AUTHOR: LEOPOLD BALY
DEDICATED TO: SAINT-LOUIS FREETOWN ANNUAL FREEDOM FESTIVAL MAY 2011
THE CONTENTS
ST-MARTIN'S SOCIO-CULTURE TRANSFORMATIONAL PROCESS.
1 – INTRODUCTION
2 – DEVIATION FROM SOCIETY NORMS
2. 1. UNIVERSAL NORMS & SOCIETY NORMS
2.2. NORMS & COLONIAL SYSTEM
2. 3. ST-MARTIN & ROOTS OF DEVIATION
2. 4. UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
2. 5. THE DEVIANT
2. 6. THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONAL PROCESS
2. .7. THE RIGHT APPROACH
2.8. OUR ATTITUDE IN REGARDS OF THE DEVIANT
2. 9. CREATION OF FAKE ASSOCIATIONS
2. 10. OUR HUMAN RESOURCES
3. ST-MARTIN'S SOCIO-CULTURAL FALLING
3. 1. ST-MARTIN AN INTEGRATED SOCIETY
3. 2. ST-MARTIN A DESINTEGRATED SOCIETY
3. 3. YOUNG PEOPLE'S PROFESSIONAL CAREER FATE
3. 4 . IS ST-MARTIN REALLY A LOST CASE?
3. 5 . OSTRACISM
4. JUVENILE'S DELINQUENCY DEVIATION FACTORS
4 1. IMMEDIATE ENVIRONMENT FACTORS
4. 2. EXTERIOR FACTORS
4. 3. BEING WITHIN A METROPOLITAN NATION
4. 4. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BFRENCH & DUTCH POLICY
4.5. NATIVE'S ATTITUDE
5. IS THERE A SOLUTION TO JUVENILE'S DELINQUENCY?
5. 1. A REFORM IN ATTITUDE
5. 2. THE DEVIANT MOTIVATION
5. 3. EXPECTATION NEEDS PROVISION TO BE REALIZED
5.4. YOUNG PEOPLE'S EXPECTATIONS
6. EDUCATION AND TRAINING
6. 1. LANGUAGE INSECURITY
6. 2. ST-MARTIN CLASSIFIED “ZONE PRIORITAIRE”!
6. 3. OUR CHILDREN'S FATE IN NURSERY AND PRIMARY SCHOOLS
7.ST-MARTIN'S EDUCATION AND TRAINING STANDARDS
- CIVIL RESPONSIBILITY OF TEACHERS
- PARENTS AND TEACHERS SHARED RESPONSIBILITY
- SCHOOL'S VIOLENCE
- FALSE SOLUTIONS
8.PUBLIC SCHOOL'S PERFORMANCE
- A TYPICAL CLASS LEVEL
- SCHOOL'S ATTENDANTS DROPOUTS
- DISCRIMINATORY SORT OUT
- PUBLIC SCHOOL'S EDUCATION
- GOVERNMENT'S TRAINING PROGRAMS
9. EMPLOYMENT INSECURITY
ST-MARTIN’S SOCIO-CULTURE TRANSFORMATIONAL PROCESS
1 - INTRODUCTION
The effect of the transformational process on the lifestyle of St-Martin's natives started to become obvious about four decades ago. The then young People are today's parents and grand parents.
Therefore the socio-cultural deviation we all deplore today is the result of a generational process engaging adults and youngsters and not to be simply seen as a rootless culture recently adopted by our only today's young people.
Today's parents and grand parents are they themselves indirectly victims of the transformational process of the last four decades and this means that they may not be in a position to grasp from within themselves the necessary resource to recreate a St-Martin,s society build upon its traditional ethics.
We the natives as we passed from one generation to the next, were simply reduced to powerless spectators before the unfolding of a new society life-style in our midst. Not sufficiently enlighten on the outcome we have preferred to hope in political promises of a brighter future than to resist a governmental promoted process by which we were given no other choice than to suffer the vicissitude of its overtaken wheels.
As a matter of fact, it was not in our culture to organize ourselves into a resistance front or to hold a uniform attitude against our political leaders or the metropolitan government that was in our belief the incarnation of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” as imprinted on us by our forefathers who had paid a heavy tribute in the liberation of France during the first and the second world’s wars.
Unprepared, we were force to strive our way through this exclusive transformational process and to no surprise fatally we fall into the vicissitude of selfish individualism. Our reaction instead of being uniform can rather be qualified as a wild fratricidal race.
In a break with the traditional culture of our forefathers, we have lost the notion of holding fast to a common ideal and to think in terms of general interest. Some of us selfishly hustled our way through the system and will faked to be living up to society’s expectations, some of us were use to pretentiously confirm the goodness of the system, some of us struggled actively just to meet survival means, while the majority in particular the youngsters simply resigned in a state of inertia some depending on governmental social assistance and precarious jobs others in street’s gangs.
The generational difference that may have some of us today accusing Young People’s attitude to be at the core of St-Martin’s ethical downfall, is that at the beginning of the transformational process four decades ago, we had hope and high expectations in St-Martin's future and many of us are yet fooling ourselves. On the contrary, today's young People are confronted with the realities of the society we have allow to unfold that is: A discriminating and hostile environment.
Our yesterday’ hope is our young people’s today’s deceit and pessimism over their future and the outcome of St-Martin, their ancestral homeland.
There is no worst feeling for one than to be pessimistic over his future in his homeland.
The all directional transformation that have occurred in the last four and a half decades on our little island, in the name of an economic boom, have shifted in the native's mind from dreams to hope to falling in deceit of a brighter future as the said economic development pursue its exclusive overtaken process.
In less than two decades in the process our hope have began to turn into disillusions by the reality of facts: We the natives at all level of the social ladder, even those composing the leadership elite and that had formerly constituted the economic force island-wide, have all found ourselves to be nothing more than the “Laissés-pour-compte”, overtaken and neglected in the whole said economic development process.
As a matter of fact even when the truth was told to the people, they did not believe that the acknowledged policy behind this economic boom on French St-Martin was not to their benefit but simply to accommodate a new immigrated population. It is of our nature to believe in the goodness of our European colonizers in spite of a history of fatal deceits.
The non-discrimination policy implemented by France and the European Union forcibly resulted in reversal discrimination when extended to a minority civilization as St-Martin for being classified their integrated ultra-peripheral region.
What may have appeared as ideal upstream was in downstream realities an ordeal St-Martin’s natives were condemned to suffer as belonging to France’s territorial collectivity.
Not direct discrimination but through the subtleties of reversal discrimination we have been suppressed and rapidly substituted. The Central Government’ non-discrimination theory have proven to be a hidden genocidal maneuver against St-Martin’s natives.
In spite of all evidence of the imminent ending of our existence as a People's, our future is yet today considered and treated in the most casual manner both by State's Government and local elected leaders whose only pride is to safeguard their personal elective career.
We have seen during the last four decades, our young people, in growing numbers, gradually turning adrift from society rules and obligations and organizing themselves in different forms of subversive groups, ranging from passive resistance to hard offenders. Today they constitute a fast growing street population.
Considering this alarming situation one will expect the arisen of a general feelings of consciousness if not guilt mostly amongst our local politicians and elected representatives in regards of the deteriorated conditions of the educational, training, social and cultural system we provide for our young People. Unfortunately the younger generation of politicians has adapted the same selfish and fickle attitude as their elder peers.
Young people are used for electoral purposed then forgotten until next electoral season. Our Young People's decadent attitude is not to be taken as a young People's problem but as a generational society problem and ought to be approached as such if we are serious about finding solutions. We ought to take a bold stand of shared responsibility instead of demagogically accuse the other or the government.
Ask ourselves the question: Do we truly heartily have the concrete future of our young People at heart or are we simply using them to our personal interest?
There is no doubt in any heartily minded person that today, the fate of our young People is unscrupulously exploited in a cupidity chase behind public and E.U. funds budgeted in the name of education, professional training or cultural activities, but once these funds become available in the hands of a population of hustlers and schemers in the different Administration's, the young people really in need and to whom the funds are destined, are excluded from the actual benefit to the exception of a few hand pick customers needed to justify one's cut of the cake.
Today, our young people are paying a heavy price for our yesterday’s casualness in the politics and run of the affairs of our little island. As natives we have all been relegated to the rank of intruders in our own forefather’s land. We must be aware that this true fact applies not only to our young People, but also to all of us.
In our native quality we are all condemned to cope with humiliation in every step of life in our country, when not straightforwardly we remain constantly oppressed by a sense of being the embarrassing intruder in the overtaken foreign environment that have become our homeland.
The massive distribution by the government of work-free salaries, non-productive funds, economic-wise and training programs are but subtle policies to keep the mass blind and asleep from seeking active participation in society life.
The questions we are all tempted to ask ourselves are: Do we as St-Martin’s natives, exist as a socio-cultural people protected by universal human rights as should be all minority groups within a globalization system or are we simply a few scattered undefined intruders on metropolitan France's territory? Does France hold St-Martin to be a human-wise citizen's Collectivity or simply a territorial collectivity meaning France's territorial possession as we have recently been labeled?
In any case, it is not to France to prove or to define to us our existence as a people, It belongs rather to us to define and to confirm our existence as a distinct civilization with a specific history and specific society norms and values that are inseparable from our healthy social and cultural growth as a distinct People.
A healthy evolution of a People is not found in their imitation and assimilation to another Nation's life-style but rather in their self-conciliation with the authenticity of their ancestral human nature imprint, a process that permits a child to identify himself and be identified as a distinct person with distinct socio-culture values. This is the prime attitude to uphold in our expectations to see our young people voluntarily living up to society norms, because we are the first model they will chose to imitate.
Any human society that has lost all points of reference as to identify itself within its authentic cultural values has also necessarily lost all means of positive influence on its young people as to obtain their voluntary adhesion to society norms and assure their evolution within the boundaries of the civilized world.
We must be aware that adhesion to society norms is an individual voluntary process that cannot be imposed from the outside but is largely influenced by the quality of one's surrounding.
A society that is decadent in human values and in lost of its socio-cultural norms do not have a direct nor an indirect positive framework assuring the healthy growth of its young People and their resistance against outside negative influence.
It is in the exercise of society values that is found the tools to the process that introduces individuals to ethical and social relations in society life and not in norms taken as imposable laws.
Society duty is to provide to young people the necessary tools permitting them to satisfy their candid expectations as they contemplate their integration into an active productive life and at the same time so that they may also be able to live up to the norms of society’s expectations.
This is a sine qua non condition. And it is to the People to fulfill this condition and not to leave it to the will of the government. We should be at the very least by now convinced of the fact that our government is composed of a population elected individuals whom prime preoccupation is not the socio-economic success of the citizen but rather to evolve in electorate building by all means as to guaranty a life time electoral career.
My aim here is to try to analyze the generational socio-cultural evolution within the socio-economic transformation of St-Martin and in particular the factors behind the young people's deviation from society norms or in other words: Juvenile's delinquency.
2 - DEVIATION FROM SOCIETY NORMS
Society norms can be defined as standard types of behaviors or formulas of what should be or what is to be taking as value of reference in public judgment on society ethics. Society norms are contextual. In this sense individual’s behaviors are necessarily dependent on contextual socio-cultural environment.
To remain within the specific context of St-Martin's society, it may be necessary to distinguish the difference between society norms from an universal point of view, seeing as general human social values and society norms civilization-wise, meaning in the relative context of a specific designed society.
2. 1 – UNIVERSAL HUMAN SOCIAL NORMS AND SOCIETY NORMS
2. 1 – UNIVERSAL HUMAN SOCIAL NORMS AND SOCIETY NORMS
Both universal human social norms and society norms refer to individual’s behaviors therefore can be confounded one with the other if we should view society as a great worldwide family of human being. But this remains a simply theory.
As a matter of fact, universal human norms tends more and more in today's world to be but an abstract concept that becomes a source of conflicts in regards to human dignity if arbitrarily imposed by exterior powers.
Universal human norms and society norms in common refer to concrete obligations such as: Rules, laws, commandments, precepts, models, abstract ideals etc., but must never be confounded in their generality when come to the analysis and the interpretation of individual's behaviors that are always relative and contextual.
In reality of facts, individual behaviors are socio-cultural dependent and as such can only be accurately analyzed by referring to the contextual characteristics of the society to which belongs the concerned individual.
The object of this study is more specific and refers to the contextual characteristics of St-Martin’s society and basically oriented on the decline of society norms and the decadence in the People's behaviors generated by the transformational socio-economic process occurred in the last four decades. To be clear, once we have had a culture, today we are in the midst of a cultural chaos.
Universal human norms are commonly taken as point of reference to judge individuals ethical behaviors but such a practice often leads as paradoxically as it may seems, to human injustice. Judging all People under the same uniform behavioral law often leads to reversal discrimination. This is a gospel truth inherent, more than anywhere else, in all French colonial system.
A subject as juvenile’s deviation can only be accurately interpreted if approached in all the respect due to human differences. Given consideration to individual's contextual influence, to surrounding characteristics and customary training and behaviors that may be predominant in the concerned individual social and cultural evolution.
2. 2. – IN A COLONIAL SYSTEM IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO DIFFERENTIATE UNIVERSAL NORMS FROM SOCIETY NORMS
Making the difference between universal human norms, that may be considered as abstract concepts, and society norms refer to as the concrete general way of life of a distinct civilization, is very important because the mentality of European colonizers in particular has always been to brake in to their European socio-cultural norms, the native populations considered to be savages. This mentality perpetuates even today and we need to uphold a vigilant resistance because we can only achieve human perfection within our own nature, in our own DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid).
True socio-cultural progress comes through the generalization of individuals free and self-will decisions to adhere to or to reject society values. It's a process inherent in our nature. Any foreign culture imposed from the outside is counter-nature and reduces us to a category of sub-human being.
Society attains an ideal in human conscience and behaviors not through its prescribed moral and legal obligations but by the generalization of individual's voluntary acceptance and submission to social ethics.
This individual process by generalization upon common factors not withstanding different social levels, creates and regulates spontaneously society life style of a distinct people that may be united as a country, or as a Nation, or as a civilization, or as a distinct ethnic, group, community etc.
It is therefore very important to differentiate the abstract concept of “Universal human norms” from the concrete facts of “Society norms” in the analysis of a subject as “Juvenile’s deviation from society norms”. The latter is the result of an individual interior process and reflects the natural realities of society life characteristic to each civilization while the former in application rejects human differences by imposing or expecting all to live up to an universal or nation-wide behavioral-type.
It is understood that it is at the level of individual’s daily interdependent relations in society that individual characters are formed and generate a collective lifestyles that tend to differentiate one group from another.
It is a human right that minority groups under colonial powers or within the globalization system be protected from genocidal overtaken in all aspect of local society life.
To fully understand the behaviors of the deviant and be efficient in our analysis, we must place him in his true and full socio-cultural environment.
So the question that will permanently haunts all along this analysis is: Can a society sincerely expect to have control over its social and cultural evolution and more precisely the evolution of its young people, in the absence of well defined and identifiable society norms?
A People can be identified as an entity, in particular by their: Nationality, laws, culture, principles, manners, customs, morals, ethics, precepts, conventions, practices, rituals, etc. The combination of which contributes in designing the general recognition criteria as well as the general socio-cultural characteristics that can differentiate in the details from one group to another.
The problem is that the socio-cultural environment of a society being composed of individual's behaviors is vulnerable to outside influence and as result, a society can move gradually from a mono-cultural society to a multi-cultural society. A sociologist may say from an integrated society to a disintegrated society.
2. 3. ST-MARTIN & THE ROOTS OF NATIVE'S DEVIATION FROM SOCIETY NORMS
More significantly from the beginning of the seventies, our little island, St-Martin, has become the object of a non-planning economic development, basically in the field of tourism and commercial businesses, and this has taken the entire island to an uncontrollable influx of new settlers generating a socio-cultural chaos.
Natives were not prepared neither technically, neither professionally, neither psychologically, neither financially to be counted as integrated participants in the development process. As a matter of fact, on the French Side, the ruling policy was less the strengthening of the island economy than the simply implantation of a new population, meanly European. The influx of workers from the impoverished Caribbean Islands was a necessary accessory due by labor demand.
Of course, the acknowledged objective was to create jobs and provide means to a higher standard of living in priority for the natives but reality of facts have proven otherwise.
The lack of a rational social and economic planning, the lack of a sustainable ideal and policy, An economy basically oriented towards short term speculations instead of sustainable investments, all combined to generate a great inflow of immigrants of all social level and cultures. Today it's no secret that natives are excluded from the island economic network to be relegated in their majority to government jobs or social plans for minimum survival means.
In the space of an overnight, natives found themselves socially relegated to low class citizens compared to the influx of French Europeans and culturally and psychologically disoriented, having to deal with an imposed French language and a new style of life on one hand imposed as belonging to France and the E.U and on the other hand as a result of the influx of a diversity of new cultures, relegating the country former monoculture to old fashion in the People's fragile mind.
The once warm, friendly and brotherhood relationship dearly cherished by our forefathers has given place to cold and anonymous relation one in regards of the other.
Unprepared financially to integrate the investment process, even natives that were formally the economically strong on the island found themselves totally eliminated from the business arena, reduced to simply lessors and the common native, found himself grasping for survival in little jobs demanding no qualification and the young people in search for their first job, trapped between the “devil and the deep blue sea” that is the government social policy to avoid the uprising of mass "Les laisses pour compte" in the transformational process
The economic development of St-Martin has also generated an intensified the direct interference of Metropolitan State's governments and the European Union, in the way of life of the natives often with laws, measures, and norms that are not only far from being sustainable answers to the concrete problems that confront the island and its natives but in many aspects ended up to be but genocidal for haven to be generative of destructive reversal discriminations.
Iniquity, social injustice, inequality, intolerance, insanity in Education and Training system, defect in communication, inadequate policies, are factors that prevent the full blossoming of individuals in society life and favor the creation of deviants and the street population we deplore today on our island.
2. 4. UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
Living up to society norms is considered a natural common rule to all human being but all human being are not by nature equip with the same natural faculty or capacity and each individual can only correctly blossom at his own tempo that may be different from his neighbor’s or from his European colonizers.
Difference in intellectual faculties or in cultural standards does not makes one inferior compared to another. A country's social progress resides in individual’s complementarity. It is counter-progressive to lead a country into a policy of elitism that is nothing more than an exclusion policy in regards of the mass.
It is mistaken to believe that identity conformity is the way to achieve social and cultural equality. Advocating equality in society is not a plea for identity conformity of all, but rather a plea for a society in which each individual in his difference is considered as an equal complementarity, all benefiting from the different contribution of each other.
As said before, cultural legitimacy is found in the generalization of individual’s self- options to adhere to society norms. The contrary is also true, and it is therefore safe to say that deviation from society norms is an individual self-option to reject society norms, this evolve into a society problem by generalization.
As said before, cultural legitimacy is found in the generalization of individual’s self- options to adhere to society norms. The contrary is also true, and it is therefore safe to say that deviation from society norms is an individual self-option to reject society norms, this evolve into a society problem by generalization.
Therefore, the right point of departure in search for solutions to Juvenile's deviation from society norms is from an individual standpoint at all the different social levels of society, considering collectively the responsibility of each and every individual composing society in cause of the problem. Corrective measures to be sustainable ought to be oriented as a first in the recognition of our individual responsibility and our duty in meeting the satisfaction of our young People's expectations.
Deviation of individuals from society norms is triggered by a complexity of factors that vary from one society to another. These factors are contextual, generally socio-cultural dependent, and demand that corrective measures be grounded on contextual realities and not on theoretical precept. Any other approach is fake.
Deviation of individuals from society norms is triggered by a complexity of factors that vary from one society to another. These factors are contextual, generally socio-cultural dependent, and demand that corrective measures be grounded on contextual realities and not on theoretical precept. Any other approach is fake.
2. 5. THE DEVIANT
The deviant can be defined as a maladjusted to society norms. But the deviant will more justify his attitude as an act of revolt against deceit in his expectations as he discover the true realities of what is supposed to be the civilized world.
Confronted to an exclusive society, the deviant decides to separate himself from what he discovered to be a fake world of civility and refuge himself in groups in which he can identify himself, most often, unfortunately, turn out to be organized delinquent gangs.
Society has expectations from its youth, but the youth also has expectations from society. The true reality is that expectations are not fulfilled in the likeness of manner falling from the sky but through the process of responsible provisions to meet the satisfaction of our young People expectations.
When we fail to live up to our responsibility, our young People lose confidence in us as parents, teachers, elders and all that constitute the civilized world.
Deceitfulness is the core cause in the motivation of our young People's disobedience to society norms and their seeking elsewhere of means to exhale their self-esteem.
We will never succeed in curbing the ascendant trend of young People's Deviation from society norms by approaching the problem as if it is rooted in the free choice of young People to reject the civilized or belong to an accidental failure of one to adjust to society norms.
The deviant trend is triggered by one deceit in society’s established values.
Self-esteem is an integral part of our human nature. Every human being pride in society life is to exhale his or her personality. The deviant motive is no exception to the rule.
Juvenile’s delinquency is a situation in which the deviant in his inner conscience is trying to confirm his personality by placing himself in affairs against the civilize world as to benefit of society attention.
The reason we see no issue to the dilemma is that the civilized world, in the darkness of its implication and responsibility in the cause leading to the problem, refuses to initiate the necessary responsible communication with the deviant's world and prefer to set up protective barricades and to tend towards exclusion and elitism.
A right and fair approach requires that the deviant condition be rightfully approached as the result of society failure to provide the necessary tools and space to assure young People's transition into the adult world.
A right and fair approach requires that the deviant condition be rightfully approached as the result of society failure to provide the necessary tools and space to assure young People's transition into the adult world.
The question that should haunt our mind is: What can cause a child, born innocent, once the apple of the eyes of his parents to suddenly convert himself to a society offender?
2. 6. THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONAL PROCESS
St-Martin's juvenile's deviation problem is not to be simply blamable to parents failure to provide the necessary means to satisfy young People's expectations as they contemplate their entry into the adult world.
More critically it is a society failure rooted in the radical socio-economic transformation of St-Martin in the last four decades. Our entire socio-cultural existence as a People has been denied by the French government in an implacable maneuver to reconquest France’s overseas possessions in the Caribbean by promoting a massive implantation of a predominant European population that has also generated the influx of new populations along with a diversity of cultures, moving the island society life from its integrated mono-cultural state to a disintegrated multi-cultural society?
Our way of life has radically changed, in the space of no time, from a spirit of warm friendly personalized relationship to a state of selfish relation between an anonymous individuals.
Willingly or unwillingly, the friendly and personalized relationship has given place to an indifferent and depersonalized relation caused by a rapid growing anonymous population and a new life style.
The new economy era with its influx of new settlers have influenced and transformed our attitude one towards another as natives, leaving nothing in common with our forefather’s fraternity precepts.
The new economy era with its influx of new settlers have influenced and transformed our attitude one towards another as natives, leaving nothing in common with our forefather’s fraternity precepts.
The ethical harmony between the outgoing generation and incoming generations no more exists as there were no more specific identifiable society norms, leaving our young people on their own, reduced to social and culture chaotic conditions.
Each generation is more or less on its own confronted with a worldwide diversity of cultural and social issues, yet not having the least landmark to refer to for guidance.
Authentic communication between generations based on senior-ship, mutual respect and self-discipline has become outdated values. Relation between elders and youngsters sums up to rejection and repression on one hand and separation and revolt on the other hand.
Authentic communication between generations based on senior-ship, mutual respect and self-discipline has become outdated values. Relation between elders and youngsters sums up to rejection and repression on one hand and separation and revolt on the other hand.
2. 7. THE RIGHT APPROACH
Juvenile’s deviation is a society problem and must be approached as such if we want to be efficient in reversing the trend. To put a finger on a specific category of individuals as solely cause and solution to the problem is the wrong approach.
A society moving from precise norms to fall abruptly under a multiplicity of cultures, is confronted with a serious and very complex socio-cultural problem that cannot be solve in an one sided approach but on all sides and in its diversity with point of departure the source from where the problem originates, the contextual environment of the concerned people and with the concerned population because it is they that know best the roots of their problems, their aspirations and expectations.
Efficiency calls for a bi-partisan approach composed of socio-cultural professionals and deviants working in symbiosis to the analysis and finding of solutions to the true realities causing young people to separate themselves from the civilized adult’ world.
Efficient solutions to juvenile's deviation from society norms are to take into consideration factors such as: Childhood training and experiences, social and cultural growth, psychological and physical insecurity (sustenance & intellectual deficiency, language and self-esteem insecurity), level of education and professional training, the attitude of parents and elders, social and economic environment, politics and policies etc.
Effective solutions can only be found at the source of the problems and this demands a serious analysis of factors and circumstances that have favored the deviation trend society-widely.
Observing and seeking remedy in lamentations a petitions is an irresponsible approach and means we choose to approach the problem at the end of the process, in other words in its only repressive and judicial course. Seeking a cure at that phase is hopeless.
Only if we firstly acknowledge society failings and failures as the basis cause of juvenile’s rebelliousness against the civilized adult’s world, we can be efficient in seeking and applying solutions capable of curbing the course of juvenile’s delinquency and crime in our society and built hope for a better future. Of course this demand from us the courage to take a worthy stand and denounce cupidity at all level of the social ladder
All causing factors are to be considered at the source and not hopelessly in the ends. In matter of juvenile's delinquency, upstream solutions are preventive, downstream solutions can only be of repressive nature and we know that repression tends rather to accelerate the rebellious trend instead of curbing it.
Socio-cultural problems are always the result of a combination of inseparable factors that may be society-wide but the right approach in seeking solutions must always be individualized and contextual because the same problem can be caused by different factors.
A society-wide scourge as juvenile's deviation and delinquency cannot be cure by the sole intervention of repressive authorities but primarily, demands a society-wide radical change in individual's attitude in regards to others and a community-minded attitude of community life in general. A socio-cultural change cannot be imposed from the outside, it comes through a surge of individuals interior decisions. To contemplate any other way out is hopeless.
We may look to God, but God can only change things through us and that comes by making ourselves equipped and available to his purpose.
The "Evil" and the “Good” are integral part of human nature. Both can condition our ways of life in a manner that may confuse us in the recognition of their difference. In this sense, a good society life consist not in an impossible mission to eradicate evil but depends on our ability to manage both the good and the evil we encounter in daily life, whether in our personal life or in our inter-relations with others including the deviants; Our inner conscience being the judge and Jesus Christ, his life, his death and resurrection being our inspirational source.
We must always bear in mind that we cannot eradicate the evil but we can create the necessary grounds for social and cultural harmonious advancement in direction of the “Good”.
2. 8. OUR ATTITUDE IN REGARDS TO THE DEVIANT
To the contrary of a mono-cultural or integrated society, in a multi-cultural or disintegrated society, there is no uniformity in reaction before the behaviors of the deviant, but rather a diversity of reactions including a selfish passivity.
Some parents and elders may resign to a state of tolerance while others may demonstrate rigorous intolerance and repression; some may observe an absolute rejection in regard of the deviant, while others may seek common grounds for compromise permitting acceptance of the deviant in his difference.
This diversity of reactions sums up, responsibility-wise, to a general tacit tolerance characterized by a generalized feeling of absolution or discharge from our civil responsibility as adults leaving solutions totally on the charge of the government and repressive authority to cure a problem that is in its essentials no more than the result of a society failure, a generational communication gap between generations.
True solutions are not in a semblance of tolerance of some and the rejection of others, or in the creation of all kinds of fake philanthropic associations, but in a generalized change in attitude of all, parents, teachers and Elders, all understanding the necessity to adapt a new attitude opened to changes, to new circumstances and to questions that can no more be answered within empiric precepts.
All also understanding that change in attitude should never be interpreted as a denial of fundamental moral principles or of social and cultural values but on the contrary as an intelligent initiative to assure cultural progress and a harmonious relational advancement between generations, as we can no more pretend to bypass the relentless wheels of a worldwide diversity of attractive life styles.
An equally wrong approach is our simplistic tendency to see the new settlers on the island as the sole source of all the negative trend we deplore and cause of socio-cultural chaos. Young people’s deviation from society norms is a society problem and concerns youth of all origin, native and immigrant.
All influential factors are to be taken into account, such as: The generalization and practically free access to modern means of worldwide communication, the social policy, educational orientation, professional training policy, the job market openings policy in favor of young people in particular, deceit, family situation, parents and elders attitude in regards of young people and community affairs, etc. are decisive sources of influence in the forming of individuals character and behaviors.
The abysmal generational gap we deplore today is not the result of one or two isolated factors but of a combination of numerous and diverse negative factors consciously and unconsciously nurtured during the last four decades. These factors demand today more than ever our scrupulous attention and the application of bold solutions.
The Juvenile decadence into delinquency is triggered primarily by the general attitude of the civilized world to prejudge and treat the underprivileged young People in a whole as a population of outcasts, one with no sense of pride or self-esteem and secondly by the deviant desire to affirm his personality. The tendency of the deviant is to embrace the image projected upon him. This attitude intensifies the separation gap between the two worlds.
Evolution of human condition never comes through government initiative but through the voluntary initiative and sacrifice of the concerned people themselves. To depend on the government to solve human relational conditions, can be hopeless.
Previously to the transformational process of the last four decades, the natives were aware of that fact. Philanthropic associations were created upon precise aims of worthy general interest and sustained exclusively by membership contributions and the organization of cultural festivities. Associations in those days would have never think on requesting government financial support and have never received any public funds contributions.
2. 9. CREATION OF FAKE ASSOCIATIONS
Today we witness a plethora of creations of fake associations under philanthropic covers hiding in reality personal interest, all sustained principally on public funds. We should be aware of digging our grave as a People when we exploit a human crisis to our personal interest. Our attitude is not only detrimental to the general interest of our community but by our action we create a fake environment by which progress becomes impossible.
There can be no better way to repress progress in a Community than a policy that promotes the creation of a fake socio-cultural environment. When at government level a People evolve in leeching practices in the name of fake philanthropic aims, they can never as a People achieve wealthy ends. This leeching attitude of a certain category of People, likely a hand pick elite, is at the core of our falling as a People in our homeland. Progress comes through a self-control process and never faking reality
How can we expect from our youth, yet in the purity of their Godly spirit, to discover society's fundamental precepts and share a healthy part in society life, when we offer to them nothing more than a fake environment dominated by tricks at all level of the social ladder and by shallow minded personalities.
As parents and elders, we can and should do more to convince our children and young people of our caring and efforts for the building of a healthy and prosperous Community offering them the necessary means to meet their expectations and develop their sense of self-esteem as they reach the age we expect that they should be playing an active role in society life.
The first step is to put a stop to our questionable leeching attitude and start taking philanthropic initiatives not as a personal interest enterprise but as an associative movement for the general interest essentially supported by the sacrifice of its members.
A healthy community calls for a population of community-minded people inspired by the general will and the general interest.
St-Martin is a living proof that philanthropic associations created as intermediary between the government and young People in the carrying out of the government's sustenance policy, are no more than corruption tools in the hands of despotic leaders.
Let the government assume its full responsibility in all spending of public funds may it be in the carrying out of its social and cultural policy. The use of private intermediaries is a fragrant discharge of public responsibility and doors open to corruptible deeds.
As a matter of fact, Government sustenance policy is not the answer to St-Martin's problem, may it be economic-wise or socio-cultural-wise. What we need is a true sustainable policy with palpable results and not just fake theories.
And this begins by a collective step against government’s perpetual handing out of means of sustenance aids that have done nothing more up to this day, than destroyed our very human nature will.
Sustainable development means freedom from perpetual begging and for us as a People and a country to produce our own long-term sustenance means. Until we do just that, our dignity remains at stake. We can be either a self-sustenance People or remain eternally handing out our hands. We can be a beneficiary or a victim in today's economic globalization system.
To reckon on being a dignify beneficiary in the globalization process we ought to give priority to the development of our human potentials and take in hands ownership and run of our country’s affairs, this by taking a stand as real men and women with a full sense of patriotism and dignity as a distinct but equal human being.
2. 10. OUR HUMAN RESOURCES
As a people, we yet have a strong tendency of putting our trust in the power of money and to underestimate the academic value of our children, our younger generations in general. Even when academically highly qualified, we yet count them as incapable of standing on their own or having the ability to run the public affairs of their country. This is a counter-progressive attitude and cause for the politics of our island to be predominantly in the hands of shallow and corruptible personalities.
On the other hand, profession-wise, many of our youngsters with university degree qualification are reduced the unworthy means of social sustenance offered by subscription to the government unemployment policy plans, consisted essentially of an overabundance of training programs and short term precarious jobs. The doors to a sustainable life career are today closed to the majority of our young People even with high academic degrees.
A sustainable development begins by us as natives putting our confidence in the professional and leadership ability of our younger generation to design their future and unfold the history of their country. The public affairs of our island are in need of transparency and to be run in the democratic general interest of all. Only new and clean blood can bring about this vital change.
It is an unacceptable fact for today’s youngsters even more qualified and enterprising than most persons holding high positions on our island are unfortunately for sustenance sake, obliged to submit their qualified competency to the routine practices of unqualified bosses. Condemned to play the corruptible games they end up no different. The People expected change from them deceivingly the ended up to be peers within the corruptible system.
We are falling as a People because at every electoral season we are led in dreams upon promises that never come to reality and over and over we commit the same mistake in electing leaders not upon their true qualification and integrity but simply because of their apparent personality and ability to distribute money in electoral seasons. No surprise we end up with leaders incapable of setting the right policy insuring sustainable progress and the advancement of the country and its People.
In today's world, no country can afford to elect leaders based on their sole paternalistic attitude or upon their artificial personality or unclear wealth. Politics is a science and to lead a People one needs to be at the very least transparent in the origin of his wealth and knowledgeable in economic science, socio-economy and socio-cultural science.
In St-Martin bearers of intelligence and academic qualification to survive, as a rule must submit to the unbearable routine within public authorities and by so doing resign from their honest and ambitious will to excel in their intrinsic and progressive values to integrate a counter-progressive environment.
In today's world, human facts have taken a globalization lift that can only be approached efficiently through scientific methods acquired in superior academic studies, a building of human resource process. In this perspective we ought to entrust the academic value of younger generations. Seeking solutions to the problems afflicting our island should begin by a true recognition and assessment of our human resource.
As example, a problem as juvenile's delinquency that can only be effectively analyzed in consideration of the individuals socio-cultural environment demands necessarily if not a qualified analyst at the very least a leader fully conscious of the dimensions of the problem. Often we are stunned in deceit over the casualness elected leaders display in the apprehension of the potential danger in not controlling and curbing the development certain social deviations.
We cannot escape the wheels of today's globalization system that has an all over impact on our way of life. Therefore we must be equipped and conscious of the fact that empirical approaches are insufficient in the offering of effective solutions.
We must open the way for our qualified younger generations to exhale their intellectual and professional potential in the management positions and leadership of their country. Time have changed, empiric approached can no more answer to problems generated by a world governed by inescapable globalization policies.
As written in Matthew 9: 17: “Neither do men pour new wine into old wine skins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wine skins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wine skins, and both are preserved,”
Youngsters scientific contribution to elder’s world of precepts and routine, should not evolve diminishing feelings of one trying to relegate the other, but, on the contrary, be supported as a necessary complementary process for any civilization in quest of means to blossom in a world where high technology and globalization are pursuing there relentless progressive course.
May I quote this letter from God’s Apostle Peter addressed to Elders and Young Men: 1.Peter. 5. 1-5:
"Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers, not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; Not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock".Human facts are not simple but complex and the unforgivable mistake is when society instead of taking responsibility and come up with efficient answers, only give proof of casualness or to the most may evolve into downstream simplistic solutions simply because those in power refuse to acknowledge their intellectual inability to deal efficiently with the matter.
Deviant’s facts and all society problems in general are to be dealt with upstream, by taken preventive measures at the source. This demands adequate qualification, basic knowledge and wisdom in human science that lay beyond common sense or passionate opinions.
Unfortunately, in the politics of our little island, human science is often taken for nonsense and the academic qualified looked upon as a lunatic when refusing to adhere to the routine rules of the corruptible system. On one hand, parents and elders clung to their traditional concepts and on the other hand elected politicians are more concern in excelling in a lordship image and securing a life time electoral career than taking on the real but unpopular issues.
Unfortunately, in the politics of our little island, human science is often taken for nonsense and the academic qualified looked upon as a lunatic when refusing to adhere to the routine rules of the corruptible system. On one hand, parents and elders clung to their traditional concepts and on the other hand elected politicians are more concern in excelling in a lordship image and securing a life time electoral career than taking on the real but unpopular issues.
Electoral politics is conceived not as a democratic right accessible to every citizen but exclusively as an elitist prerogative under the benediction of colonial powers and a corruptible flow of cash for votes.
What goes down upstream naturally finds its way downstream. We find manifested the same casual attitude over serious matters of general concern, in relations between parents and children, between Elders and young people, and in all our daily approach to community or society problems.
At the end of the day, we find ourselves confronted to a society suffering from a community-minded deficiency at the root of a generational gap. At the root of juvenile’s deviation from society values is a regrettable deficiency in sustainable provisions and communication from one generation to the next, with consequences, a mass of young people disoriented in their will to develop their sense of self-esteem and confirm their adult personality in the practice of a job in which they can reckon on making career and built a family as any normal adult
Young people condition is today to a very serious and dangerously explosive state. The question is how much more time is left to us as members of the adult world to continue in our casual and demagogic manner in dealing with this potentially explosive problem.
3. - ST-MARTIN'S SOCIO-CULTURAL FALLING.
To assess realistically the effects of the transformational process on St-Martin’s society life island-wide, we must begin with the comparison between society life previously to the seventies, period during which the People abide by precepts or society norms and the following period during which our society life have been forced to suffer the impact of an all over and uncontrolled transformation process.
Before the induced economic boom, society life in St-Martin was known for its friendly and brotherhood relationship. Society norms were essentially grounded on Christianity teaching. The people lived in faith and fear of God and held the Bible as their first source of individual and collective general rules of conduct as well in relationship one in regards of the other as in relationship with God.
The people in general were not instructed in literal civil laws yet they automatically abide within a spirit of civility by tradition and by biblical teaching and Church’s preaching. The St-Martin of those days can be defined as a Christian’s society living up to biblical principles in relation with God, and with brethren.
The people in general were not instructed in literal civil laws yet they automatically abide within a spirit of civility by tradition and by biblical teaching and Church’s preaching. The St-Martin of those days can be defined as a Christian’s society living up to biblical principles in relation with God, and with brethren.
Public opinion was the judge of all behaviors. Society norms were not written but not less fully imprinted in the ways and manners of each member of the community. The fact that one lived in fear of general public reproof evolved an auto-control community life. Every member of the community island-wide was identifiable, therefore no one can reckon on passing unknown in acts and behaviors.
It existed in every district volunteer elders that were respected as advisers and conciliators, they usually will more refer to biblical precepts than on legal dispositions to enlighten in particular young People on all that is forbidding in individual and reciprocal relations, on the preservation of human rights, on the keeping of Sabbath day, on the respect for parents, Elders, morals and ethics, etc.
Individual conflicts were in priority submitted to the arbitration of these voluntary district conciliators or eventually to the Priest or Pastors of the Church. Civil Court was the ultimate recourse in the settlement of individual's conflicts and even at this level the judge was a conciliator and the civil court was a court of conciliation
Unfortunately, today this type of society life belongs to cultural history. Respect for society values was a natural and integral part of each individual way of life. In this context elders naturally were holding the upper hand on society life style. Society life was governed under a unique and common culture. The St-Martin of those days may be designated by the sociologist to be an integrated society.
In the course of the transformational process, society life in St-Martin has begun to suffer a socio-culture destabilization crisis, characterized by the confrontation of a diversity of cultures. The natives found themselves in a downward trend in all aspect of society life carrying along the lost of the very notion of society norms. St-Martin has falling to what is designated by the sociologist to be a disintegrated society.
3. 1. ST-MARTIN AN INTEGRATED SOCIETY
An integrated society is primary a society in which each member clearly identifies the other. We may call it a society of “Known” in opposition to a society in which no body knows no body, a society of “Unknown”, characterized by relational anonymity. In the former society, observance of a personalized relationship was a question of moral principle, on the contrary, our transformed society is today characterized by a depersonalized relationship.
For example in the former, a teacher will greet her class in terms like: “Good morning my children”, Today the tendency is rather in terms like: “Good morning class”. The same goes to Churches, instead greeting in terms like: “Brethren, Friends, etc.” the new style is “Good day Church”.
In our former way of life we will see others in our own image and feeling, today we see others in the vague and abstract material image of what they may be representative of in society.
Previously to the seventies, identification of others in St-Martin was a personal pride, even as isolated as one district may appears from another and the limited transportation means, yet every body knew every body and more, each was in one way or the other affiliated or related to another.
Previously to the seventies, identification of others in St-Martin was a personal pride, even as isolated as one district may appears from another and the limited transportation means, yet every body knew every body and more, each was in one way or the other affiliated or related to another.
In example every inhabitant of the district of Colombier knew every inhabitant as far as St-Peters or French Quarter. Every elder will make it his pride to be capable of enumerating the entire roots of every other native starting at times from slavery roots.
From Simpson Bay to French Cul-de-sac district, from French Quarter to Marigot, from Philipsburg to Grand Case, it would be the exception to the rule if one should pass through any other village under the cover of anonymity, there was always someone to recognize his affiliation, his relatives or his district of residence.
From Simpson Bay to French Cul-de-sac district, from French Quarter to Marigot, from Philipsburg to Grand Case, it would be the exception to the rule if one should pass through any other village under the cover of anonymity, there was always someone to recognize his affiliation, his relatives or his district of residence.
Home residences of inhabitants were organized into villages or districts, each governed by a spirit of oneness and at the same time living in fear of general public reproof.
French or Dutch, no one passed unknown and the rare foreigners were immediately identified by all island-wide. One of the prime virtues of an integrated society is its auto-control faculty.
French or Dutch, no one passed unknown and the rare foreigners were immediately identified by all island-wide. One of the prime virtues of an integrated society is its auto-control faculty.
Family and Community members were jointly concerned over ethics and general advancement, in a natural heartily fervor one in regards of the other, each member wishing the happiness of others and caring for the prosperity of the entire community.
The status and quality growth of children were timely programmed. As a tradition, children social journey from childhood to adult: Their rights and duties were explicitly predetermined and designed in details proportionally to their advancement in age.
By tradition, there was an age of absolute obedience to elders, an age to be in school, an age to learn a profession, an age to be a man or a woman and hold a job, an age to own one’s personal home, an age to be married, no age to lose respect for parents or elders etc.
Parents detained full authority over their children as long as they remain under their roof and are dependent of their financial support. The family home was the center of all taken decision. In addition, by general consensus, all elders were implicitly the natural advisers, conciliators and controllers of children’s growth within the respect of society values.
It was every elder's rights and duty to lecture not only their own children but to all children and children had the obligation to be obedient not only to their parents but to all elder including elder sisters and brothers.
Parents detained full authority over their children as long as they remain under their roof and are dependent of their financial support. The family home was the center of all taken decision. In addition, by general consensus, all elders were implicitly the natural advisers, conciliators and controllers of children’s growth within the respect of society values.
It was every elder's rights and duty to lecture not only their own children but to all children and children had the obligation to be obedient not only to their parents but to all elder including elder sisters and brothers.
Daily relationship was built on precise ethics and any deviation from the norms was systematically observed, judged, qualified a scandal and implicitly or explicitly sanctioned by general public reproof. At times, an elder may even physically chastise a child for his misconduct and that was well accepted by the parents.
The fact that no one passed unknown evolved a state of self-discipline. Each member lived in fear of failing in his reputation because individual’s social status, as one’s reputation and esteem were unavoidably subject to general public opinion.
The pride of each individual was to promote a highly thought of image of himself in the community. Therefore living up to society norms was a natural and self-imposed obligation.
The thought of a simple look of reproof from others had a dissuasive impact on each individual.
Each village and its residences were identified and link t
Each village and its residences were identified and link t
o a particular social image, so living up to society norms was not only a personal pride but also a collective moral obligation because individuals traveling from one district to an other were often prejudged upon the notoriety image of their district of origin.
This was reason for each village member to put pride in the building of social life in his village, the latter being the mirror reflecting his first sight notoriety in the sight of others island-wide.
Such was the socio-cultural environment of St-Martin some forty years ago.
Such was the socio-cultural environment of St-Martin some forty years ago.
3. 2. ST-MARTIN A DISINTEGRATED SOCIETY
A disintegrated society may be characterized by the anonymity in relationship combined with a confrontation of a diversity of cultures. Most detrimental is the falling of the natives in this depersonalized relationship within themselves, one in regards to others.
We no more relate to others in a manner creative of a friendly and brotherly relationship or evocative of intimate brethren love and friendship, to the contrary we have adopted a general tendency to depersonalized our surrounding, our relational intimacy has given place to relational anonymity, void of person to person feelings, we no more see others in their intimate person but as a collective representation or a specific category.
Anonymity in relationship from being a part of everyday life has destabilized society’s ethical rules to become a promoted culture even in relationship within Churches. As consequences, the deviant by his anonymity is protected both from the general public reproof and from identity denunciation to police authorities.
In a disintegrated society, identification of society norms becomes impossible and therefore the notion of juvenile's deviation is no more grounded upon reference to specific norms. The general public opinion on one's behaviors is no more grounded on common socio-cultural values. Anonymity and the fact that the fear of public opinion is no more an influential factor have combined to created a safe haven for the deviant, as long as his infringement is not punishable by law, he remains protected by his human legal or universal rights.
Therefore as a consequence of St-Martin transformation from an integrated society to a disintegrated society, deviant’s immoral behaviors are no more subject to a unique general public reaction but gives place to a diversity of reactions when not the general passivity of all.
Since society life is more regulated by the adhesion of all to common ethical rules, the question is: What alternative remains in the hands of the adult world to assure a harmonious growth of children and the integration of young People into the adult’s world?
The economic transformation of St-Martin instead of generating socio-cultural progress had rather generated by indirect or reversal discrimination the exclusion of natives in general from the economic circuit and young people’s lost of hope to pursue a sustainable professional career in their homeland.
In the traditional St-Martin, elders were invested with the respect due to their seniority and had the power to intervene in the regulation of society behavioral trend, in the new the modern St-Martin generated by the economic transformation, it is no more a question of seniority respect but a matter of who is holding the cash is also holding the influential powers to design society rules.
In the traditional St-Martin, achievement idealism was timely programmed and measured upon: Academic and professional success, having a profession, business and industrial investment, a job, family life etc. In the modern St-Martin what really counts is to have the cash and being known to be a good distributor. No one question the exact origin of one’s overnight infinite wealth.
Money and standard of living have become the new units to measure one’s successful achievement in society.
The ideal to achieve a harmonious wealthy, family and social life have degraded to a simply desire to have the means to be a competitor in the disorganized and lavishing world of the elites of society.
The observance of ethics in a disintegrated society depends more on individual’s conscience than upon society’s imposed laws and regulations. This is a fact to be very aware of, because it tells us how much useless can be our appeal in form of petitions to the government against violence. The right departure in a struggle against deviation from ethical rules is at the source and that is in the development of individual's human conscience.
Our traditional St-Martin characterized by: A natural observance of ethical rules, society auto-governance ability, Christianity way of life, and the intimate relationship between members, have given place to relational chaos: Anonymity, disregard of precepts, undefined ethical rules, impossibility to orient towards a common culture, a full disregard for protocols, etiquette and all other conventional rules, brake down in communication between generations, etc.
Our traditional St-Martin characterized by: A natural observance of ethical rules, society auto-governance ability, Christianity way of life, and the intimate relationship between members, have given place to relational chaos: Anonymity, disregard of precepts, undefined ethical rules, impossibility to orient towards a common culture, a full disregard for protocols, etiquette and all other conventional rules, brake down in communication between generations, etc.
Traditional monoculture is seen and treated as an old time fashion way of life and the once friendly relation has given place to indifference and anonymity one in regards of the other.
The implantation of a new population, has rendered the traditional society auto-control impossible, as consequence, the People in their struggle for security and social peace find themselves irresponsibly reduced to hopeless protest against violence and crimes, turning to the government and repressive authority to assure individual and collective security and justice.
In the traditional St-Martin, society voluntary auto-control was in its essentials a preventive factor. This spirit of provision and prevention no more exist in modern St-Martin, the people are today only motivated when before the accomplished facts, an attitude that places exclusively in the hands of government and repressive authorities the responsibility and outcome of society life.
The people's patriotic attach to their country have lost its sense of self-abnegation, have lost its self-sacrificial sense in behalf of general interest, have lost its community-minded spirit. Intimate fellowship creative of human feelings has given place to depersonalization with its negative psychological repercussions on young People’s way of seeing others.
The intrusion of a dominant and anonymous new population on one hand and the centralized system of government on the other hand, have destroyed the natives sense of belonging to their country. As a consequence voluntary and community-minded initiative are no more part of the people’s idealism.
Auto-visibility, general public opinion, interference or reprimand, elder’s authority, society auto-control constituted regulating factors of society life. All these factors have given place to an anonymous way of life inductive of an impersonal culture. Henceforth, deviants because of their anonymity can easily get away free from the general public reproof in the perpetuation of offensive acts not sanctioned by law and to a certain sense free from repressive crimes.
Reigns in an anonymous environment a spirit of suspicion one in regards of the other. General public zeal to cooperative in the process to justice has given place to a culture of distrust and silence. This explains the reluctance of the people to cooperate with repressive authorities in the identification of criminals.
- In a disintegrated society the only tool capable of orienting young People’s ethical conduct is the adult world’s behavioral model offered. Parents teaching one thing when in reality of facts they practice the contrary in the eyes of their children is not only useless lessons but more a factor of young People’s revolt against adult’s supposedly civilized world.
Every adult represents a fix image in a child's purity of mind. A father, a mother, an elder brother or sister, a teacher, a Church's paster, a priest, a leader, a president, a minister, a deputy, a senator, etc, all represent a high and covetous ideal in the purity of a child's view of the adult world. The adult world's supreme duty is not to deceive that child in his growth to the discoveries of the true realities of life.
It is also very important for parents to uphold a personalized and brotherhood relationship with others in the sight of children as a good manner to develop in their children a spirit of intimate human feelings and respect of others.
Greeting others even if not by name at least in terms such as: Neighbor, Friend, Brother, Sister, Brethren, or by their professional title, develops a sense of equal human recognition.
On the contrary, to purposely choose to greet our fellow-brethren using a depersonalized attribute is creative of negative socio-psychological apprehension of human relations and is absolutely not of the nature to develop a sense of intimate human relationship in children’s minds.
Formerly, when greeting a Church's congregation we will always use attributes such as: Friends, Brethren, Brothers and Sister in Christ, words that evoke a sense of intimate brotherhood fellowship, today we proudly greet from the altar of our Church in terms like: “Hello Church”, a depersonalized attribute. This is most disturbing because one may believe that in the absence of precise society norms, it is exactly organizations like Churches that have the power to develop a quality society life.
The ethical outcome of a disintegrated society depends on the quality of our collective expectations: Adults expectations from Young People and Young People's expectations from the adult world. Our understanding that quality life comes through a process in which each party has a role to perform and the common will of all to make all necessary provisions to the realization of expectations.
3. 3. A MAJORITY OF YOUNG PEOPLE WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT IS A PROFESSIONAL CAREERFor the last three decades, very few St-Martiners can talk of their job in terms of professional career. And the few who can are essentially in the public sector. The private sector, with the benediction of the government policy, is offering to St-Martiners only short terms limited jobs contracts most time partly paid on public funds.
It is obvious that the government objective is essentially to maintain social peace even at the price of social progress. Job policy is no more than a means to meet this objective. Precarious jobs, unemployment funds, handing out direct free money, temporary occupations offering the worker absolutely no hope to build a career, are simply meant to regulate the rising street population and avoid a general uprising.
Today, a majority of young people is forced to accept as career indefinite temporary training courses, moving from one enterprise to another by whom they are used as free labor, this within government’s training program in partnership with Temporary Employment Agencies or directly with private and public entities.
Jobs opportunities in St-Martin are essentially reduced to the only government organized programs consisting in placing the jobless at the free and temporary disposal of private and public enterprises.
Giving out free money to young people in the place of a job should be the last thinkable policy of any government because it destroys young people natural human ego to develop their sense of self-esteem and exhale their self-worth.
Today, a majority of young people is forced to accept as career indefinite temporary training courses, moving from one enterprise to another by whom they are used as free labor, this within government’s training program in partnership with Temporary Employment Agencies or directly with private and public entities.
Jobs opportunities in St-Martin are essentially reduced to the only government organized programs consisting in placing the jobless at the free and temporary disposal of private and public enterprises.
Giving out free money to young people in the place of a job should be the last thinkable policy of any government because it destroys young people natural human ego to develop their sense of self-esteem and exhale their self-worth.
Charitable policies consisting of dishing out free money in the place of jobs is destructive not only to one’s personality but to his very human nature. It is a policy that deprives a person of his social status, diminishes his self-esteem and his auto-regulating faculty within society life.
Juvenile’s deviation from society norms is a real pain to life in our society. We ought to approach facts and situation with concrete, practical and sustainable measures.
Juvenile’s deviation from society norms is a real pain to life in our society. We ought to approach facts and situation with concrete, practical and sustainable measures.
3. 4. IS ST-MARTIN REALLY A LOST CASE?
The general opinion today is that St-Martin is a lost case. The common words we hear today are: “Only God can save St-Martin”. What is most disturbing is hearing this complaint coming from the very individuals that the people have elected over and over to lead the country.
It is true that changing the status quo or overturning the political system, comes rarely through elected leaders and never by awaiting the hands of providence, but through the uprising spirit and hands of the People conscious of their patriotic duty to make the necessary self-sacrifice in struggle for general good.
The way to progress as a People requires a general choice between accepting society life as it is or doing whatever is necessary to make it be what it should be. Until the making of that choice, naturally each generation will be the continuation of the everyday life just as they were trained to subdue by policy and by individual or collective circumstances.
The only free metamorphosis granted to mankind by the creator is death. Remaining in pessimism, counting on God to bring about the calling changes in our earthly lifestyle is to the contrary, the exact attitude that is leading us gradually and surely to our death as a people.
God can only change human conditions here on earth if we are available through him to meet the challenges. God never operates in magical means but demands that we make of ourselves his provisional materials in the process leading to the fulfillment of our prayers.
To communicate with God and he with us, we must not be of a resigned and pessimistic spirit but on the contrary we can only be beneficiaries of God's will by making ourselves usefully active in spirit and in deeds in conformity with his recommendations through his Son Jesus Christ. May we quote in 2Co.3: 6. “He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
Authentic spiritual life in God is when the Holy Spirit flows through man's soul like blood though his physical body and to achieve that level of communication with God demands hard work and self-sacrifice not simply quoting scriptures, praying and singing. We ought to make of our heart the translator into actions of the dispositions of the spiritual life of our soul. There is nothing magical between man and God. The realization of our prayers is a matter of process.
The first step towards change in society's life-style is a general change of heart and a change of heart is always possible because it is of our of our human nature ever since creation to seek redemption for our wrong doing. It’s a given gift from God that makes all things possible in our life through his Holy Spirit, but it is not free, we do not have to offer any sacrificial animal but to inherit the sacrifice of Jesus Christ we must submit our life to his recommended process.
God’s apostle Paul, in his efforts to awake the consciousness of the Romans wrote to them: “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”
(Ro. 8:6)
To conclude, yes St-Martin is a lost case for the resigned. No St-Martin is not a lost case for those of us that believe that righteousness is a cause worthy of our self-sacrifice and take a positive decision to do whatever is necessary for our Homeland to regain its happy and friendly way of life.
Our formerly open heart in regards of each other and zeal to provide for a better future for our children and coming generations is not lost because it’s an attitude that belongs to our nature as a People, all we need is to recover it.
Being a people wasting our energy in a senseless rat race one against another, is death. To be a people persuaded and persuasive upon a common ideal is life.
It is very important to understand that the above quoted letter of the apostle Paul to the Romans was addressed to the Romans not as individuals but as a civilization. Paul predicted their death as a People.
History confirmed his prediction. Rome, the greatest and most luxurious capital in the world died.
Reason of its death! The Romans freely opened their doors to the culture of the Barbarians at the lost of their soul and this was the cause of their predictable death.
Comparatively, St-Martin offers today an edifying example of the process that leads a civilization to its death. The practice of: Greed, corruption, short cuts to high standards of living, belief in God without action, lack of self-sacrifice, are some of the signs indicating the imminent death of a People.
Today, walk through Marigot and you are overwhelmed by an aura of death. The former inhabitants have being substituted by people of all horizons. With all the added riches, yet one gets the feeling of a town that has lost its living Soul.
We have taken the heritage of our forefather for granted and have freely opened our land and our soul to all Barbarians that knocks to our door. It was our mistake to give preference to settlers over our own fellow-natives.
We have sinned as a People and we surely are in the plenitude of paying the wages of our sins. Are we going to remain the passive spectators of our death as a People or are we going to wake up and seek redemption in doing whatever is necessary to regain our life-progress as a People?
3. 5. OSTRACISM
Ostracism can be defined as actions taking against a person to exclude or prevent him from acceding to a position of power. This sanction is usually taking against a person that differs in his politic opinions from the status quo or the politics of those in power.
Ostracism is a policy that has been secretly recourse to in St-Martin ever since the end of slavery. It is n secret that being a “persona non grata”, a political threat or even of a political opposition parents, is jeopardizing to one’s academic achievement and professional career. Many of our young People’s future have been maliciously sabotage in a combine enterprise between political leaders and State's representatives.
On one side you have political leader motivated by the need to preserve their political monopoly and make career in politics, on the other side you have State's representatives motivated by the means to guaranty their Governmental career and that is by keeping down peacefully the people under colonial check.
Any suspected individual capable of awakening the People in the way of their human dignity and sustainable progress is under state secret condemned to ostracism when not simply to death.
Ostracism is a reality in our colonial system and explains the reason why free outspoken qualified natives are never elected to political leadership or appointed to public administrative assignments but intently excluded as persona non grata.
And in a system where the life of the entire private sector as well as all associations depends of the distribution of public funds, once declared persona non grata at governmental level, you are virtually condemned to exclusion society-wide.
4. JUVENILE’S DELINQUENCY DEVIATION FACTORS
To find the right solution and take the right departure in solving a socio-cultural problem as juvenile’s delinquency or juvenile’s deviation from society norms began by determining the factors that trigger the phenomenon.
Juvenile’s civility or deviation is link to a complexity of factors such as:
Juvenile’s civility or deviation is link to a complexity of factors such as:
4. 1. IMMEDIATE ENVIRONMENT FACTORS
- Childhood training
- The socio-cultural environment in which a child frame his behaviors,
- The education policy set in place that can be discriminating, selective, exclusive and not considering all children equal before education.
- Ethnical prejudice, using civilization’s differences as a discriminating factor instead of human complementary
- Language differences treated as a psychopathologic deficiency, as an education barrier, instead of a cultural advantage.
- An elitist, exclusive, prejudicial and discriminating environment in which individuals or prejudged, excluded, and victimized simply because of their ethnicity or class of origin or political opinions or rejection of the status quo and upholding a dignified attitude.
- Young People's unfulfilled expectations and deceit
- Lack of love and affection
A person judgment to distinguish between right and wrong is largely dependable on the social and cultural circumstances in which his conscience is developed.
The quality of training at childhood level is decisive. Influence acquired in childhood left indelible marks of which effects are prolong up to adult age and beyond.
Childhood experience of behaviors contrary to social ethics is decisive to their future social behaviors in their teenager and even adult life. Experiences such as hatred, fear, indiscriminate sex, delinquency, criminality, etc. have decisive effects.
Childhood experience of behaviors contrary to social ethics is decisive to their future social behaviors in their teenager and even adult life. Experiences such as hatred, fear, indiscriminate sex, delinquency, criminality, etc. have decisive effects.
A youth, in lack of family affection and closeness, rejected by education and training institutions, finding no common grounds for communication, affinity or support in the civilized world, is a youth deeply in need and in search for adoption.
Exclusion leads them to regroup themselves into gangs, for the most criminal gangs.
Young people overwhelmed by a feeling of exclusion, create their own welcoming world in which they find intimacy, a role and a status. From a group of deviants, they quickly become organized gangs.
Lack of affection one way and lost hope in achieving an adult status, are factors that incite young people to brake away from their family and adult civilized world and get involved in inventing and practicing types of behaviors answering to their need to affirm their personality in their own manner.
Today, the Territorial Collectivity is advocating elitism to the young people. One can be only be but indignant about this trend, because an elitist society is a society that practices exclusion, class discrimination
A society of elites means nothing more than a society that practices class prejudice, a society in which individuals are prejudged according to their class of origin.
Advocating elitism is at government level is to implant it directly in the morals. In time it becomes a culture.
Advocating elitism is at government level is to implant it directly in the morals. In time it becomes a culture.
Excluded individuals seldom remain in passive isolation, but turn their back on society prescribed norms and organize themselves into society offenders. Exclusion is the breeding ground of delinquents.
4. 2. Exterior factors
The new technology of the 21st century in telecommunication/satellite/network, by which every individual can communicate vocally and in image with the entire world at very low or no cost, is not a negligible factor
Today, mostly in the western world, we can talk in terms of cultural globalization. There is no more cultural border. Individuals all over the world are today open up to a diversity of influential cultures, unavoidable, yet may be conflicting in the form and in the content from one civilization to the other.
In dealing with modern generations of young People, it is vital for parents and elders to adapt their teaching and training attitude to the reality of daily facts. The time for just roughly “rubbing in” precepts and society norms in young people’s minds is over, we are in an era where youngsters reject dictations and simply want to identify themselves through models. Today’s young People’s sensitivity reacts positively only upon concrete edifying examples.
We can only be effective in our educating and training role as parents, elders, teachers or preachers by adjusting our minds and attitude to the changes of time and stop doing the things we ourselves do not believe in but that we do because of society’s standards, traditions or routine.
In dealing with modern generations of young People, it is vital for parents and elders to adapt their teaching and training attitude to the reality of daily facts. The time for just roughly “rubbing in” precepts and society norms in young people’s minds is over, we are in an era where youngsters reject dictations and simply want to identify themselves through models. Today’s young People’s sensitivity reacts positively only upon concrete edifying examples.
We can only be effective in our educating and training role as parents, elders, teachers or preachers by adjusting our minds and attitude to the changes of time and stop doing the things we ourselves do not believe in but that we do because of society’s standards, traditions or routine.
We need to open ourselves to new and adjusted approaches. Instead of “rubbing in”, we need to rather submit our way of teaching to an enlighten process through free and democratic debates.
We need to accept the reality of facts: No subject is today taboo for our young people. Ambiguity can no more prevail, so we ought to be open up to debates and changes. Also no human being should by too powerful or influential not to be exposed in his unethical or corruptible practices
Unless we as educators, parents, elders, reform our ways and attitude to meet the new challenges of time within our environment, the exterior world will always have the upper hand on our young people's behaviors.
The influx of new settlers on the Island is not the only source to blame for the implant of a diversity of culture in St-Martin. The true fact is that through modern technology in telecommunication, the concept of integrated society is no more in facts a reality.
4. 3. BEING WITHIN A METROPOLITAN NATION
We place blindly the education of our youth in a hostile socio-cultural context and expect them to be successful.
The truth about our educational environment in St-Martin is that from the first day our authentic St-Martin’s children enter the French public Education door, they are considered and treated as odds and ends this simply grounded upon their ethnical and cultural origin in particular their language that is not French but English.
Their educational outcome is prejudged and decided on that very first day. Such is the policy in our Public Education schools. Very few of our children may meet a stroke of luck and escape the rigidity of our Public school’s policy.
We blindly submit the development of our children's personality to an educational system and context that not only is not conceived for them but that is a real threat to their mental health because of the absence the necessary provisions in matter of communication. The French education system applied in St-Martin is a brains killer.
The French public Education system as applied to St-Martin's youth is creative not of educated young people but of psychopaths, the growing population of young People involved in delinquency and crimes should be no surprise, it is the evident result of a mind-destroying educational context.
Our young people develop a consciousness of being abandoned within a system in which they have no hope of being integrated participants, this is a non-negligible factor that trigger their will to adopt as a means of revenge, behaviors contrary to society's expectations.
Young people pride is never to be society rejects but to become meaningful personalities. They all have a natural thirst to affirm their personality because this is human nature of itself. One can satisfy his ego by situating himself at either of the two extremes: being a successful intellectual or being a notorious society offender.
Youth overwhelmed with a feeling of rejection, develop a victimize mentality that directs them towards groups in which they find affinity, regain their lost childhood sense of belonging to a family, and can be induced in ways to affirm their personality.
Youth overwhelmed with a feeling of rejection, develop a victimize mentality that directs them towards groups in which they find affinity, regain their lost childhood sense of belonging to a family, and can be induced in ways to affirm their personality.
4. 4. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FRENCH AND THE DUCTH POLICY.
The development of Dutch St-Martin preceded over a decade the development on French St-Martin. The objective in promoting the economic development was different therefore it’s no surprise that we discover two different policies.
The Dutch objective was essentially socio-economic while the French objective was essentially based on colonial politics. The true objective behind the economic development of French St-Martin was essentially a matter of territorial reconquest and this in complete disregard of the native’s social progress. The policy and interventions of the French central government in Paris was strictly focus on creating the necessary structural development to accommodate the implantation of a new population of European settlers.
While on the Dutch side the policy was basically to attract foreign investment, mainly North American's capitalists, on the French side the objective was basically to attract European settlers regardless to their status. The policy was to Europeanize, a frankly elimination and substitution the natives.
While on the Dutch side the policy was basically to attract foreign investment, mainly North American's capitalists, on the French side the objective was basically to attract European settlers regardless to their status. The policy was to Europeanize, a frankly elimination and substitution the natives.
For being a French integrated Commune, based on the constitutional principle of non-discrimination in circulation and establishment due to all European Union member State’s citizens, St-Martin’s natives as a minority civilization integrated within the French Republic and the European Union were reduced to suffer a genocidal process by an all-directional overtaken in our homeland.
Europeanize the French colonies by implantation of a new population was an explicit plan of metropolitan State's government, known under the title: “Pierre Messmer 1971 circulaire”.
St-Martin because of its rising economic boom in progress mainly on Dutch St-Martin, has become the most focused target of this governmental order to reconquest France's overseas territories by overtaken occupancy, nothing less than genocide by substitution.
The rejection of this plan by Mayor Dr. Petit was cause of his tribulations with the metropolitan State's government and finally his oust from mayor-ship power in the seventies.
The Fleming’s mindless of the socio-cultural upheavals the metropolitan plan was to cause in the lives of the natives, have embraced open heartedly the plan, have become Metropolitan State's government's chosen electoral candidates and were elected in the place of Dr. Petit.
The rejection of this plan by Mayor Dr. Petit was cause of his tribulations with the metropolitan State's government and finally his oust from mayor-ship power in the seventies.
The Fleming’s mindless of the socio-cultural upheavals the metropolitan plan was to cause in the lives of the natives, have embraced open heartedly the plan, have become Metropolitan State's government's chosen electoral candidates and were elected in the place of Dr. Petit.
It was the Fleming's belief that by being nice to the Europeans the latter out of gratitude would align behind their leadership, given them a predominant electorate independent to the rising Black population to elective leadership. On the contrary Dr. Petit knew that European's gratitude in regards of colonized natives, regardless to color of skin, is not a virtue one should ever reckon upon in dealing with European mentality.
These two different objectives in the development of the island, one Side compared to the other is a very important factor to the analysis of the socio-cultural transformation of St-Martin, because while on the Dutch side the afflux of a diversity of cultures can be considered as a latent threat, that can be approached successfully through rational efforts at various levels, governmental, individuals or community undertaking.
These two different objectives in the development of the island, one Side compared to the other is a very important factor to the analysis of the socio-cultural transformation of St-Martin, because while on the Dutch side the afflux of a diversity of cultures can be considered as a latent threat, that can be approached successfully through rational efforts at various levels, governmental, individuals or community undertaking.
On the contrary, for the French side, in addition to the afflux of a diversity of cultures, the French natives had to deal with the compulsory imposition of French metropolitan society norms including the French language, as a constitutional obligation.
This policy has generated on French St-Martin among the natives, a population of unconscious socio-psychopaths, ridiculously at the mercy to European's shrewd irony, and this in all areas of society activities, social, cultural, economical, political, run of public affairs, all predominantly in the hands of metropolitans and other French overseas nationals.
Generations down to the eighties were to deal with a psychopathologic problem, the advocacy that European citizens were the light to lead them to what they considered to be their true identity: Real French citizens. Native’s belief was that to Europeanize their culture was an educational and cultural edification.
The plan has proven to be nothing more than a re-colonization scheme leading to a genocidal process by population substitution.
The plan has proven to be nothing more than a re-colonization scheme leading to a genocidal process by population substitution.
4. 5. THE NATIVE'S ATTITUDE
After times of illusions, comes the time to face reality. Natives in a short time found themselves placed before a real re-colonization challenge, finding there way within an outnumbering amount of European, other French Overseas nationals and foreigners attracted by jobs opening.
After over four decades of peacefully endorsement of France's government reconquest policy. The plan being fully endorsed by the newly elected local leaders, the Fleming's party, as a matter of fact, the latter made it clear in their electoral campaign: “France agreed to satisfy all our demand on the only obligation, we do all that is necessary to favorably accommodate European citizens”
A drastic favoritism policy was set up at all areas of public Administration. As example, one has to be in favor with the status quo to get a job, to benefit of a housing apartment, to open a private business or even create an association, to receive social assistance, etc.
The political atmosphere was that of dissuasion. No one dare resist the metropolitan government's policy, if, then be prepared to suffer the consequences, ostracism, oppression in all different forms: (Sabotage in academic & professional achievements, society-wide exclusion, ostracize from jobs and professional career, put on international file as dangerous communist or terrorists etc.)
The massive implantation of European has radically transformed the socio-cultural environment. All the virtues that have constituted our native’s sense of pride and patriotism, our culture and sense of being a People, of being a distinct civilization, have all felt apart and have become obsolete.
The massive implantation of European has radically transformed the socio-cultural environment. All the virtues that have constituted our native’s sense of pride and patriotism, our culture and sense of being a People, of being a distinct civilization, have all felt apart and have become obsolete.
Our state is now like a ship at sea uncertain of its port of destiny. What left of us as People is like a man that has lost the life of his soul and is now condemned to pursue his journey looking hopelessly towards God in search for that lost life, because we do not have the faith nor the will to face head on the realities surrounding our existence in our Homeland.
To be counted in the new implanted context, the native had to disown his homeland culture including his mother language and go through an imposed integration process. To fail is to be excluded as a society dropouts.
To be counted in the new implanted context, the native had to disown his homeland culture including his mother language and go through an imposed integration process. To fail is to be excluded as a society dropouts.
It is the natives that had to adjust to settler’s language and not the other way around.. As consequence, each native found himself on his own to deal with a personality conflict, the degradation and denature of his inherited culture and self-worth.
The most humiliating aspect was for the Education authority to classify St-Martin's youth, education-wise, to be maladjusted pupils and Instead of granting teachers a performance award based upon pupil’s success, they are simply granted a compensation allowance for the unpleasantness of having to teach maladjusted pupils.
The most humiliating aspect was for the Education authority to classify St-Martin's youth, education-wise, to be maladjusted pupils and Instead of granting teachers a performance award based upon pupil’s success, they are simply granted a compensation allowance for the unpleasantness of having to teach maladjusted pupils.
This education policy entered the mentality of most parents and it had become their belief that to be a successful person was to become culturally French.
In this denaturing process, each native found himself in an aggressive race, one against another, even parents discriminating children, each seeking by all means, confirmation of his new Europeanized personality and social integration.
In this denaturing process, each native found himself in an aggressive race, one against another, even parents discriminating children, each seeking by all means, confirmation of his new Europeanized personality and social integration.
As the Mayor once stated the people’s attitude towards each other can be compared to crabs in a pan, forming a the climbing ladder one on the other back then disrupting it as to provoke the fall as soon as one attempt to grip on the top of the pan to get out.
It is one thing to be at peace with metropolitans, other nationals and foreigners holding high positions in our society but it's another thing to feel defeated by achievements of our own fellow-native and will do anything possible to put a spoke in his or her wheel. Both attitude combined lead to our extermination as a People.
Fratricidal attitude in regards to each other added to our cultural imperfection as supposed Europeanized French citizens, generate the ideal clearances for European and other French colonized citizens to take over of the most substantial social, economic and socio-professional availabilities in St-Martin.
To our mistake, we have created in St-Martin an exclusive upper class society, an elitist society, in which the mass of present and future generations of natives will be ethnically, socially, economically and culturally marginalized. Today, this is already an obvious reality.
It is one thing to be at peace with metropolitans, other nationals and foreigners holding high positions in our society but it's another thing to feel defeated by achievements of our own fellow-native and will do anything possible to put a spoke in his or her wheel. Both attitude combined lead to our extermination as a People.
Fratricidal attitude in regards to each other added to our cultural imperfection as supposed Europeanized French citizens, generate the ideal clearances for European and other French colonized citizens to take over of the most substantial social, economic and socio-professional availabilities in St-Martin.
To our mistake, we have created in St-Martin an exclusive upper class society, an elitist society, in which the mass of present and future generations of natives will be ethnically, socially, economically and culturally marginalized. Today, this is already an obvious reality.
Today the question for the natives is whether they can oppose a resistance front to preserve their Homeland through a change of status yet remaining within the French Republic?
With in mind the critical condition of the present and future generations, we cannot content ourselves with a negative discovery of our mistakes. Hope never dies even in the debts of disillusions.
We can yet hope, if we take lessons and this time, be assured that we are taking the right departure.
5. IS THERE A SOLUTION TO JUVENILE’S DELINQUENCY?
5. 1. A REFORM IN ATTITUDE
Human behaviors must be approached in the same sense of dignity we wish for ourselves.
It is obvious today that society's reprobation has lost its dissuasive power in the in curbing of the course of juvenile deviation from society norms, as we stated was the case in an integrated society.
St-Martin is today transformed into a disintegrated society in which deviants are protected under anonymity. Identification of persons in our environment is no more a part of our virtue.
If society norms cannot be clearly identified, the very notion of “deviation” has no foundation, no point of reference, so we may be reduced here to the general notion of human relation.
St-Martin is today transformed into a disintegrated society in which deviants are protected under anonymity. Identification of persons in our environment is no more a part of our virtue.
If society norms cannot be clearly identified, the very notion of “deviation” has no foundation, no point of reference, so we may be reduced here to the general notion of human relation.
The problem is that human relation defines universal behaviors, but in the perspective of analyzing the behaviors of a specific people, one cannot ignore the concerned socio-cultural context. Where there is a diversity of cultures there is also a diversity of reactions in regards to the deviant behaviors.
Some may resort to an acceptable degree of consensus tolerance or resign to a passive or tacit tolerance while others on the contrary will demonstrate radical intolerance and rejection.
The difference in approach to the maladjusted can be very varied within the same society. One part of the population remains secretly attached to the deviant while the other part tends to avoid any communication with him or her and just see them as a thing that can be legally exterminated by repressive authorities.
When a little society as St-Martin suddenly becomes overwhelm by a diversity of cultures to the extend that parents, teachers or elders can no more assert a common socio-culture behavior without creating a generational conflict, it should be clear that we are no more before a young People's problem but we are dealing with a society problem and it must be approached as such.
Resigning to street demonstrations and signing petitions in protest against juvenile's violence is nothing more than a demonstration of our irresponsibility as adults, parents, teachers, mentors.
A responsible step towards effective solutions is not in trying to protest against the waves but to learn how to approach them. And this calls firstly for a full reform in our attitude with in mind that along the way our children and young People have lost confidence in us and the first step is to begin by doing all that is necessary to regain the lost trust and inspire anew confidence.
The unchanging parameter in young People's motivation to chose the right side or the left side of the equation, is their human nature desire to affirm his or her self-esteem.
Identifying and understanding the triggers in society way of life that shift into two opposite extreme young people supposedly due to equal opportunities, will be the right departure to achieve efficient solutions.
The maladjusted conflict with the civilized world is always socio-cultural dependent. What may be a cure for a metropolitan society can reveal to be very destructive if applied to a community as St-Martin. It is meaningless to reckon on uniform applicable solutions. The specific socio-culture context of the deviant is the only authentic foundation upon which efficient solutions can be edified.
It is only by placing our analysis within the radical economic, social and cultural, ethnical, demographic, transformation of St-Martin, in the last four decades that we may truly identify and understand the particular aspect of juvenile’s deviation from society norm.
5.2. THE DEVIANT MOTIVATION
A great sociologist, I don’t recall his name, once said in substance: “The aim of a person in doing the right thing and the aim of a person in doing the wrong thing is the same, only the means to achieve their objective changes. And the means are largely influence by the socio-cultural environment of the person. The aim of both is: Conquest, success, popularity, prestige, a status, Happiness, power”
In our approach to the maladjusted let us always bear in mind the above human motivation.
Since the aim of one individual to live up to society norms and the aim of another in revolting against society norms are the same, then the ideal answer to juvenile’s deviation is in the democratization of opportunities, an open heartedly policy offering equal opportunities by taking into consideration each only respective talent, will no justified reason for extremism in matter of mains for each to achieve his aim.
St-Martin has evolved in exclusive elitist society. The education, training, and professional orientation policy is very selective instead of being democratized and inclusive.
The right approach in seeking solutions to juvenile’s delinquency is not in demagogic petitions appealing to repressive authorities for solutions, but in first place building a society life based on common and democratized actions in the benefit of all and not to a selected few.
Implementing upstream solutions, at the source of the society evil is the rightful and only efficient approach. Placing our efforts downstream, deploring the only facts is simply given proof of irresponsibility.
There is always a motivation behind individuals as well as collective offenses against society's establishments, injustice is always at the base, the civilized world is called to take in hands its part of responsibility in the juvenile's deviation process.
St-Martin has become a very selective and exclusive society. It is nonsense to pretend that in a little community as St-Martin that a fruitful outcome can result from dividing young People socially-wise into on one side the blessed group tand on the other side cursed group (Les vermines) because society scourge is contagious and all young people are vulnerable so it is idleness to conceive a frontier between a good group and an evil group and simply demand the extermination of the latter.
Efficiency will be to unravel the triggering factors that induce a young person to do the right thing and gain a blessed status in society life and the factors that induce the same young person to do evil things, given him a cursed status in society life.
We have numerous examples here in St-Martin proven to us that vulnerability of young people within the community spreads like a contagious disease that cannot be restrained by family's high social rank.
Every human being has a deep interior desire to exhale his or her personality and their first and natural choice is always to exhale in doing the good things when given the opportunity, if not, his search for ego-fame will conveniently induces him or her into notorious criminal behaviors where he or her receives even more public attention as the one doing the good thing.
Identifying all people to be equal in their differences. Instituting a democratic socio-culture and socio-economy environment in which each member of society can exhale his or her personality not as a different but as a fruitful and responsible complementary, will be the right policy to efficient solutions.
Conceiving a society built upon a dream, with accessibility to responsibilities for all as complementaries in their differences, a process by which each and every individual will be able to discover at his or her own tempo the appropriate field where they can affirm and exhale their personality is the right departure to a healthy, peaceful and prosperous society.
5. 3. EXPECTATION NEEDS PROVISION TO BE REALIZED
The significant difference between yesterday’s St- Martin and today’s is that yesterday's St-Martiners were open heartedly living souls. We were a friendly People, open hearted, cooperative and community minded. We were a people living by a strong sense of self-abnegation when come to helping others or for general cause and general interest.
Many of our grand parents and great grand parents have paid a heavy tribute for the liberation of France during the first and second world wars. They had a stronger sense of the value of freedom that their European co-combatants on the battle field.
I can never forget my last conversation with Mister Butey Baly, combatant of the first world war, he relates how many times they the Black combatants were humiliated by the French soldiers in terms like:
“Why you niggers do not go back to your country? You are the cause of the continuation of the hostilities, we do not care, for we a flag is a flag, all we want is to rejoin with our family and live in peace.”
Our grand parents before the transformation process, had a strong sense of their obligations to common duties and it was each personal duty to enhance society image. They understood clearly that society must invest in coming generations because it is of them that depends the quality of society life in the future. Designing a timely status for youngsters from childhood to adult age, was an integral part of their culture. Making provisions for coming generations was all their thoughts and daily priority.
Today we expect our youngsters to perform as civilized adults while we fail to design their status and provide means to meet our expectations as they attain adult age, such as sincere open hearted professional training and sustainable jobs.
It is utopian to expect adult behaviors from young people based simply upon their adult appearance. If we want our young people to perform in the likeness of adults them we must design a society equipped with accessible adults tools. The condition of our young People today is the consequence of our ignorance in matters of making provisions and investing in the future.
It is illusive for today’s society to expect young people attaining adult age to abide in conformity to the ethics of adults life when they are diminished in their pride and ambition by either being jobless are subject to charitable programs and all sorts of institutionalize precarious occupations. Conditions that kills one's sense of self-esteem.
Instead of creating jobs, we institutionalize and reward inactivity.
What we need to understand is that young people natural ego is to exhale their personality and rise to a status of self-esteem. This is in the nature of every human being and cannot be held indefinitely on standby. It is an explosive human state that sooner or later will explode.
Forcing young people to accept out of necessity precarious occupations that offer no issue towards a sustainable career can only incite contempt and revolt instead of instilling in them a sense of general interest in society life.
A vital step in building a Nation is to dispense to the youth an education and professional training subjective not simply to home country jobs opportunities but preparing them for a career at a universal level.
As our territory become more integrated into Europe, in parallel, the State's government has promoted a policy in the name of local jobs integration this while keeping the local jobs market more than ever open to European workers that in no secret manner have the preference in matter of qualified jobs. This policy is nothing more than the same apartheid policy implemented in South Africa under European colonization to prevent South Africans from seeking jobs on the European jobs market.
It is obvious that local jobs integration policy is a fake policy, it sounds good but in a colonial context it is the cause of the annihilation of our young People we deplore today.
A vital step,instead of promoting lazy consumers, is to implement a socialization policy consisting one way in making each individual an active member in the society he belongs and the other way by creating accessible means to qualified jobs opportunities rightfully at a E.U. Level, as we are an integral part, but more largely on an international level. This is not new, as a matter of fact, it is of St-Martin's People's tradition, being migratory workers all over the world.
Expecting young people to take on an adult behavior and conform to the ethics and norms of society is a process that demands sincere and open hearted provisions.
5.4. YOUNG PEOPLE’S EXPECTATION
Young people as they contemplate their entry into the adult world, expect to find the necessary means permitting them to discover their self-awareness and welcoming them into their responsible role in society. When they are confronted with deceit in this vital expectation, this triggers their contempt in regards of society general interest.
Young people as they attempt to enter the adult world expect to be welcomed by a sustainable policy assuring them an effective integration into a new world in which they share an active and responsible role.
Young people are not demanding alimentary survival, their desire is to affirm their value through an effective and qualifying job permitting them to fulfill a precise and satisfying role in society life capable of developing and satisfying their sense of self-esteem..
Young people are not demanding alimentary survival, their desire is to affirm their value through an effective and qualifying job permitting them to fulfill a precise and satisfying role in society life capable of developing and satisfying their sense of self-esteem..
Unless the adult civilized society meets with these expectations the course of juvenile’s deviation from society norms will relentlessly pursue its vertical climb.
6.EDUCATION AND TRAINING RESPONSIBILITY
6.1. LANGUAGE INSECURITY
It is pretentious for any ancestral rooted St-Martiners, to pretend being fluent in the French language. Even those of us that have succeeded through the French system, suffer from language insecurity in trying to express ourselves fluently in the French language.
This is honestly true for myself and it is true for all St-Martiners using the French language. This do not mean that those of us with an academic degree are less qualified than the ordinary born French European, but in matter of fluency it will be pretentious to claim fluency perfection as well as we can in English.
We should admit to the fact that language insecurity is a hindrance to our intellectual blossoming and this explains why we accept passively the fact that all high management positions in the run of public Administrations be exclusively occupied by French Europeans.
Through living in dread of making language faults, we often prefer in many occasions to remain silent, because committing faults in using the French language is look upon by many as diminishing to one's intellectual and social status.
As example the most commonly faults in using the French language is in confusing masculine words with feminine words, using “La” for “Le” or “Une” for “Un” or in collective nouns using the plural in place of the singular.
In French, there is no rule to distinguish a masculine word from a feminine word, its either you know probably by affinity with the language, or you don’t know and have to deal with the insecurity of blundering when spoken in French. To this is added our constant underperformance in our anxiety to prove our ability to master the language not excluding our St-Martin’s accent often hold in ridicule by other nationals.
Since language insecurity is an acknowledged hindrance to we the parents and elders, even after our academic achievement, then we are the most qualified persons to value real threat the compulsory imposed French language represents to our children's education.
Where is our love for our children, when we make ourselves the accomplices of the French Education authority to consider our children to be intellectual psychopaths simply grounded upon the fact that their mother tongue language, English is classified as annihilative and the fact of them not being capable of assimilating a lesson in the French language is considered to be a psychopathologic deficiency.
How can we justify our silence?
French St-Martin is the only community in the world where children's mother tongue language is used against them to classify them to be intellectual psychopaths.
English as our children's first language should not be taken and treated as an annihilation, on the contrary it should be supported as a complementary intellectual contribution of our country children to the expansion of French educational.
The annihilation is in the denial made to our children of their mother tongue language and the compulsory imposition of a foreign language from the first day they enter the door of French public schools.
Recognizing our children's mother tongue language as an asset to the French Education is absolutely not of the French colonial mentality, in their view this will recognizing local culture and given St-Martiners a “Plus” over metropolitans and other french speaking nationals teachers, ignorant to the English language.
6.2. ST-MARTIN CLASSIFIED “ZONE PRIORITAIRE”,
This is nothing more than an institutionalized insanity.
European colonizers mission in the colonies was to bring the indigenous to civilization meanly by imposing upon them christianity, we know that in facts the indigenous were exterminated by heinous crimes committed against them by the same that were in charge of bringing them to christianity.
Today when analyzing the Education authority mentality, the analogy with these previous European colonizers is striking. The Education authorities approach to education is to consider and treat the French indigenous whose mother tongue language is English to be uncivilized and bringing them to civilization is to impose on them by will or by force the French language.
This educational policy as a result has transformed St-Martin's indigenous into a population of socio-cultural psychopaths. Even those of us that claims the leadership power seats, do not know the difference between politic powers and administrative powers and they are the people that reflects in their confused narrative, to the world the intellectual standard of our island.
This is the colonial aura that covers the French Education system applied in St-Martin.
The Education authority only policy to the alarming failure of St-Martin’s pupils is to classify St-Martin “Zone prioritaire” interpreted to be a mentally retarded zone.
Instead of obliging teachers to a satisfactory result based on their pupil performance, the Education authority took the simplistic decision to grant to all assigned teachers in St-Martin, a substantial post allowance in reparation of the unpleasantness of having to teach St-Martin's retarded children.
By this institutionalized insanity, teachers can no more be held responsible for their mediocrity. On the other hand, they have no reason to strive for positive results because positive results have become contrary to their self-interest by the institution of this grant promoting insanity in the dispensation of education in St-Martin.
Teachers assigned to St-Martin are gratified as victims haven to suffer St-Martin’s children intellectual inability.
When to the contrary, a sincere, dignified and rational policy should:
- Acknowledge that all normal born children are equal intellect-wise and apt to education, language not taken as a discriminating factor.
- Admit in the light of facts that St-Martin’s pupil failure in Education is in proportion with their language disadvantage. Assimilation process is based on one's aptitude to connect sounds of words to images registered in his intellect by acquirement in his environment from the day he open his eyes to his surroundings.
-Recognize that it is an insanity to institutionalize the psychopathologic of youth because of their origin, declare their inaptitude to education and gratify the mediocrity and inefficiency of teachers, considering it prejudicial to them to have to teach St-Martin's youth.
- If gratification should be, it should be based on performance. A bonus grant to efficient performing teachers instead of strengthening teachers in their mediocrity with post allowance for unpleasantness in teaching to St-Martin’s kids. This is a shameful discriminating policy.
- That St-Martin’s children need more school days in a school year. Absenteeism of teachers needs closer attention.
- Teachers need special qualification to be assigned to St-Martin and not to seek training after being affected upon school days, leaving pupils to be wandering about on the streets like sheep without a shepherd.
A child will always become what he is considered and treated as. If a child is treated as capable of success, he will be successful, if he is prejudged a lunatic he will rise no higher than the stage of a lunatic.
A child natural tendency is to always satisfy in particular, his parents and teachers expectations of him.
We have allowed school’s authority to lay upon our children an insane identity. How many times I was indignant reading in the press school’s principals qualifying pupils under their authority in terms of “Vermine” (scums)?
How you dress your children is the way they will take care of themselves, If you dress them in dirty clothing they will not fear to mess with mud, if you dress them in the best of clothing, they will think twice before going to mess with mud.
Children natural nature is to live out the identity given to them in particular by their parents, teachers, caretakers give.
6.3. NURSERY & PRIMARY SCHOOLS ARE OUR CHILDREN INTELLECT GRAVEYARDS
It has been scientifically proven, that at the age of two and a half, a child’s intellectual attitude begins its formation essentially by imitation of adults in his surrounding. A child inwardly chooses his imitating educator that will serve as his model of reference in his actions and reactions. It is in this process that he built his self-attitude.
It has also been proven that at the age of five, the intellectual attitude of a child is completely structured. From this age a child's attitude can be clearly observed and analyzed permitting to determine on the state of his intellect, whether showing aptitude to learn or is doomed to failure.
It is exactly within this age interval that our children are confronted with the most intellect killers one can ever think of: A language barrier and unqualified surroundings.
The French Education authority motto is: Because St-Martin is French and French being the official constitutional language, even if children's mother tongue language is English and this is their only fluent language by which they can master their environment ,the French language must be enforced upon them beginning from nursery and primary classes.
This is the most backward and fallacious reasoning one can imagine, because instead of developing the child's brains it burns the brains and as a result our children rapidly develop psychopathologic symptoms and this justifies the decisions to orient them into specific classes not with objective to produce results but simply to satisfy the school-leaving age legal obligation.
Some of the most famous psychologists/sociologists agreed that when a child is place in a context in which he is incapable to link the “Sound” of the word he capture through his hearing sense, with the image of the object registered in his intellect memory, he is in an impossible condition to assimilate and intellectually conceive.
That child intellect is blocked, and if such a situation should be prolonged, that child’s brains could be irreversibly burned, intellect-wise,.
We ought to learn that the development of a child intellect cannot be separated from his mother tongue language in which he had learned to master his surrounding from the day he opened his eyes to the world without psychopathologic consequences.
To deprive a child of his language at the threshold of school’s doors is to compromise his entire intellectual future.
7. ST-MARTIN’S EDUCATION AND TRAINING STANDARD
7.1. CIVIL RESPONSIBILITY OF TEACHERS & SCHOOL’S INSTITUTIONS
Today, many of our Schools present the aspect of insane asylum with double walls and fences, likely barricaded against the intrusion of unwanted youths that are no more than former pupils of the same institutions. The creator lives in dread of his creation, this surely appears to be the case.
What should be considered as the school’s service perimeter, providing access and safety accommodation for the pupils is fenced in the style of insane asylum and exclusively reserved for the parking of staff’s vehicles. The safety of their vehicles is more important that the safety of the pupils.
Pupils are left abandoned to themselves, bunched up on a very narrow sidewalk exposed to the danger of heavy two ways traffic. The boarding and stepping down from school’s buses is done in the midst of this heavy two ways traffic because all areas given to the schools are fenced and exclusively reserved for school's staff use.
In the sight of this scene the first question that comes to mind is where begins and ends the civil responsibility of teachers and School’s institutions?
Isn't it understood in the terms of the law on civil responsibility that there should exist a minimum perimeter deserving school’s institutions within which lies the civil responsibility of teachers, professors or school's authority in general?
Should it not be determined a point of departure and a point of end of the shared civil responsibility between parents and teachers regarding pupils journey from and to school?
Haven’t article 1384 of the “Code Civil” and the 5th of April 1937 law decided on the
civil responsibility of teachers, professors, school’s authorities in regards of pupils under their care and supervision?
Shouldn’t it be the government responsibility to intercede under the provisions of the above- mentioned article and law article that concretely be fix a minimum perimeter in the vicinity of each school within which school’s institutions are held accountable in virtue of article 1384 of the Civil Code?
It is high time that the civil responsibility of teachers becomes a concrete fact. Article 1384 of the Civil code should be taken by the government as template in any disposition taken against school's violence. Instead of setting asylum style fencing, parents and teachers should be enlighten on the point of shift in their shared civil responsibility.
It is an elementary step against Juvenile’s delinquency, that be defined for each institution the point of departure and of end of civil responsibility between parents on one hand and on the other hand teachers and school's authority during the pupil journey between parents residence and school’s establishment?
Today by all evidence, civil responsibility of teachers and school’s authorities is totally ignored as non-existent even within the class room perimeter where pupils are supposedly under their teacher’s authority. Within class rooms or within the asylum style fencing, pupils are considered and treated as in a no man’s responsibility zone.
Teachers becoming fully conscious of their civil responsibility in regards of pupils supposedly under their care, is the rightful point of departure in any struggle against school's violence. It is high time for article 1384 of the Civil Code become effectively applied in its terms and in the spirit of the legislator in all our Education Institutions.
Civil responsibility of school’s staff is not to be limited to the only perimeter of classrooms or within school’s barricades but must necessarily include the entire service perimeter given access to school and to school’s bus service.
In my school days teachers took it as their duty to widen their sense of responsibility beyond the terms of their legal civil responsibility. Whenever and wherever a teacher should encounter with one of his pupils he would make it his duty to see that that pupils is within behavioral norms. As pupils we had full confidence in our teachers and we respected them.
I few weeks ago, a pupil told me: We do not have caring teachers in our schools, our schools are today populated with hustlers bearing the name of teachers, they see their only personal interest and do not care anything about pupils performance or conduct as long as they are not personally aggressed.
I have personally met with parents attacking parents in courts in reparation of prejudice suffered by one's child in incidents occurred in a classroom during class hours between their kids. By law it is the civil responsibility of the teacher or the National Education that should be involved.
Article 1384 of the Civil Code is a sanctioned obligation, yet it is ignored by all concerned, both by parents, school’s staff and pupils.
7. 2. PARENTS AND TEACHERS SHARED RESPONSIBILITY
The objective in defining civil responsibility zones between parents and teachers is less seeking territorial division of responsibility between parents and teachers, than for both parties to grasp the truth of their joint and legal involvement in school's violence and in general juvenile deviation from society norms.
Expectation to see pupils living up to society norms demands an effective and efficient partnership between parents, teachers and school's authorities. There is no reasonable cure in setting up asylum style fencing when in reality it is within these barricades that violence is instilled in these revolted pupils and ex-pupils.
None can deny the fact that in recent years a climate of hostility between parents and teachers, teachers and pupils and even between parents and children-pupils, is daily nurtured up to a latent explosive state.
To perpetuate this situation the National Education authority found no other solution than to enforce by decree a partnership with the National Security and Repressive force authorizing the latter to exercise their duty within class rooms on demand on the head of school.
7. 3. SCHOOL’S VIOLENCE
The basic roots of school's violence are nurtured in pupils lost of all confidence in teachers. Pupils claim they see not teachers before them burt hustlers that could not care less about pupils success or failure. In majority pupils do not believe that teachers care about their schooling success, this generates a lost of confidence, lost of respect and creates a state of disobedience in retaliation.
On the other hand we find teachers deeply involved in unethical and illegal deeds yet remain successful in placing themselves above suspicion in public opinion when at the same time pupils are not fooled and are fully aware of the reality of facts.
Today's teachers have no sense of the professional responsibility attached by law to their duty in regards to pupils under their care and authority. The majority of today's teachers are the wrong models for our pupils, but they are covered by a teacher's status and in public opinion the pupils are the only demons. Pupils know differently but no one will believe in their stories.
As example, we may recall the fact of teachers going on strike a few years ago as means of pressure to oblige the Gendarmes to arrest a little 15 years old pupils in a case where the teacher was in first place the party to be blamed for the incident.
In spite of the gendarmes claim not to have sufficient proof to justify an arrest, those teachers did not put an end to their strike until the 15 years old pupil was arrested, spend one night in custody at the Marigot gendarmerie and transferred the following day to Basse-Terre/Guadeloupe before the public prosecutor to be indicted and hold in prison..
This is the type of example that enlighten on the abysmal gap nurtured between pupils and teachers.
This repressive treatment reserved to this 15 years pupil by instigation and pressure of teachers is a typical example and not an isolated case.
For any banal routine incident between a pupil and a teacher that in any civilized educational environment will demand just a little common sense to be peacefully conciliated, is viciously blown up out of proportion by teachers in vigilant demonstrative protest.
The atmosphere in most of our schools is ruled by a high degree of intolerance and psychological insanity. Communication between on one hand school’s staff and the National Education authority and on the other hand pupils and parents is simply insane.
Shortly after the affairs of this little 15 years old pupils, the same teachers presented to the repressive authorities, the gendarmes, an exhaustive list enumerating in detail all delinquencies occurring within the school's premises, (gangs fights, threats to teachers, daily aggressions against teachers, use of side arms, drogue traffic, prostitution)
Shortly after the affairs of this little 15 years old pupils, the same teachers presented to the repressive authorities, the gendarmes, an exhaustive list enumerating in detail all delinquencies occurring within the school's premises, (gangs fights, threats to teachers, daily aggressions against teachers, use of side arms, drogue traffic, prostitution)
But at the same time they categorically refused to cooperate in the judicial investigation procedure. They publicly forbid themselves from revealing the identification of the accused pupils, claiming: "Retaliation can be a question of life or death, due to the fact that penal procedures do not preserve one's anonymity.)
If this is true then of what is consisted the recent partnership decree between National Education authority and Public Force to fight against school's violence?
The truth is that school’s staff itself has a lot to be hidden from the repressive authority. Many of them are as corrupted characters as the accused juveniles. This is a notorious fact, but they are protected by an acquired status above suspicion.
Education is the future of a country, and teachers have a professional duty to give proof of a higher sense of responsibility, tolerance, and dedication to the purpose of their profession. Our schooling system is in need of a radical transformation from the actual petite and irresponsible image teachers have taken pride in recent years to exhibit in demagogic petitions and streets demonstrations here in St-Martin.
Education is the future of a country, and teachers have a professional duty to give proof of a higher sense of responsibility, tolerance, and dedication to the purpose of their profession. Our schooling system is in need of a radical transformation from the actual petite and irresponsible image teachers have taken pride in recent years to exhibit in demagogic petitions and streets demonstrations here in St-Martin.
Resorting to strike and march down the streets of Marigot on every isolated incident between a pupil and a teacher is but a shameless camouflage of teachers inertia in the fulfillment of the professional responsibility attached to their profession. Instead of seeking means of curbing the trend of school’s violence they are implicitly nurturing violence in the bosom of our schools..
Responsible parents and teachers must be assured of having a throughout knowledge of the roots and the context of problems object of their protest and the wisdom to be aware of emotional and simplistic solutions and over all, to have a full sense of their moral and legal civil responsibility. This is the basic attitude to uphold in an efficient and preventive struggle against school’s violence.
If teachers show respect they surely will receive respect in return. That’s a law of human nature. The identity teachers or parents affect to a kid is what the kid will demonstrate to them.
7.4. FALSE SOLUTIONS
Teacher’s protest against insecurity and school’s violence made its first appearance in St-Martin during the school year 1996/97.
Ever since juvenile's delinquency has become a media issue characterized by teachers and parents associations signing petitions and organizing demonstrative street’s protests.
The simplistic arguments brought forward as solutions reveal the true motive behind theses actions. The requested solutions had no direct link with school’s violence in itself as a relational conflict opposing pupils and teachers or pupils against pupils, but were exclusively limited the overpopulation of Marigot Secondary college, an appeal for the construction of new Schools, installation of proper fencing of school's premises against intrusion of delinquents,and the presence of gendarmes guarding school's entrances. Nothing on creating means to achieve a better relationship within the school and between teachers and parents.
The need for building new schools was simply to create means for a discriminating selection of pupils. The creation of schools reserved for the privileged pupils and schools to bundle the disadvantaged pupils.
In short, the protest was about School's violence but the solutions were strictly limited to the need for material accessaries and reinforcement of repressive authorities in areas that legally fall under the civil responsibility of teachers and school's institutions.
Here we find ourselves with teachers, supposed to be intellectuals, making no difference between adequate solutions capable of curbing the trend of school’s violence, essentially a school relational problem and material accessories to meet their personal conveniences.
School's violence do not result from lacking in school's comforts. It is the result of a generational problem, mainly, a deficiency in communication between generations And as such should be taken into hands by the civilized society, teachers, parents, organizations, associations etc. in a concerted manner, analyzing the true facts and seeking common grounds in building solutions.
By their choice of solutions, it is clear that none of them have a sense of their responsibility in society duty to struggle against society scourges.
To open the debate on school’s violence in itself, was running the risk to expose to the light, teacher’s mediocrity and the insanity of the national education system applied in St-Martin.
8. PUBLIC SCHOOL’S PERFORMANCE
8. 1. A TYPICAL CLASS LEVEL
In a typical class of the French public school, wether at primary level or at high school level, by statistics, of 30 pupils, we find:
- 6 that can neither talk, read, write nor understand the French language,
- 14 that can master their native language, but below the average in French language,
- 6 that even with an average level in French have an assimilation problem.
- 4 only have a normal chance to success.
Sums up to out of 30 pupils in a class- room, 26 do not have the elementary standard required to be a normal pupil.
The question is what then is the objective of the National Education authority?
The principal of a certain college once said to me: “The objective is essentially keeping them off the street”. But how long can they be kept of the street?
We should not be surprise today of the fact that we are in an era of the generations of the street.
8.2. SCHOOL ATTENDANTS DROPOUTS
The reality is even more disquieting when analyzing the number of school attendants dropouts from entry in primary classes to high school.
Of an average of 600 kids entering primary schools yearly, we can assume that only 160 have a chance to go on to secondary classes (High school), this mean that in a 6 years cycle St-Martin counts over
2 600 adolescents drop-outs.
And of the 160 adolescents entering yearly secondary classes:
- 35% have a chance to graduate up to a secondary degree,
- Of which 50% only have a chance to graduate up to a "Baccalaureat"
- And 45% may have a chance to pursue through a short cycle 2 years vocational classes with a 60% chance to obtain a professional diploma.
On a 6 years cycle this means that between 400 to 500 adolescents drop out of secondary classes without a valid qualification.
We can conclude that a child entering primary class only has 27% chances to pursue to secondary classes (High school) and a child entering high school has only 50% chances to achieve a secondary graduation. Such is the performance of St-Martin public school education.
This alarming number of youth and adolescent dropping out from a normal education every year indicates clearily that the real breeders of the street population and evidently juvenile delinquents and gangs members, is our broken school's system along with mediocre teachers and the latter should be held accountable.
If up to today we are not more aggressively under the attack of this growing street population it is thanks to the numerous precarious measures set in place by the government simply to keep under control the growing street population instead of setting up a real social and sustainable young People's integration plan.
8.3. DISCRIMINATORY SORT OUT
Secondary classes counts an average population of about 3000 adolescents, sorted out into about 150 classes, we find:
- 45 classes composed of French fluent language pupils of which 80% Europeans and 20% of French West Indians parents, of which 5% may be considered to be St-Martiners.
- 80 classes reserved to pupils with difficulties in perception and assimilation with the French language.
- 25 classes reserved to hopeless cases, whose fate is just to hang around in school until the fatal compulsory school age expires and they can be expelled from the public education system.
Considering the alarming number of youth and adolescent dropouts, an average of 400 yearly not completing a primary education grade added to an average of 80 not accomplishing a secondary grade, the first question that comes to mind is: Where are these adolescent dropouts destined to?
We can count it a blessing from God they all don’t fall into juvenile’s delinquency.
8. 4. PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION: FREE, COMPULSORY, NON-RELIGIOUS
By the French constitution, It is the State duty to provide free and non-religious education at all level and guaranty equal access of children and adults to education, professional training and to culture. School attendance is also compulsory for children within a certain age.
Before 1959 school attendance was compulsory for children between 6 and 14 years (school year of civil year birthday) since it was prolong to 16 years. There is no legal recourse against expulsion from schooling after the age of 16years.
From 1963 two more years not compulsory were added bringing to 18 years of age the chance to pursue a normal education cycle.
Henceforth, no child is allowed to repeat an elementary class. During the 4 years prolongation the pupil is considered to be under an observation cycle of 4 consecutive school’s years in special secondary classes (6-5-4-3 grades).
In theory, during this under observation cycle, children having great difficulties are supposed to be placed in specialized education sections (SES) in which teachers are requested to give special attention essentially in 3 subjects: French, Mathematics and modern language. In reality we know that these classes or but an in penning policy with only objective, the regulation of the growing street population.
From 1980 through the channel of nursery schools, school attendance was decide by government decree to be compulsory from 4 years and possible from 2 years within the limits of places available.
Compulsory schooling is not exclusive to State’s public schools, but can also be justified in private schools or at home under supervision of academic inspectors, in this case, it is compulsory to make a declaration to the local collectivity Administration.
Prolonging the limited schooling opportunity from 14 years to 18 years has place in the hands of teacher’s appreciation 4 crucial years of young People's schooling life, in actual facts they are dormant years.
This has created over the years a change in parent's attitude regarding the education of their children, a feeling of irresponsibility in the process of their children' s education and professional training.
Previously when at the age of 14 a child was expelled from the public school, from that age parents started to be concerned of their children's future and will take over charge, as example they may send their dropout children to a private school in Guadeloupe, Martinique, the USA or here on the island or they may also try to place them under apprenticeship.
The loophole in schooling compulsory attendance obligation is that each public school establishment being an autonomous entity, is under no legal obligation to retain a troublesome child even under the age of 16 years. For this reason many parents find themselves powerless with children in their youth and adolescent in hands with no future in view for their schooling or professional training if they do not have the means to place them in a private school.
8.5. GOVERNMENT'S TRAINING PROGRAMS
The gap between parents and their children's education and training at an age when they should be contemplating their integration into the active life of society has been even more significantly widen by the fact that today, after the limited 18 years age within the normal national education system the government as a social policy, intervene with local integration process in the contrary of its former migratory policy of locals to integrate France's Jobs market at a time when European citizens were very discriminating in regards to certain available jobs, creating a demand for workers on the metropolitan jobs market.
A massive emigration of natives citizens from the overseas territories was promoted mainly through a public organization known as the BUMIDOM. Today the European mentality by the force of circumstances has changed to the understanding that a job is a job. Hence forth the government is forced into a reversal policy that is the return of the excess overseas natives to their homeland and a check valve on the migratory system promoting the circulation of workers in the only one way direction that Europe towards the Overseas territories.
In this objective, the Government is offering to young People up to 25 years of age extended education programs through special organizations associated to the National Education framework and to all adults and unemployed, enormous opportunities in extra training programs through public and private organizations, where age is rarely a limitation factor.
National Public and European Union funds invested in education and professional training programs are enormous. But the question is who is in the reality of facts is profiting of these funded programs?
Adults educations and professional training are financed through public and E.U. funds but the channeling of these funds is organized in a manner that open doors to the cupidity of a few privileged and rarely meet their rightful destination.
Government's contracts with private Associations/Organisms are never free of electoral politics considerations and the fact that there is no control over the effective run of these programs and the effective result in the advancement of the young People and adults in number and individual achievement, in reality the real beneficiaries of these programs funds are not those to whom they are destined but a few selected and customary organizers.
Not including the salary paid to the attendants of these three months cycle training programs, the yearly budget allocated or available for St-Martin in public and E.U. funds is over 50 millions Euros. Enough to attract covetousness.
More than half is spent in the administrative settings and procedures at government level, and for the balance we find a plethora of public and private organizations run by a carefully selected few whose only known skill is knowing how to position themselves to get their cut of the cake.
These organizations operate secretly or in any case most of them are completely unknown to the majority of youth, adolescent or underprivileged adults to whom these funds are intended and who are really in need of education and professional training. There is nothing in the run of of these public and E.U. Funds by the name of transparency and democratization.
Any person that may advocates for a democratization of these programs as a mean of given a real second chance to the true underprivileged population, after their failure in normal education program is avoided as persona non grata. This is a truth I personally can certify too.
These programs that officially are designed to give a second chance to young people , adults and the unemployed, have been reduced in reality of facts to a lucrative business in the hands of real schemers that are far from having at heart the future of St-Martin and the fate of the common man..
It is a shame and a sin in the sight of God for this mass of public funds that can be put to an efficient use if directed into an open hearted education and training system, be wasted to the only cupidity of a few unscrupulous people.
Where can little three months express training here and there can lead if not to “nothingness”? False illusions follow by frustration.
An example of the money racket in place: The socio-professionals, through their federation (FISM), to recuperate the compulsory tax on salaries destined to finance professional training, decided to create their own training center (FORE), but manifestly refuse to recruit trainees presenting a diploma certifying that they were trained by their training Center. Business is business.
Every unemployed or persons in search for a job in St-Martin, represent a windfall average to about 800 Euros per head and by a training cycle of 3 months in government contracts with these opportunist training Centers created as well in public, semi-public administrations as in the private sector. Not ignoring the fact that the attendants are also paid a salary by the government,
Any one with a true concern over the growing street population in St-Martin can do otherwise than ask the questions:
- - Who is profiting from the funds from tax on salary applied to all employers and intended to professional training programs?
- Who is really profiting of the funds from tax on salary that is today claimed by the socio-professional in partnership programs with government's institutions?
- Who is profiting of public funds and European social and development funds (FSE, FEDER) intended for the training of young people and the underprivileged?
- Who is profiting of public funds invested in education and professional training within the Public Education framework, in particular through public institutions such as: GRETA (Groupement d’Etablissement pour la formation contunue) or CNAM ( Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers) or CNED ( Centre National d’Enseignement a Distance) CNED, etc.?
- Who is profiting of public funds financing education and training in private centers?
- Who is profiting of public funds invested in partnership training programs between public entities and the private sector?
All of these leads to a second chance in behalf of school's dropouts are in reality held under secrecy from those to whom it is in reality destined too by a a few public funds hustlers.
These programs are neither transparent nor democratized. The chosen training centers are not interested in reaching out to the young people really in need on training. Their prime concern is simply to obtain a list of attendants to be qualified for a training contract with the government or semi-public organisms in charge of dishing out the funds.
In reality less than 10% of the population potentially beneficiary benefit from this mass of public an E.U. funds destined to Education and professional training.
It may be rumored that the young people are not interested in education and professional training. The truth is that young people are in a state of revolt for being over and over ride like donkeys. The content of these programs offers no future.
The attendants to theses programs are interested in the financial benefits, because they are paid a salary to attend. They are not to be accused, it is simply because they are conscious that these programs are conceived without a true vision for their future and are in the hands of a people really far from haven in mind for them a successful future, they are simply used to justify a money racket.
To benefit of social integration allowances, beneficiaries are under obligation to accept to follow these training programs. They are the victims of a heartless exploitation of their misery by these public funds schemers
Formerly, adults of my generation as example, when we decide to return to a school bench, we were stimulated by our ego to repair our normal school’s days education failures. And it was at our expense. It is inconceivable that this noble and cherished aspiration for education be reduced to a mere money racket.
What goes down upstream finds its way downstream.
The same sense of casualness we find upstream at government and its Administrations level, whose objective is more a question of keeping young people off the street and maintaining social peace than to implement an efficient education and professional training, is the same sense of casualness we find downstream, with a few attendants following theses programs not for the training content but to fulfill the necessary obligation making them liable to unemployment allowance.
Juvenile’s deviation from society norms is in proportion with the deviation of public national and European Union funds for education and training programs from their intended purpose.
It is only in a change of heart and attitude in regards of youth, adolescent or the underprivileged in general that we will convince them to abide by society norms.
We need to change from being exclusive to become more inclusive, a change from being partisan of an elitist system to become advocators of a democratize system, a change from greediness and leeching to become community minded and contributors to a real progressive social, economic, politic and cultural objective..
The growing street population and juvenile’s delinquency will pursue its ascending trend in spite of the mass of public funds dished out as long as the training of school's dropouts, young people and adult is not assured within the framework of a socialization planning with at the very least a yearly assessment under control of an independent and incorruptible public institution.
9. EMPLOYMENT INSECURITY
Out young people are today pushed at a loose end, nothing to do, by a fierce job market apartheid within the colonial system. As mentioned above, for the last four decades the State’s government to restrain our young people from coveting national and E.U. job's market, has institute a perpetual local job integration training policy creating utopian expectations in the naive minds of our young people when by the reality of facts, the only outcome is to elect them liable to unemployment funds while at the same time promoting a plethoric influx of nationals to take advantage of the real jobs and career openings.
Employment policy is essentially conceived upon precarious occupations largely financed with public funds as a result of on one hand a social and economic sector that is only relying on tax cuts and public funds grants to survive and on the other hand a massive number of unqualified young people, a product of the poor performance of our Education and professional training.
The system in place fails to ensure in particular to the young people in search for a first job a permanent employment permitting them to built a professional career and dignified standard of living.
Even the few with a secondary or university degree, find themselves on the job market holding on to insecure jobs or consecutively moving from one job training to an other job training and at the end find themselves with all their qualifications, living on unemployment allowances.
A socio-economic policy based upon temporary relief in form of charitable allowances (RMI) and insecure employment instead of upon a substantial professional career policy can reveal in time to be humanly and financially very destructive because most young people tend to ignore the insecurity attached to their status and get engaged in liabilities they don’t have the means to meet. On the other hand the question is what is the social security retirement status reserved for temporary workers when they arrive to retiring age?
Even the few with a secondary or university degree, find themselves on the job market holding on to insecure jobs or consecutively moving from one job training to an other job training and at the end find themselves with all their qualifications, living on unemployment allowances.
A socio-economic policy based upon temporary relief in form of charitable allowances (RMI) and insecure employment instead of upon a substantial professional career policy can reveal in time to be humanly and financially very destructive because most young people tend to ignore the insecurity attached to their status and get engaged in liabilities they don’t have the means to meet. On the other hand the question is what is the social security retirement status reserved for temporary workers when they arrive to retiring age?
