Ronald Thwaites | Moral revolution

In the 2025 Reith lectures on the BBC, historian Rutger Bregman records the moral revolutions and creations of worthwhile institutions brought about by the persistence, wisdom, and sacrifice of small groups like those who led the slave revolts in the 18th and 19th centuries, the anti-slavery campaigners in Britain, the suffragettes and the civil rights movements of the next 100 years, and so many more.

He posits that these brave persons were the kernels from which mass movements gathered and eventually wrought systemic change. They uniformly compromised women and men of deep moral and religious or humanistic conviction, mostly volunteers prepared to sacrifice for principles and noble causes. He contends persuasively that their efforts have toppled evil empires and reversed the normalising of unthinkable cruelty and injustice, which previously, had seemed impregnable.

Not long after the founding of the United States when the Empire felt sure that this impudent experiment in freedom would soon spiral into autocracy, French journalist Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the hearty tendency of Americans to form many and varied interest groups would defy the pretensions of any tyrant. (I wonder how he would analyse current events in that country nowadays where even its admirably balanced constitution with its enshrined separation of powers seems no defence to the rampage of executive excess!).

OUR STORIES

We should consider this history in the light of our own past. We celebrate too little the heroism of the few committed persons who incrementally built education opportunities for the black population. Or the covey of nationalists who sacrificed to bring about the workers movement and those who stimulated the broader nationalist struggle.

These groundswells are often scorned and violently suppressed by temporary potentates and go on to outlast the forces of reaction. The best example in what has become Western culture is the endurance of the Jesus movement, which has survived all the Herods and Caesars of 21 centuries.

More of such bold coming together will be necessary if Jamaica is to recover and prosper inclusively. With all respect to the highest vocation of politics, the way we have bastardised and cramped politics with divisiveness renders governmental activity by itself despite its control of public money and the instruments of repression, unable to spur enthusiasm so that a critical mass will struggle for equal opportunity to fulfil themselves. Just check public disillusionment, half-dead voter turnout, or watch Parliament playing with itself if you want proof.

Most of us don’t act like the progress we chat about is even possible. Many must die so others can live as they please – just so long as none of us is a casualty and while we can control the balance of terror. Implicitly, no longer ever explicitly, economic policy, like the millenarianism of the colonial preachers to the slaves, invites the lifelong patience of the many who dream to add substance to their dignity and passion for justice.

OUTLIERS

For it to become otherwise, outliers will always be needed to confront power with renewed values, principles, and practices. One such effort is the Grade 7 Academy experiment in improving literacy, numeracy, and character formation where these are egregiously lacking even after children have experienced eight expensive years of pre- and primary schooling.

We belch out on this society about 15,000 such souls every year. Although the State has offered a measure of support and a benign eye, they are so preoccupied with keeping the existing system going that they find it hard to innovate. So the backing for this urgent and now well-on-the-way to be a proven effort has come from non-government developmental and philanthropic sources.

STAR AND OTHERS

Project STAR, for instance, has provided the yeast for the venture. Their quick faith in people and concept and their rigorous assessment prove how systemic initiatives get off the ground. Similarly, National Continental, Digicel, S Hotel, and the Breds Foundation have leapt over all the ascriptive obstacles we construct to defeat ourselves and offered the leaven of visionary support.

Selfish desire to be proprietors of all novel ideas, political or religious bias, stifling bureaucracy and entrenched traditionalism do not encumber these true brokers of human fulfilment.

The modest yet exciting progress which previously bad-behaving, illiterate, and innumerate teenagers have shown after a year of effort demands the closest evaluation, modification, and scaling-up to contribute to sustainable crime reduction and exponential productivity.

CONSCIENCE

The underlying moral principle motivating the Grade 7 Academy and the many, but not sufficient, other small group uprisings, is a reverence for every God-given life and an intolerance that this society, after such historical struggle and with abundant capacity, continues to excuse the mortal sin of disrespecting the human potential of so many thousands of young people.

Equally, we reject the “waste-man” mentality of victim entitlement displayed by some teachers and students. How, for example, do many parents give priority to fashion and entertainment rather than financial support to the schools their children attend? And how does the teachers’ union rationalise the 90 per cent-plus satisfactory or exemplary annual performance assessment grades given their members with the continued and growing cohort of gross underachievers leaving their care?

The first ingredient of the moral revolution this society needs in 2026 so as not to confuse rebuilding with the higher goal of renaissance is the commitment to speak truth to ourselves rather than diet on the fizz of jigged statistics, the ‘kin-teet’ of press conference half-truths, and unforgivable cruelty and murder in our bedroom and street corners. It matters not where.

We are not to become people who bomb and kill on allegation, fabrication, or assumption of wrongdoing. To do so is to repeat the brutality of our past and to wreck any prospect of a peaceful future. William Wordsworth’s horror of “man’s inhumanity to man” must become our nation’s mantra.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.