Students behave worse at home than in school

PRELIMINARY data emanating from a survey done by the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice has revealed that students behave worse at home than at schools, but further analysis must be undertaken in both environments before exact conclusions can be made. This revelation was made yesterday during the discussion on “School Violence, Victimisation and Delinquency in Trinidad and Tobago,” at the fourth international conference on Crime and Justice at the Learning Resource Centre, UWI, St Augustine.

Kathy Ann Belmar, of the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice, said data collected last year from 2,600 students in forms one, three and five at 20 high-risk secondary schools, showed that disobedience was higher at homes than schools. She said at home, students were found to be damaging more property, stealing, drinking and using more illegal drugs and weapons and getting involved in more fistfights, compared to when they were at school. She said it appeared that the home environment was influencing the atmosphere at schools, but further analysis had to be undertaken to determine the “what, how and why.” However, the use of obscene language was more prevalent at schools compared to the homes, causing Belmar to note that it was “almost a second language.”

She said while boys displayed more deviant behaviour at schools, the girls were very close on their heels, as they kept their bad habits at home rather than at school. Chairman of the session, Prof Ramesh Deosaran, who heads the centre, told the audience that the students were punished with licks at home, and the only reason why teachers did not administer such, was due to policy. He noted that while policy was being created to deal with delinquency and school violence, “it is a jungle at home.”

Deosaran said he also observed that if parents and teachers were shown data and demographics, they were more likely to embrace policy and communicate better, toward resolving problems. Another presenter, Ian Ramdhanie, said 50 percent of the students polled did not live with both parents, 21 percent lived with their mother; five percent with fathers and grandmothers; 11 percent with mothers and step-fathers and two percent with fathers and step-mothers. The research also showed, said Ramdhanie, that a third of the sample students felt uncomfortable at school and 11 percent felt uncomfortable at home. Sixteen percent said their teachers were unhelpful and 50 percent said fellow students were unhelpful.