SAVE THE CHILDREN

The commemorating of Innocents’ Day in Trinidad and Tobago being celebrated today will slowly lose its significance unless the nation takes steps to save its children, many of whom because of a lack both of parental supervision and positive examples in the home, have strayed, with all too many falling by the proverbial wayside. Some of them have become street children, hustling for a living, easy victims of adult predators who callously seek them out to employ them as pickpockets, lookouts, prostitutes or persons to whom armed criminals running from the Police in dowtown areas, after a holdup or shooting, can pass their guns. Or they will employ the children to hold these guns until they are about to commit a crime. All of this in the cynical belief that the Police are not likely to assume that the children are carrying weapons concealed on their person. Yet others hustle as prostitutes serving even adult homosexuals and in the process exposing themselves to the contracting of HIV/AIDS. Admittedly, some seek honest employment such as pushing wheelbarrows in the Central Market or offering to wash cars at parking lots et cetera. At nights they would sleep, some in parks, the market, in alleyways or sidewalks, and invariably, even these are sought out by adult criminals or deviant adult males on the prowl.

Today, thousands of more fortunate children will attend the several churches throughout the country, many of them (the children) proudly holding on to and exhibiting their toys which they received as presents on Christmas Day. Some will have their toys individually blessed by the priests in attendance, and if this year’s Innocents’ Day is a repeat of those of previous years, less fortunate kids, including street children, will stand outside of churches looking on in unconcealed envy. Is this not a blot on our society? The waywardness of all too many of the country’s children is not the result of an inborn desire to be bad, but rather the result of an unfortunate range of contributory factors, including parental indifference, a lack of parental supervision, positive parenting and positive examples in the home. Many parents fail to require of their children why they have reached home extremely late after school, or to question their children’s choice of questionable ‘friends’. In turn, many tacitly encourage their sons and daughters to steal, to sell illegal drugs and/or to acquire money through other immoral means by both their clear indifference as to how their children are in a position to flaunt so much money and buy expensive sneakers and ‘threads’ and through their accepting and/or demanding part of the money as well.

But the battle to save the children must begin not simply with the parents, many of whom are ill prepared, but by giving the children a head start through the provision of well equipped pre-schools throughout the country, all manned by well trained and motivated staff. In this context Government’s decision to construct 200 early childhood education centres within the next four years, as well as achieve universal pre-school education before the end of the decade is both meaningful and far-sighted. Additionally, there must be full involvement of parents of pre-schoolers in Parent-Teacher Associations, and an encouraging of the parents by the teachers at these centres to inquire of their children’s progress, through the staffs, initially, offering the information on a continued basis. In turn, in the evening the various pre-schools should double as adult education centres, again with properly trained and well motivated teachers. The accent should not merely be on the academic, but vocational as well, exposing the parents to skills training and development. Ultimately, this will position parents who were dropouts from school or under achievers to be better able to supervise their children’s homework, even after they have moved on to the primary and secondary levels. And because the parents would now be in a position to seek to access and achieve better paying jobs, this would motivate them to urge on their children to aim not only at more satisfying jobs, but professions as well. The children can be saved with the necessaty head start.