The Tribune

By SIMON 

IN the 1970s, the late Monsignor Preston Moss of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese first observed the lack of basic and holistic human development in a significant number of our people. He was concerned that many Bahamians of all ages--especially a large number of young people--lacked fundamental values and habits required for human and moral development, including impulse-control, civility, basic manners, respect for authority, and other mores necessary for individual and social development.

Near the end of his life, Sir Lynden Pindling lamented that we were raising a nation of brutes, especially many young men, who acted in an uncivilised and brutish manner, often incapable of basic civilities and minimal standards of conduct, including the ability to treat women with respect.

Absent from Sir Lynden’s critique was the 1970s and 80s era of drug trafficking and related corruption, as well as the lowering of standards in various areas of national life. Those years were also a period of increasing slackness and sense of entitlement by those who all too often got the message that they could do as they pleased in an independent Bahamas. 

The attenuation of the role of the extended family in raising children and young people, the explosion in the number of young parents, the destruction of values in the drug era and an attendant lowering of expectations, all helped to make a significant number of us less civil, less humane, and more prone to violence as a response to conflict.

There has been a significant number of single-parent families for generations. There was often, however, an extended family network, particularly with strong and loving maternal figures who helped to rear children.

A friend recalls talking to a young Bahamian about the former’s memories of Sunday lunch with his family when he was growing up. After church, the friend recalled, the table was set and a meal was served. The entire family was expected at lunch. Guests were often invited.

The conversation around the dining room table was animated, often raucous, and everyone was expected to participate in the rollicking debates. The Sunday meal was the only one the entire family ate together during the week. Everyone looked forward to the gathering.

Everyone had chores, from helping to cook, to saying grace, setting the table, cleaning up afterwards, throwing out the garbage. The meal was decidedly about more than the food served. It was a ritual of fellowship and family togetherness.

The young person delighted in the story. But he could not relate because his family only ate meals together on rare and special occasions.

Many of the rituals of growing up or rites of passage older generations take for granted are often missing from the lives of many disconnected youth. One of the basic habits of youth is membership in a club, association, sports league or uniformed organisation. In years past very few young were not involved in some sort of youth program.

Today, thousands of young Bahamians are still involved in youth programs. Yet many are disconnected from such associations, which help to socialise young people, disciplining their time and habits, providing a safe space for growth and the exercise of civility and other virtues.

These youth programs help to build a sense of civic pride and teamwork. They are training grounds for leaders and typically offer opportunities for community service.

Humans are naturally social and seek belonging and meaning as part of a larger group. A good number of young people disconnected from youth organisations, find in gangs what they perceive as fellowship and belonging. In the urban cauldron of disconnected lives—a lack of opportunity in various areas of economic and social life, and a lack of adequate adult supervision and mentoring—there is a feral mentality among quite a number of young people, who are bringing up themselves in environments, gangs, and groups in which there is often considerable destructive behaviour.

When scores of young people are missing elements of basic human development because of poor family life or the lack of involvement in positive school-based or other youth programs, the habits of civility and proper conduct are usually poorly formed or missing. In a very real sense they are poorly socialised and civilised.

Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson has written extensively on the sociology of violence in urban America. His analysis has resonance for New Providence. The majority of young people on New Providence and throughout the Bahamas, are law-abiding citizens, who share essential positive values and social mores. But there is a large cohort of what Patterson describes as “disconnected youth.”

Most of these youth do poorly in school or are chronically unemployed or underemployed.  The staggeringly high rate of youth unemployment has a toxic effect on our social landscape. The chronic unemployment of nearly a quarter of young Bahamians is an economic and social emergency with far-reaching ramifications.

Thousands of young people wake up every morning with no work, no job prospects, with nothing to do. And they do so day after day and year after year. What’s the impact of such an existence on individuals and on society?

Boredom breeds its own discontents and demons, a truism for us all. If we do not have something to keep us busy, we will find something (or as is so often the case, something will find us.) Recall the aphorism about idle hands, which might also be said of idle minds, idle talents, idle energies, and idle youth.

There are many thousands of disaffected youth who have not been sufficiently reared with certain positive values and mores and who are in basic survival mode and feel cut off from society. Quite a number of them are in difficult family situations and often feel that they do not have access to clubs, associations and activities through which they may find greater purpose, a sense of belonging, adult mentoring, opportunities for growth, the building of self-esteem and skills development, and wholesome friendships and love.

Correction: In last week’s column, there was an editorial error made by this journal suggesting that the late Arthur Hanna played a pivotal role in the creation of the new secondary history textbook, Towards a Common Loftier Goal.

It is his daughter, current Minister of Education and Technical & Vocational Training, Glenys Hanna Martin, who played a pivotal role in the creation of the text. This was an error made by the newspaper. It was not in the original column written by this columnist. The journal has corrected the error in the online version.