Pan noise from Anglican school

THE EDITOR: As you are aware, the Anglican primary schools of the country recently held a children’s pan competition on Wednesday November 12, 2003. I happen to live next to one of these Anglican primary schools. I am complaining about the last two months of noise coming from the school. Pan practice sometimes starts about 6.30 am in the morning and they go up to 8.30 in the night. They intermittently stop for a few hours during the day.

This pan noise continues for the entire weekend including Saturdays and Sundays. Yes, the noise was so bad that it has to be called wicked. My children cannot do their homework or watch television. It is difficult to talk on the phone. It is difficult to sleep, pray or to read a book. It is possible that one day some stressed out neighbour will crack up and go on an attack with a cutlass in the school yard! I am calling on the Minister of Education Hazel Manning and also the Anglican Bishop in the diocese of Trinidad and Tobago to please have a heart. Neighbours are tormented in their own homes. The school principal and the teachers leave the school at 4 pm while the pan children continue the noise late into the night. The teachers go to their quiet homes while the school’s neighbours are left in loud noisy pan training music every single day. Would Jesus approve something as uncaring as two months of training pan music my fellow Anglicans?

We are teaching our children to be selfish and to hate neighbours instead of love. In this same school recently children have been giving teachers a taste of their own medicine with scratch bombs and violence. My suggestions are:
Take ten of the 250 million of the CEPEP money and build one sound-proof pan room in each primary school. Pan practice must not take place on weekends or public holidays or after 5 pm or  before 8 am. The principal must stay in the school for the duration of the pan training. In this way he is not allowed to run to his quiet home and leave the neighbours in torment. The principal must also feel the same pain and discomfort as the school neighbours. After all, he has the power and makes the decisions in his school. The pan room should be air-conditioned and all the windows to this room must be sealed with bricks. To be honest do the minister of Education and the Anglican Bishop really know what is happening in our religious Anglican primary schools?

ELIZABETH COLE
Arouca