Reaping the whirlwind

OUR society has sown the wind and is now reaping the whirlwind of rampant indiscipline among a section of our school-age population. The lack of respect for authority, the amorality, violence and gang activity that have become almost endemic among students in several schools in the country are not a sudden and unexplainable phenomenon; this kind of disruptive behaviour exhibited by a section of our youthful population is simply the inevitable product of a moral, ethical and spiritual breakdown within TT’s adult population over the last few generations. So that while we must deal as best we can with this disturbing crisis among our youth, we must also face the truth of its cause and its origin and the fact that the problem will never be effectively solved since what it requires is a social reversal that would be something of a mass miracle. What do we really expect from homes where parents set the worst possible examples for their children, where there is no moral or spiritual guidance or nurturing and where the philosophy of might-is-right informs the general attitude?

Many parents may now consider this question laughable, but we must ask it nevertheless to make our point: How many children in our country now go to Sunday school or are made to attend religious services with their parents on a regular basis? We remember a time when a majority of them did.
The nature of the problem, in fact, may be detected in a simple comparison between the conduct of students attending schools run by religious denominations where there is a tradition of moral and disciplined conduct and those institutions administered by the State where, in many cases, the children of dysfunctional homes with little self-esteem and even less appreciation for the importance of education to their future encounter no positive moral teaching and rebel against whatever disciplinary constraints that may exist. Can anyone imagine, for example, the unruly and disruptive incidents taking place at the Siparia Senior Comprehensive School or the San Fernando East Junior Secondary School occurring among students attending St Mary’s or QRC or Hillview College or any of the country’s denominational institutions? The comparison is significant and should be enough to tell the story.

Teachers have been beaten, students have been violently attacked by other students armed with weapons, gang warfare is now part of school life, scratch bombs are regularly used as a form of terrorism, and students have been caught smoking marijuana on school premises. “The situation is out of control” one teacher at Siparia Senior Comprehensive told Newsday. “We cannot continue teaching in a school where our lives are at risk.” To further illustrate the problem, on Tuesday the police had to be summoned to the school when a 40-year-old man assaulted a teacher in the presence of his daughter and other students. Whatever complaints his daughter might have made, this father’s instinctive reaction was to rush into the school and violently attack the teacher. What an example he has set not only for his daughter but for all the students who witnessed his assault.
What is happening in so many of these State-run schools is frightening because it takes the shape of a human time bomb that casts a pall over the country’s future and our prospects for ever solving the crime problem. While the “interventionist strategy” being proposed may do some good we feel the situation requires a much firmer hand. Criminally minded students who disrupt an entire school should not be treated with kid gloves.