Deosaran: Four out of 10 TT teachers delinquent

Four out of every 10 teachers in this country’s education system are delinquent, according to Prof Ramesh Deosaran, head of the Criminology Department, UWI. He revealed this when he addressed a Caroni Education Division Conference at Chaguanas yesterday. He said, “there are some teachers who are very delinquent and they are known to be delinquent and little or nothing is being done about their delinquency, especially when their delinquency falls on the shoulders of other teachers who have to pick up the slack in the school.”

Prof Deosaran said the delinquency of teachers had a great deal to do with the Teaching Service Commission, as well as supervisors and principals. However, he hastened to add: “But this does not apply to Trinidad and Tobago alone and does not mean that the Government is to blame and the teaching profession is falling down.” He explained that societies around the world had similar problems where the emphasis was placed on the economic function of education and as a result, “they are now paying the price.” He lamented that too often civility and spirituality had been left out of the system “and they are now struggling to retrieve their education system, which had clearly shown haemorrhages.” Deosaran told the gathering, “Law and order is not all, but you must also have justice and moral authority.  “Rules in a school must be embraced and implemented by moral authority, not by legal authority alone.

That is why the Police Service is suffering so much as they have constitutional authority but are suffering from diminished  moral authority. People have no confidence in the Police Service. That is creating tremendous problems for police performance,” he said. Deosaran said children were being influenced by what they see in their environment “especially lawlessness and civil disobedience.” He added: “This is causing problems with the teachers in the schools, because after the teachers try their best with the children in the classroom, as soon as the child steps out, it is an entirely different world, an entirely different culture, an entirely different set of  norms and circumstances.”