The concept of parenting should obviously not be limited to the physical act of having children. Once they are born, children, along with their parents, constitute a 'mini-society', a moral union of two or more persons cooperating for a common good.

Each parent society, in the natural order of things, is a building block for the overall society in which citizens are supposed to be able to find fulfilment and happiness. It follows that if parental society is dysfunctional, this will have grave consequences for the overall society, creating within it disruptive stresses and antagonisms. Without a nuclear family unit, a society is prone to disunity which, despite attempts at state control, often erupts into violence.

One of the principal obligations of a parental society is to see to the education of its children. Although this can partly be delegated to the State, the task of rescuing Jamaica's education system from its present unsatisfactory state will not succeed unless parents play their part in the process. Unfortunately, this is not happening.

At the lower levels of society, we have produced a generation of children having children, parents who are themselves so uneducated that they cannot help their children with their homework or to cope generally with the education system. These parents, mostly single mothers, have to struggle so mightily to survive, they have little time to give their children the love and emotional support they need. In many cases, parents migrate to greener pastures, leaving their children to the care of grandmothers or older siblings. Many end up as street children, easy recruits for criminal elements.

Materialism and bling have infected many in the ranks of the middle class who are so used to 'profiling' they would not miss a cocktail party to help a child having trouble with a homework assignment. Many middle-class children are shuffled off to private tutors, thus weakening the parental bond needed to hold a family unit to-gether. In the rural areas, parents do not hesitate to pull their children out of school on Fridays to work in their fields.

Most distressing of all is the attitude of many parents in confronting teachers who attempt to discipline their children. So bad has this example been that children themselves are now openly defying their teachers, in some cases physically attacking them.

The fact is that parents must bear much of the blame for the present state of education in Jamaica. They have largely abandoned their duty to help with their children's instructions, intellectually and morally. At all levels, parents need to be more involved with the pedagogic process, play a more constructive role in parent-teacher associations and give to their children en-couragement and discipline when the need arises.

In many respects, Jamaicans seem to be following an uncertain moral compass and unless greater certainty is restored at the level of parental society, the building blocks for the overall society, we will continue to founder in an education fog. Resources should be allocated to awaken parents to their obligations to their offspring and the nation.