Skills, not guns

National Security Minister, Howard Chin Lee’s appeal to the nation’s elders to drive home forcibly to misguided youths that they lay down their guns and instead acquire skills, should be heeded.

Chin Lee has clearly recognised that positive opinion leaders in the community are strategically positioned to reach out to errant young people, moreso than the law enforcement agencies. On the other side of the coin, an older generation, generally, and neglectful and indifferent parents and/or guardians, specifically, as well as negative thinking peers of the young are in large measure responsible for the rampant youthful anti-social behaviour that has made the country increasingly uncomfortable. The elders must see themselves as listening posts, as well as be ready to encourage delinquent youths to see merit, and indeed profit, in equipping themselves with skills the country needs. Unfortunately, all too often, an older generation has been merely content to condemn the deviant behaviour of many young people. It has done this either without seeking to recognise that the young may have been victims of domestic abuse and/or indifference by their parents.

Denied love and positive example at home, and not motivated to succeed, including any encouragement to study, many youths and pre-teens have drifted rudderless.  Their “counsellors” and “advisers” have tended to be dropouts from school, petty thieves or drug pushers, with money to spend, flashy “threads” and expensive sneakers. Yet it is not enough for Minister Chin Lee to make this appeal to community elders. The State should as well, through the Ministry of Education, aggressively market the idea of the need and benefits of skills training and development. It should use as its vehicles media announcements, posters and Parent-Teacher Associations. But to do this effectively it must point to not only the increasing number of available skilled jobs. In addition, it should stress the wage levels offered, while simultaneously highlight the success stories of those who have acquired skills. Specialist writers should be hired, and documentaries produced to show the ongoing negative side to criminal activity.

For the message of skills training and areas of and opportunities for advancement, as opposed to the negatives of anti-social behaviour to be accepted, they would have to be effectively put across as the better option. In turn, the Ministry of Education should contract leading psychologists to do indepth studies of the genesis of crime — the factory which contributes to criminal behaviour. A solution to the crucial problem of youthful anti-social behaviour is needed if Trinidad and Tobago is to advance, with optimum number of hands on board, to developed nation status, and a sense of well being.