THE EDITOR, Sir:
IT SEEMS evident that in thinking of ways to deal with crime we must not only look at the direct causes but we must also look at other factors which aid and abet the process.
Someone on the Breakfast Club recently lamented the poverty of mind and spirit among us as a people which poverty he claimed is now manifesting itself in the various atrocities which we have now come to accept as normal Jamaican living.
But we will suffer from poverty of mind and spirit if we do not deliberately take steps to enrich ourselves as individuals and as a nation.
My lament is that we no longer emphasize the teachings of the Holy Bible or of Shakespeare. Maybe that was deliberately done in an attempt at being intellectually independent a means of throwing off the vestiges of colonialism.
But in abandoning these two important items from our secondary school curriculum we have abandoned sources of absolute values. For what have we substituted for the "Thou shalt nots" of the Bible?
What have we substituted for the teaching of loyalty found in the Ruth and Naomi story "And Ruth said entreat me not to leave thee.."?
What have we substituted for the teaching of integrity which comes across so clearly in Hamlet : "To thine own self be true , thou canst not then be false to any man..."?
I think we need to stop and acknowledge that there must be something fundamentally wrong with the way we are raising and educating our children for us to have adults who are bereft of the 'milk of human kindness'.
I am, etc.,
S. RICHARDS
2 3/4 Ruthven Rd.
Kingston 10
