We have heard about pos­si­ble in­ter­ven­tions as re­gards a re­sponse to crime and the still in­creas­ing cul­ture of vi­o­lence. The Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said the sol­diers could act as role mod­els for stu­dents in an ef­fort to lead them away from the al­lure of the gang­ster's lifestyle.

"We are go­ing in the schools to nur­ture the stu­dents. We want to be role mod­els to them," Brigadier John Sandy told re­porters re­cent­ly. And we in the Pres­by­ter­ian Church have at­tempt­ed to in­ten­si­fy the Scouts Move­ment in all our schools in an at­tempt to pro­mote a cul­ture of dis­ci­pline. While these are com­mend­able ap­proach­es in re­sponse to crime and vi­o­lence, there is need to ad­dress the re­al­i­ty at a much deep­er lev­el. Thus the "val­ues ed­u­ca­tion" spo­ken about in the na­tion­al cur­ricu­lum must go be­yond an at­tempt to in­fuse, as stat­ed in brack­ets.

The sug­ges­tion that "val­ues ed­u­ca­tion" can be in­fused as­sumes that ours is a pre­dom­i­nant­ly civ­il so­ci­ety and that a val­ue sys­tem can be suc­cess­ful­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed by all teach­ers and ed­u­ca­tors in the school sys­tem. Is this re­al­ly so? What we need there­fore is to in­clude in our na­tion­al cur­ricu­lum a "morals and val­ues ed­u­ca­tion" syl­labus. This should be com­pul­so­ry and ex­am­inable like Eng­lish and math­e­mat­ics. At best this can help in form­ing (ed­u­cat­ing) our young peo­ple and at worst it would have been plant­ed in the psy­che of our chil­dren with the pos­si­bil­i­ty at least of be­ing used as a ref­er­ence in the fu­ture. Thus there is need to ur­gent­ly go be­yond the su­per­fi­cial. Where do we find the com­po­nent for this syl­labus? Re­li­gion and phi­los­o­phy com­bined would be one best en­try point. The aim of any philo­soph­i­cal method be­gins and ends with the ques­tion "Who am I?" which al­ludes to hu­mankind's pur­pose.

And re­li­gion as de­scribed by Hans Kung in his book Glob­al Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty: In Search of a New World Eth­ic, sug­gests: "Re­li­gion can com­mu­ni­cate a spe­cif­ic depth-di­men­sion, an all-em­brac­ing hori­zon of mean­ing, even in the face of suf­fer­ing, in­jus­tice, guilt and mean­ing­less­ness... Re­li­gion can guar­an­tee supreme val­ues, un­con­di­tion­al norms, the deep­est mo­ti­va­tions and the high­est ideals: the why and where­fore of our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty... "Through com­mon sym­bols, rit­u­als, ex­pe­ri­ences and goals, re­li­gion can cre­ate a sense of feel­ing at home, a sense of trust, faith, cer­tain­ty, strength for the self, se­cu­ri­ty and hope: a spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty and al­le­giance... Re­li­gion can give grounds for protest and re­sis­tance against un­just con­di­tions: the long­ing for the 'whol­ly oth­er' which is re­al­ly now at work and which can­not be stilled."

Rev Elvis Elahie

Mod­er­a­tor, Pres­by­ter­ian Church