Weir: Failure to teach respect creates bullies

WESTERN BUREAU:

Veteran educator Lynton Weir believes the norms and values being passed on to children, especially boys, must be closely examined to determine whether such lessons are influencing them to become bullies.

Weir made the point while addressing a forum on the role of fathers, which formed a part of the National Parenting Support Commission’s series of events in celebration of National Parent Month, which is being observed under the theme ‘Parents Tek a Stand: Raise Kindness, Stop Bullying’.

“Right now, we have a very coarse and rough society, and a lot of our boys think that they are supposed to be rough and tough. For example, boys in higher grades are the ones who are bullying the other boys, but where did they get it from?” asked Weir, who is the principal of Old Harbour High School in St Catherine. “It is learned behaviour, and it is how our society has been fashioned and how we communicate.

“We are seeing it happening in our schools with our young people, where we do not show respect and we do not love or care for each other. Then you end up seeing young people becoming serious bullies,” he added.

Jamaica’s 2026 Global School-based Student Health Survey revealed that 27 per cent of students reported having been bullied. The Child Protection & Family Services Agency received 165 reports of bullying across the island in 2025.

Weir told the forum that the social conditioning that enables bullying results from failure to teach good manners to young people, and a culture of mocking boys who practise politeness.

“A lot of individuals will see a boy and say that that boy must be ‘funny’ (homosexual) because he is talking about ‘please, excuse me, thank you’. But these are values that we need to teach, and while we are teaching mathematics, English, physics, and chemistry, we will have to teach our young people how to have respect for self and for other persons,” he said.

Pastor Courtney Morrison of Fellowship Tabernacle Portmore, St Catherine, said that contrary to popular belief, males can be more emotionally expressive than females.

“We teach boys that to gain respect, you have to act a certain way, but we do not teach them how to love and show affection because somehow, we feel that is feminine. However, men are more emotional than women,” said Morrison.

“I believe what the Bible says, that all women came from a man named Adam, and the word ‘woman,’ literally translated, means ‘from man’. It might mean we have one or two more emotions than women do; it is just that we manage them differently,” he added.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com