The Board and members of Peace and Love in Society (PALS) Jamaica mourn the loss of 13-year-old Kland Doyle, a Seaforth High School student fatally stabbed this week following a longstanding dispute with a schoolmate that families on both sides say could have been resolved. 

We are equally troubled by the viral footage of a violent assault at Jamaica College. Taken together, these incidents paint an urgent and undeniable picture: Jamaica’s schools are in crisis, and punishment alone will not save our children.

What is most heartbreaking about the Seaforth High tragedy is that those closest to it saw it coming. Both families sought help. Police were involved. Yet without structured, sustained mediation — for the boys and their parents — a simmering conflict became a fatal one. This is precisely the gap that conflict resolution training is designed to fill.

“These are not random acts of senseless violence. They are the predictable outcome of young people who have never been taught how to manage conflict, and families who have no neutral space to resolve it,” said PALS

Chairman Christopher Barnes. “Jamaica cannot continue to respond to these tragedies after the fact. We must intervene long before a dispute becomes a headline.” PALS’ conflict resolution curriculum — originally developed for Grades 1 through 6 and approved by the Ministry of Education — is built on this principle: intervene early, equip children with the language and tools to resolve conflict peacefully, and build that capacity in their parents and teachers too. For more than three decades, our behaviour modification programmes, Peace Ambassadors peer mediation model, and parenting workshops have demonstrated measurable results. PALS has done this before. We know it works.

Yet these programmes remain chronically underfunded. The integration of conflict resolution into Jamaica’s national curriculum — recommended by PALS, the PSOJ, and education stakeholders — remains unrealised. PALS calls on the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information to embed structured conflict resolution into the national curriculum, beginning at primary school, as a matter of urgency. We call on the private sector to help fund its expansion now — before the next tragedy.

Our children are telling us they need help. We must respond with more than punishment. Peace and Love in Society (PALS) Jamaica is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting peaceful conflict resolution and respectful communication in schools and communities across Jamaica. Through workshops, school interventions and national awareness initiatives such as Peace Day, PALS works to equip young people with the tools needed to build a more peaceful society.