April 7, 2003

IT appears that the "Literary Survey" is nothing more than a poorly disguised attempt to pry into people's savings and incomes with a view to introducing another tax.

The latest absurdity is the extraordinary excuse that the survey is late due to rain. What on earth has rain to do with a three-hour survey?

Even if it actually is just an honest literacy/wealth study, it hardly takes a survey to confirm the obvious: what makes most people wealthy nowadays is focused energy based on a sound education. A three-hour examiner/examinee reconfirmation of that, among 4,000 people will expend 24,000 man hours that could be far better spent addressing today's real literacy problem: the large number of unmotivated, illiterate youth, mainly among our boys and young men.

These are often without even basic literacy, and develop in the directionless and undisciplined environment of their peers, expending energy disruptive to organised society and burning it off in unsociable activities. Would it not be more productive to assess, among a similar random cross-section, how many hours have been spent in one-on-one character building and two-parent guidance and role-modelling for our children throughout their formative years? Should this generally demonstrate that success results from a two-parent family and that failure is the likely outcome of an overburdened single-parent family, not an illogical guess, we could then set to work in the churches, among the lawmakers, and among ourselves to influence a change in the customs and attitudes that have been, so far, acceptable to many of us.

Perhaps the fallacy of the adage that "it takes a whole village to raise a child" will be exposed for what it is: an excuse by irresponsible parents, particularly absent fathers, for their failure to give their children the two-parent team and male-female role-modelling normally required to bring children to successful, balanced adulthood - and in turn, to a probability of a future generation of successful parenting.

OBSERVER, St. George's