Dear Editor,
I read in KN last Sunday (22.6.08) an article by Adam Harris captioned ‘When fathers condemn their sons to criminality,’ and while I agree with his main point about fathers abandoning their responsibility to their children, I reflected that these children also spend about 8-10 hours at school, Monday to Friday, so we must ask about that forming environment and whether it is one for good or evil. I happen to have visited recently the Buxton Community High School and it is my humble judgement that what the school is basically doing is sustaining a pool of good young men and women for future recruitment into criminality.
The school is in a terrible rundown condition, and the workshop and the home-economics departments are in dire need of materials and tools. How can a child, even coming from a good and decent home, not feel a sense of hopelessness – even nowhere to recreate, no playing field! – and hence be available for someone who offers adventure and money and perhaps status. The Ministry of Education should send someone to look at this facility and either do something to improve its capacity to give purpose to those attending, or else close it altogether as it will continue to be a source of young guns for the market.
We have a responsibility to these youngsters to give them an opportunity to discover their talent and develop the same. We should not wait until there are replacements for those who have died and then act; this would be too late as I am sure other centres like the Buxton Community High exist in other villages.
Yours faithfully,
Malcolm Rodrigues, SJ
