Endangering our young

“An endangered species.” That’s how one policemen reportedly described young children in TT today; and he may have only been half wrong.

“Endangered,” when it refers to animal species, means they are heading for extinction: that more are being killed than are being born. That is not quite the case with our children: on the contrary, they are being born at an alarming and thoughtless rate, so it is unlikely that they will ever actually become extinct. However, they are certainly endangered. The past two weeks have been a litany of horror. I wrote, years ago, that Trinidad is not a society that treasures its children: it abuses them verbally, physically, mentally, sexually — you name it, our minors suffer it. We beat them at home, we beat them at school, we make them the subject of incestuous and non-incestuous rape, we knock them down as they cross the roads, we burn them alive in wooden hovels, we let them drown in buckets of water, we drive them around without seatbelts —  in short, we hurt and maim and kill them in every possible way, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not.

Recently, the stories have been horrendous. “Baby chopped to death,” the headlines screamed, a mere three days after a toddler was found hanging next to his father — the type of father-son “bonding” we could do without. On the same day as the chopped baby, we could also read about the 21-day-old infant whose thumb was chewed off by rats — luckily for her, she was dead at the time, allegedly of rat-borne leptospirosis, which suggests an appalling lack of hygiene in the home. All this a mere two weeks after three young children burned to death while alone in their home; and let us not forget the child whose charred remains were found behind the house, burned after her death on an old car tire by her unbelievably primitive parents, who would not seek professional help when she fell sick.

Clearly, we are failing our children on every front, be it by malice, neglect or sheer carelessness. Indeed, even our hospitals are guilty: remember the killer bacteria scandal at Mt Hope, and the recent case of the young mother who wanted to bury her stillborn baby, only to find that the child had been offhandedly incinerated with discarded viscera and other body parts? Did no one notice that this was not a stray arm or leg going into the flames, but a whole, human child? In this country, apparently, neither life nor death is considered sacred,  except for lip-service paid to them in church. What goes through the mind of a father who ties a noose around his two-year-old son’s neck, or who swings a chop at his baby’s tiny head? What goes through the minds of all those men who sexually assault their young daughters and granddaughters (or grandsons); or those women who leave very young children alone with kerosene lamps while they go down the road for a “lil lime”?

What, indeed, can we think of a society that makes it necessary for kerosene lamps and candles to be left anywhere, because of its inadequate provision of essential services for the very poor? A society where children can be washed away in open storm drains, or drowned in craters left by negligent WASA workers? A society where a forensic pathologist can report that a young (dead) boy has been repeatedly sexually abused, and it does not even occur to the police to investigate? What are we to make of a society where three children can live (and one die) unclothed like animals, unnamed, unschooled, inarticulate, malnourished — and the social workers tell us that they “tried” to visit the family with the police, but that a scrawny, half-naked, 70-year-old man “ran” them off the property? Might one assume that they did not “try” very hard? America is right now in the throes of a scandal over a case of similar social-service neglect, and heads will undoubtedly roll; but not here. No one cares.

Our children are victims; there is little question. The violent attacks, the deaths and dismemberments are bad enough, but it may be that an even worse victimisation is happening in our schools, the very institutions that are supposed to promote their welfare. The recent incidents in various secondary schools have been instructive; even more so the official response to them. Gang attacks, beatings, parent-on-principal violence — all these are symptomatic of one simple thing: the degree to which we’ve failed our children on the educational front. TTUTA is calling for “zero-tolerance” of violence in schools — but are they including the violence inflicted on children by teachers and principals? I doubt it. Has anyone asked what that primary school principal did to that little girl, to throw her mother and grandmother into such a rage? Or what that little girl did to incur such a beating? Yet everyone professes horror when parents over-react (not that I am condoning that, either). Secondary school violence is suddenly being attributed to widespread teacher absenteeism: what planet, one wonders, have our Ministry and union officials been living on? I wrote, more than 18 months ago (and the principal still hasn’t forgiven me!), about the high level of teacher absenteeism in my son’s “prestige” school. Even TTUTA is now admitting there’s a problem, and the principal of Presentation College (Chaguanas) recently came right out and denounced “some” teachers who “draw a salary under false pretenses.” He added, “Students left without supervision will always be tempted to get into problems.”

Principals, though, can do little to correct this problem, because it stems from the teachers’ collective agreement: TTUTA has negotiated an inordinate amount of sick and “casual” leave, in addition to the right for teachers to take time off from work to pursue their studies. In addition, the Ministry itself often runs short courses for teachers during term time; or call them out of school to vet exams. Until these absurdities are eliminated (why can’t teachers further their education during their 12 weeks of paid vacation, for example; or at night courses?), we are spinning top in mud. We will continue to shortchange and victimise our young people; and the results, as we are starting to realise, will be explosive.