Chapter 7: Historical Conundrums: Extending Inclusivity to Jamaica’s Children in State Care Education in Jamaica: Inclusive of Whom?

Discussions of inclusive education in the Caribbean region until now have focused almost exclusively on children with disabilities. One of the goals of this chapter is to broaden perspectives of inclusivity to address educational provisions for all children who are at risk of exclusion and marginalization. Specifically, this chapter provides a historical framework for examining educational responses to children in Jamaica who have fallen outside traditional social safety networks and who are living in a variety of private and state-run facilities, including children’s homes, places of safety, and remand and correctional centres.

The first section provides a critical, historical analysis of nineteenth-century Jamaican legislation in relation to the development of children’s homes and industrial reform schools set up to serve the needs of vulnerable youth. Drawing on Jonathan Simon’s (2007) work on governing through crime as a conceptual framework, this chapter argues that the use of crime metaphors in response to issues of homelessness and lack of family contributed to the development of a less than adequate system of reformatory and industrial schools, and existing negative attitudes towards children who are wards of the state. Throughout this analysis, emphasis is placed on legislative responses to youth vagrancy, both in terms of how the issue of vagrancy was defined, and how it was managed in response to Jamaica’s changing economic climate following emancipation.