Letter of Day | We must help uplift our youth

THE EDITOR, Madam:

The youth must be uplifted to realise their full potential. We must encourage and uplift our youth. We are seeing a lot of youth in Jamaica getting involved in some devious activities that sometimes get them killed. We are seeing students arguing with teachers, fighting, or stabbing each other. You will hear parents say that they raise their children well, but they don’t know how, what or who influences them to behave rudely outside their homes.

The youth are in the news because they are involved in terrible activities. Moreover, teachers are even terrified of correcting them because they may start a fight.

There should be weekly seminars in the primary schools to try to guide them from an early age. Our youth must know that not because they may grow up with a single parent or in a remote area or in a poverty-stricken home, that means they should lower their standards.

We are not excluding the principles or training that are supposed to be instilled in the children from home, but we can try to enforce those conventions in the schools.

If our youth are taught how to love themselves, they will know how to love and care for others. They may not get it right the first time, but by doing these teachings over a period of time, they will grasp the concept of how to love themselves, where this will become a part of them. This move will enable them to triumph over certain inner battles that tend to plague their minds, which cause them to act the way they do at times. We have to understand that certain traits are imparted in these youth when they were much younger. Some may be raped, rejected, maltreated, harassed; and some are even trying to overcome the negative words that were spoken over their lives by people who may be close to them. Yes, a low self-esteem is still an issue.

We are not sugar-coating the wrongs that they sometimes get entangled in, but we are looking at the root of the problem that we have in these youth and the society. Let us not give up on our youth. Let us not become discouraged based on what we see happening today; but let us just begin to see the future with a more improved Jamaica, where a shift for the better happens. Moreover, let us speak well over our nation. Truly, ‘no weh nuh betta than yaad’.

SHAWNA-KAYE SENIOR