JAMAICAN YOUNG people of younger and younger ages face a host of problems. Most every sign around us points to the fact that our young people are alienated, discontented and have become comfortable with criminal activity because of high unemployment, the places where they live (or because they have no real places to live) and the poor education system which does not prepare them to live in a society that must compete in a globalised world.

Easily the most important factor leading to the alienation and criminality of our young people is the absence of good parenting. The real truth is that most times those who gave birth to these young people were immature and were not part of a family structure that could support children. Because our young people face this awesome problem, every citizen in Jamaica has a problem.

The law-abiding citizens of Jamaica need to arrive at a quick and broad consensus that we need to do something unusually effective to literally capture our youth from the claws of criminals and murderers.

We have to reshape our murderous society into a civil and socialising nation. We have to decide that the money that will be spent on this venture is an investment, not a cost. We have the army corps of engineers and social agencies that need to be brought together to design a kind of boot camp with a difference.

While the normal boot camp which trains young soldiers is based on physical exercise, the use of weapons and training through hardships to meet the difficulties that a military campaign might require, the socialising boot camp - because that is what it has to be, given the fact that our youngsters are not coming from homes that socialise them properly and very often not coming from any homes at all - must have a broader but clear set of objectives.

I suggest that these socialising boot camps start off with these four clear objectives: to instil discipline in these young people; to teach them self-respect and respect for others; to provide them with skills training that will give them skills to market in Jamaica and elsewhere; and to teach these young people that courtesy to others is a real competitive advantage.

DISCIPLINE AND SACRIFICE

As in the military boot camp, these young people who are placed in these socialising camps will need to be taught discipline right at the outset: The discipline to get up on time, the discipline to cook for themselves, the discipline to go to classes on time, the discipline to speak to people courteously, along with the understanding that success is invariably the result of personal hard work and sacrifice.

We need to teach our youngsters that discipline is neither a four letter word nor a bad word and change their mindsets by introducing them to historical and current role models such as George Headley (teach them some history), Veronica Campbell and Asafa Powell (disciplined young stars with outstanding moral values) and wider afield people like Tiger Woods - who stays on the golf course for up to 14 hours hitting small golf balls in every possible direction, even when he is clearly the number one golfer in the world.

We need to teach our young people that most anything that is worthwhile is difficult to achieve and therefore personal discipline and a longer view has to be taken when success is the objective. It is fair to say that generally, we are an undisciplined people and have much too short a view as to how success must be achieved; that approach needs to be changed. This socialising boot camp can be an important part of that change process.

SELF-RESPECT AND RESPECT FOR OTHERS

Given that most of our youngsters who are the source of many of our social problems come from homes where no home atmosphere really exists and parents often turn out to be a single mother in wherever that home is supposed to be, many of our young people suffer from low esteem and low self respect.

Often this low esteem and self respect is reflected in rudeness, aggressive behaviour and a total lack of respect for others and the laws and conventions of civil society. As the socialising boot camp seeks to instil discipline, it must equally use a variety of methods to plant and nurture the seed of self respect in these youngsters and over time encourage them to develop a healthy respect for others.

People, youngsters or adults, who lack self- respect and suffer from low self-esteem, will find it easy to lash out at others and blame others for their failures rather than taking responsibility for their behaviour and making themselves accountable for their personal and social success, or otherwise.

SKILLS TRAINING AS AN ANTIDOTE

The centrepiece of the socialising boot camp must focus on providing these youngsters with marketable skills. Jamaica needs thousands of people who are master craftsmen at restoring wood and buildings.

The tri-city corridor of Port Royal, downtown Kingston and Spanish Town is going to be gentrified and we will need skilled craftsmen to restore our old buildings and furniture so that a new aspect of our tourism industry, heritage tourism, can be established and enhanced.

The need to instil self-discipline and self-respect will largely be met when these youngsters are trained to be excellent masons, carpenters, joiners, steel benders, truck and heavy equipment operators as well as cooks and medical assistants and even teachers (first of craft and then in the school room).

The discipline of learning a skill properly will teach discipline and self-respect to youngsters who now do not even understand the concepts. The teaching process must have the requirements and systematic monitoring and measuring of results of the training.

Assessment must be regular and objective, and participants in these socialising boot camps must understand that they are required to meet high standards. They must also understand that they will have to stay the course until they achieve the first step in order to move to the second.

The process may be time consuming and somewhat costly, but the alternative (a society besieged by murderous criminals), is as we now know, decidedly unacceptable.

The fourth leg of this socialising table is the inculcation into the boot camp participants - a kind of a finishing course - the clear concept that courtesy is a competitive advantage. We need to teach our young people that being courteous is not weak and being 'dissed' is not the end of the world.

Indeed, we need to point out to them that they can use consistent courtesy as a competitive advantage to get ahead and that rudeness is very costly when sustained success is the objective.

Changing people's behaviour or changing the way a society operates is a long term business. We want everything to happen in the short term, which means getting rich, being successful, however we define it, and getting people who have never been taught to behave in a socially acceptable manner to become instant gracious socialised angels. That is not going to happen in Jamaica given where we are today.

The Government and civil society must decide that we will use our army (primarily the corps of engineers) and social agencies, our lands and buildings and our retired teachers and security personnel as well as securing assistance from overseas to help us in this process.

PAY YOUNGSTERS TO LEARN

We will need to find all the best craftsmen in the country and import those we do not have to serve as teachers and mentors in these boot camps. We must also recognise that we will have to pay the teachers and pay the youngsters to learn and that this is part of the national investment we must make. These 'students' can be paid an agreed reduced salary (in exchange) for excellent training to build roads, bridges, buildings and restore furniture as part of their training. It is a price we will have to pay to rebuild a society in which people will have respect for each other and criminals will be reduced to a minimum and will find it uncomfortable to exist among us.

We need to look at at least a 10-year plan and fund it from the beginning. We cannot expect that we will go to Parliament every year to have the funding argued over and bargained downwards; rather, we must arrive at a national consensus that boot camps will be designed in such a manner so that the individuals - bearing in mind that many of these young individuals will be people we normally would not want to deal with - must be treated with respect if we are going to expect them to learn to respect others.

Their basic human rights must be protected and military officers and social workers who deal with them must not be allowed to abuse them. Discipline is one thing; abuse is an altogether different subject.