Old Boy Pride: Jamaica College

During the nineties when I made regular trips to Jamaica, I'd usually visit my alma mater, Jamaica College, and invariably, I'd be disappointed by the physical appearance of the buildings and the rowdiness of the boys. Not that when I was in high school my friends and I weren't a bit rowdy. But this was rowdiness to the point of being rude. The line between personal and communal behaviors seemed to have been blurred, and whereas we were cautious about crossing social barriers, these boys didn't even recognize the limits and barged through with reckless abandon.


Last year, however, I visited Jamaica College and noticed a visible change. The buildings were painted and the boys seemed less uncouth. They were even courteous. This was a welcome change, and for the first in a long time, I felt proud to be a JC Old Boy.


It was quite a strange feeling because I've always had a quixotic relationship with Jamaica College, which I've written about in my novel Benjamin, my son and in some of the stories in my latest collection, Who's Your Daddy? and Other Stories. The time I spent at Jamaica College meant a lot to me, and I'm being precise when I say it was my alma mater--nourishing mother.


As a young man growing up in an all boys' school during the seventies, Jamaica College provided me with space to think about my relationships with parents, friends, and community. It was a time of enormous change, and every relationship, every assumption behind every relationship was scrutinized. This scrutiny extended into social and gender/sexual arenas.


And because Jamaica College, besides being known for its intellectual tradition, was also known as a "battyman" school, it was difficult to balance the decency and tolerance that were the cornerstones of the education that I received from JC Old Boys and teachers such as Dennis Scott and Jimmy Carnegie, while at the same time reconciling the idea of being a Jamaican gentleman, exemplified by JC Old Boy and then Prime Minister, Michael Manley, with the rise of feminism and the homophobia of Jamaican society.


I was also born during the generation that could remember the lowering of the Union Jack and the raising of the Jamaican flag, so the question presented itself: What does it mean to be a Jamaican gentleman in postcolonial Jamaica?


Growing up in colonial Jamaica, many of the previous old Boys had a clear idea of a Jamaican gentleman: white, Oxbridge accent and a sneering contempt for the masses--VS Naipaul sans melanin. However, after we gained our independence from Britain, the clarity was lost as new dimensions were added to the conception of our identity: Africa, Rastafari, feminism. Rastafari and feminism forced us to ask ourselves: How do men and women behave toward each other without invoking the legacy of paternalism, colonialism, race, and class privilege?


Reggae and Rastafari were also transforming Jamaican culture and language and therefore the lens through which we interpreted the world with words such as dawta, I-dren, and sistren.


To all these questions, I got mixed answers. So what's a boy to do?


Well, we must act and the behavior of this young man, a current Jamaica College student, seems to be just right:

He was just another Jamaica College student; she, from Ardenne Preparatory. They could have been siblings, or cousins. Yet something about them pulled my attention away from the other students nearby who were chattering noisily… It sang to me in the almost fatherly way in which he instructed her to position herself so that she could hold on to one of the bus seats for stability…


He was no longer just another high school student. He was that little girl’s protector, her rock.


And he became the hope I clenched tightly in my heart for the future of our young men.

There didn't seem to be any condescension of the young man's part, just genuine care for a younger sistren. He could be strong even in the knowledge that there are predatory men out there who would seek to exploit the sistren's vulnerability. In that moment, he was her "protector"--he was being chivalrous in the truest sense of the word, for there was nothing to be gained. He acted truly and he was on his way. And that's what being a gentleman--in any culture--is all about.


This young man acted in a way that affirmed the rich tradition of Jamaica and my alma mater. And after reading about him, I have one more reason to say proudly, "Yes, is there I come from."

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Jamaica College