passage often exemplifying the worse rather than demonstrating our better values.

So today, most of today’s proms do transmit life lessons, unfortunately the wrong ones. Healthy competition is one thing, especially in athletics and academics. But competing who can indulge in the most excess on prom night is not the kind of competition we should encourage.

Over the years, luxury cars, police escorts and uncontrollable spending on clothing and related expenses were the hallmarks of prom season. Over a thousand or more per student for prom night is typical, with some students spending even more in a bid to compete for the prize of “the most spent”.

Some parents cannot resist the urge to go overboard, spending more in one splash than they may have spent providing their children with extra tutoring, books or other educational tools and experiences.

While prom should be memorable, it should not be remembered for excess and poor values which teach our children life lessons bolstering a crude materialism crowding out more positive values like self-restraint, saving and responsibility.

For students about to enter college, some of those funds may be used to pay for books for the first semester. For those who are ending their formal schooling after high school graduation, perhaps some of those prom funds can be earmarked for a savings account.

Further, students planning the prom may consider adding a yearly event to their prom related activities, namely a service project which will benefit the wider community. In this way, prom will be remembered as a time for both personal enjoyment and community service, a combination really worth celebrating,

Thankfully, many parents have shown restraint regarding prom spending and more Bahamians may be realising, that a reordering of our priorities is in order. Prom and the circumstances which gave rise to its excesses is another place to remind ourselves that the good life need not be gaudy to be good.