Implement Pantin’s proposal


THE EDITOR: Mr Clive Pantin’s proposal during the recent symposium on crime that the one hundred of the most deviant students be removed from the school environment and be tutored by the regiment is a most welcome one. Those involved in education and in teaching in Junior and Senior Secondary Schools are fully aware of the reality of dealing with students who are extremely disruptive to these schools.


While the challenge of these educational institutions is to attempt to reform these students, the reality is that this has failed. Several of these schools have suffered disruptions and institutional breakdowns and continue to be in crisis. The press has repeatedly highlighted this crisis and the public is fully aware of it.


The solution is as Mr Pantin has suggested. Extremely deviant students should be removed to another environment where they can be taught.


To allow them to continue in the school system is to perpetuate the crisis. And the Ministry of Education needs to empower principals with greater authority to address matters of discipline. Why, for example, must suspension forms be sent to the Ministry of Education? Principals/Vice Prin-cipals/Deans of Discipline are quite capable of dealing with indiscipline in their schools if they are given the authority. Unfortunately, their hands are tied in red tape and bureaucracy.


So we have the situation where the Community Police now has to make frequent visits to these failed educational institutions to assist school administration and teachers to maintain discipline and to control unruly students. And the issue is not one of class but culture.


Any educational system has as its aim, just as the family, the socialisation of students, to learn economically viable skills and to be cultured, civilised and to be an evolved human person.


To argue that Mr Pantin’s proposal is motivated by class or colour considerations is to display ignorance of what is occurring in some of our schools.


Administrators and teachers involved in these schools welcome Mr Pantin’s proposal. It is for the Ministry of Education to consider it very seriously and implement it quickly.


KHASTRA SINGH
Couva

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