For our children’s sake, please, no police in schools

THE EDITOR: I beg your indulgence for some space in your newspaper to express my horror at a report in which a senior police officer is calling for greater police presence in schools, as a solution to the problems with indiscipline.

This is a horrible day for this country and the future when an individual in a position of great influence could make a suggestion, to the effect that more policemen should be put in schools. In many of my writings and talks I have said that if we look at our youth as potential criminals we will think of ways to defend ourselves from them. This is a classic case of this view. Put more police in schools because the schools are producing potential criminals. I want this to stop right now. If we look at our youth as potentially productive citizens of this country, we will call for more guidance officers, more social workers, more educational psychologists, and more counselling psychologists. We will organise programmes that will help our youth find purpose in life. We will hire an expert in youth development at our National Library to work specifically at finding relevant and interesting programmes for our young people, instead of banning them from the library. This is indeed a sad and horrible day for this country. Those so called “experts” who are having a permanent “boys’ or girls’ night out,” who travel to other countries and are supposed to look at the successful programmes of those countries, come back and where are the reports? Where are the implementation plans? More police in schools will not work. I hope that the Schools’ Intervention Strategies Team that was set up to look at this will oppose this vehemently. More properly trained guidance officers, social workers, educational psychologists, more counselling psychologists; more non-judgmental, empathic, caring spaces will work. It is proven. In Holland, I know that in 1999 the teenage pregnancy rate was down to point 1 percent, by now it could have been eradicated. I was told that Curacao does not have a problem with HIV infections, because they dealt with it as soon as it came on the scene. There was no denial of the problem. These are Dutch countries. Obviously, they are doing something that we are not doing. I am sure that their suggestion in a situation like this will not be more police in schools.

Come on people, our young people deserve better than this. This move will definitely not help our 20/20 vision. Stop it now. Get thee to an optician. You are becoming legally blind. I am not working my butt off for this country with young people, many times “gratis,” to have them face policemen in schools day in day out. Mr Police Officer and all of you, your 20/20 vision is blurred when it comes to our youth. There are young people out there who are responsible and doing very well. Go to Barataria Senior Comprehensive and see what they have done over the years to be now a school where many people want to send their children. There were problems, yes, but we worked with the problems. Teachers worked hard over the years to bring that school to where it is now. I was one of the first group of teachers, when the school opened. I also worked there as a guidance officer when I returned from my studies, and I know that the students who go there do not deserve a permanent police presence. I attended their graduation last week and that school is going to rival the best. I predict that. I just hope that parents will adamantly object to this. I will repeat here, that there should be a call for more guidance officers, more social workers, more educational psychologists, more counselling psychologists and more of the helping professions that will assist in nurturing the good of our youth, not focus on the bad. Come on guys, give this country and its future a break. Spend the $$$ where they should be spent and save the future, not destroy it. This is why parents, and all the workers in all the unions should be marching. All of us have to care for our youth. Come on TT.

ANNA MARIA MORA MA, M Ed
Founder/Managing Director
The Mariama Children’s
Museum and Teen Turf
Arouca