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<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000"><span style="font-size: 17pt">The partnership between school and prison</span></span>
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Thursday, December 11, 2008
Schools were originally intended to operate in tandem with prisons. <span style="font-weight: bold">The schools would teach children to conform to social norms, and if that failed, the prison would be there to contain them</span>.
We found it a bit more than a coincidence that two news stories appearing on the same page in yesterday's edition of the Observer quoted two of our leading public officers addressing two of the most critical problems linking both school and the prison.
Dr Marion Bullock-Ducasse, the senior medical officer in the health ministry, and Glen Brown, the senior Corporate Area resident magistrate, have something other than their Jamaican citizenship in common - a patriotic concern for what is happening in our schools, even if from different perspectives.
Speaking on Tuesday, <span style="font-weight: bold">Dr Ducasse confirmed the support of the health ministry for the teaching of children about sex and HIV/AIDS before age 12</span>, and she dismissed suggestions that providing youngsters with such information would lead them to experiment with sex.
No doubt, and we hope it will, the senior medical officer's revelation will re-ignite the debate about the appropriate age to teach children about sex, and what information should be given to them.
As a society, we tend to be very conservative when it comes to the <span style="font-weight: bold">business of discussing sex with young children, primarily because some persons firmly believe that to arm our youngsters with information about their sexual and reproductive health could encourage them to start having sex much earlier than intended. Of course, some grown-ups are just too shy</span> and don't know how to comfortably handle the issue.
Importantly, Dr Ducasse cited surveys and studies from all over the world, showing that increased knowledge of sexual behaviour, sexual intercourse and sexually transmitted diseases do not create any increase in the number of persons starting to have sex earlier.
We share Dr Ducasse's concern that even where there is more knowledge about irresponsible sexual behaviour and the transmission of deadly diseases, many young people continue to indulge in risky behaviour.
Those who are still objecting to sex education in schools need to stop burying their head in the sand and face reality. Ignorance, both among parents and children, is just too costly.
For his part, Resident Magistrate Glen Brown also has our sympathy for his call Tuesday for <span style="font-weight: bold">mandatory searches to be carried out at all high schools</span> by the police each morning in order to stem the practice of students arming themselves with offensive weapons.
"What they [Ministry of Education] should do is send police cars to every school in the morning and search everybody going inside," said an obviously frustrated Judge Brown.
He had just addressed a schoolboy who was brought before him on a charge of possession of an offensive weapon (knife). Mr Brown was also reported to be ticked off by the frequency with which large caches of weapons were being confiscated from students.
Of course, we know that <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-style: italic">the magistrate did not expect that police should literally search the thousands of students at the island's 164 state-supported schools. That would not be practical</span></span> but his frustration is understandable.
After all, he knows that <span style="font-weight: bold">if the school does not work, he will soon be filling up the prisons</span>.