UNICEF Rep: Caribbean culture not the issue

THE culture in the Caribbean is not the issue challenging positive behavioural change and management. Instead the issues are at the level of the organisations – the norms that need to be changed before growth can occur.

“When you say ‘It’s the culture,’ culture, it’s too invasive a word. It sounds so embedded that it can’t be touched. It really is not a cultural issue. It is a practice that has become the norm and the norms need to change; that is how we need to look at it,” charged UNICEF Representative for the Eastern Caribbean area, Khin-Sandi Lwin.

She urged, “We don’t like to generalise because there are some schools that have very strong approaches that instil self-discipline in students, not external discipline, and there are some schools who use very strong forms of what we would call violent discipline, so you shouldn’t generalise. I think that schools can learn from each other and be open to these positive behaviour management approaches.”

School Counsellor Joana Matthews, who facilitated a workshop, said: “It is a lot of work,” but asserted that the challenges should not be reduced to culture.

She said, “I would bring it down to it’s going to be the organisational culture rather than the Caribbean culture. It depends on the school – the culture at the school.”

Matthews said that recognising the challenge is not the society’s culture, but occurring on the institutional level makes the regional behaviour management initiative “so fantastic, because you get to cater it to the schools. It’s an umbrella plan, but the school takes it and basically custom fits it to them. The challenges would come from organisational culture – how resistant to change they are and how willing they are to … grow and try something different, try a different approach”.