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WHEN A SOCIETY has to delve into its seedy side and says it is a reflection of its culture, something is wrong, warned Minister of Education Ronald Jones. He was speaking to regional representatives of the University of the West Indies (UWI) School of Education Biennial Conference yesterday during the opening ceremony at the Accra Beach Hotel & Resort, Rockley, Christ Church. “So when a calypsonian has to demonstrate to all and sundry how to ride a bumper, and a newspaper is going to publish that and put it out there – a man on top of a woman – one has to understand where we are going and what we are doing,” he said. Jones called for efforts to be made to lift the mind and spirit rather than “have every weekend now some importee singing something or develop locally a jump and wave”. He felt there should be more of the “beautiful quality of commentary”. “So, three words and a flag!” he noted. “The poetry of the language is dead. I make no condemnation, but there must be something else.” The minister’s comments echoed those of outspoken principal of the Garrison Secondary School and radio talk-show host Matthew Farley who said last Friday that the Crop-Over Festival was a disaster and should be temporarily stopped. He noted then that it had failed socially and morally in terms of the level of interaction it fostered and called for the goals of Crop-Over to be seriously analysed. Jones said the UWI’s Errol Barrow Centre For Creative Imagination should demonstrate “an end result”, as well as institutions such as Erdiston Teachers Training College, the Garrison Secondary School, Milton Lynch Boys’ School, and all other teaching institutions, “[to] reflect a new and different dynamic as it relates to this cultural behaviour and cultural propensity”. “It is an important diversion in relation to education but education is part of the cultural fare of society, so we have to do a lot more. We have to go into the bellies and bring out so much more for the development of our people right across this region,” he said. (TM) |