Dickson Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

Economic pressures on the poor and middle class; unsustainable migration; the collapse of the village as social parent; absent, incapable, and unable parents; and a material culture driven by digital technology, with a significant number of kids accessing pornographic sites and unwholesome media; is producing a generation of children and teenagers with significant learning deficits, and anti-social behaviours.

The result of this national dilemma will be a doubling of the prison population in coming years; the waste of scarce educational resources in babysitting dysfunctional children and youth; a negative impact on the educational infrastructure as mediocrity and deviancy in the system increases; a steep increase in crime; a philistine culture; and a class system where the socially articulate, well socialised, and well educated, rule over a new and expanding UNDERCLASS.

It will take a radical overhaul of the social infrastructure to change the trajectory of this incoming SOCIAL MISSILE.

It is well acknowledged worldwide that a scientifically oriented, technology driven, innovative education, is the route to strong economic growth, especially when that education is available to the poor and middle class. Knowledge driven economic growth is the one sure way of creating good and well paying jobs for the country’s youth.

An appropriate education model that is innovative and scientifically driven is the platform that lifts the poor into the middle class, and the country into true global prosperity. However, social dysfunction in the Virgin Islands threatens to derail educational opportunity for the poor and middle class. It does so by making effective education inaccessible to the underachieving and dysfunctional child. Ultimately, mediocrity feeds social and economic underdevelopment.

Now, there is a culture of denial in the Virgin Islands. The establishment fully understands that there is a serious social problem in the country. However, one of the cultural subsets in this country is the burying of the head in the sand. There is a lot of discussion but little action: a sweeping of problems under the rug.

There is a lot of talk on every subject under the sun, but very little action.

The surface is what matters in these Lesser Antilles: the superficial. Hence the love of the material, and status: drive an expensive car, and live in a mansion and you have arrived, even if all one’s children are in prison, or the grave.

If things look good on the surface, then all is well. The ‘’I am all right Jack’’ phenomenon, is a way of life. This MASS DENIAL is a type of anesthetic.  As long as a problem is not discussed and tackled head on, then it simply does not exist.

That is a fallacy, however. And one day the denier wakes up to REALITY. Reality in the Virgin Islands is right around the corner and it takes the form of a growing SOCIAL MONSTER.   

Parents besieged by various social woes will not solve this problem of dysfunctional and problematic youth. Most of the parents of these children require social assistance themselves.  The babies are having babies is a pervasive new syndrome.

Neither will the church solve this crisis, despite the human and material resources it possesses: the church appears nonexistent these days, and engrossed in a theology that appears increasingly irrelevant, when not applied functionally. Business can only scratch at the surface of the problem with its big buck donations.

Yes, to those Supply Side Economics, small government types, this Old Boy will state the one organisation that can get to grips with this present CRISIS: GOVERNMENT. 

Government alone has the power to bring all the stakeholders together for a lasting solution. Government alone has the resources to even begin to rope in the dreadful beast.

The solution to changing the trajectory of this incoming missile is to first of all wake up to the threat. The real impact is yet to be experienced. Averting disaster will mean millions of dollars in government spending.

Money spent on restructuring certain government departments to place the matter of deviancy at the top of the priorities listing. It will require creating a whole new deviancy and juvenile delinquency policy and infrastructure.

A Senior Virgin Islands Academic told this Old Boy that the country should establish a COGNITIVE and BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT CENTER. Creating such a beast that links with key departments and organisations will mean better cohesion in the fight against the deviancy monster. It will build optimum cross functionality.

A comprehensive deviancy policy will better allocate resources to early childcare, early childhood development, and primary education.

It will entail special centers where learning and behavioral deficits are tackled and treated. Parents will have to be brought into the equation and counseled together with their children. Secure dormitories will have to be built where juvenile delinquents will be detained and their poor behaviours assessed and corrected, before release back into society.

Leisure and sports help in the war against deviancy. These will have to be better integrated into the public schooling system: targeted for maximum impact on the majority of school children, not the ad hoc manner sport is being managed at present.

Then, on an island surrounded by warm and inviting seas, the idea of a national swimming and sea skills programme, making swimming and boating compulsory for all school children, will help fight deviancy by providing a new physical, and leisure outlet.

Streamlining will have to become the norm. Children with serious learning deficits cannot be allowed to hinder others who are fast learners. They will need to be placed in a facility where they will get special attention to correct that deficit, before returning to regular schooling.

Poorly behaved children and youth will have to be pulled out of the mainstream altogether, and placed in a deviancy programme and provided with corrective type education. Poor discipline in the classroom is disruptive to learning.  

Unsustainable migration is a crucial factor in social dysfunction. Migrants moving to the British Virgin Islands have children who are Virgin Islanders. Some of these migrants have no status and leave the country, but they leave their kids behind. These children would have been better off following their parents to their homelands; instead the children become de facto wards of the state, with minimal parental supervision.

Unsustainable migration is a strain on scarce resources and impacts the lives of new migrants negatively, just as much as it does residents, citizens, and natives. A new policy on managing the problem is urgently needed.

This Old Boy and many others have given suggestions on the migration dilemma over the years. One such suggestion is the introduction of a new guest worker status, where the granting of residency and citizenship will be limited to marriage. But like everything else, unless migration becomes a crisis, the problem will be ignored.

In any event, the status quo can be maintained. Then half of the country’s children may end up in social difficulty, or in prison, as a result. And the paradox is this: in order to enable the economy to function, as more Virgin Islanders fall by the wayside, more migration will be required to replace these Virgin Islanders and Belongers.

The native population continues to shrink. And so the problem of unsustainable migration and the related social dysfunction it brings to these Lesser Antilles only gets worse.

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