Media need balanced reporting on school indiscipline

THE EDITOR: Your coverage of “problems” at Malick Senior Comprehensive is in stark contrast to that of other papers. Your coverage of the student (female) who assaulted a female officer, was in contrast to that of another paper which called her name, and provided a picture; while I still await, with nosy curiosity, the name of the “prominent south doctor” arrested a couple of months ago for sexually assaulting a patient. Balanced reporting do we call it? When politicians “attack” the media, I am inclined to go with the media. The “fourth estate” is the guardian of the rights of the poor man, but within the scope of journalism coverage in TT, there is the need for an agreement on practices that, if they do not help stabilise the society, at least will not aggravate a difficult situation.

The young lady charged with assault, neither needed her picture nor her name in the papers, even though what she did was clearly wrong. Making it difficult for her to be repatriated into the society cannot be in the best interest of all concerned. Her picture in the paper could also make her seem like a hero to the lawless element, in society and school, who would be inclined to attack police officers. The same is true of Malick Senior Comprehensive. It has a number of troubled students. Students giving interviews to the press, and teachers talking to the media about a situation of which the Ministry is yet to be informed — according to Ministry of Education officials — cannot help but be incendiary. Showing up with reporters and cameras can incite further violence. Watch the world news. Do you think those street fires and “down with” (Bush in Iraq, Aristide, Mugabe, take your pick) go on all the time? They are staged for the media.

Correspondents to the newspapers’ letters section, have apparently approved of locking one hundred students out in the sun and rain, because they need discipline. Such a large number of students can then go on to create havoc in other areas, including visiting other schools. Did the school officials consider that possibility? What is the legal responsibility of an administrator to students, if the parents send their students to school, believing them to be safe there, they are suspended en masse for tardiness, and they, having nowhere to go, end up creating chaos elsewhere, or fight among themselves and get seriously hurt? What is that administrator’s responsibility to the society as a whole in such a case? What if it was half the school that decided, deliberately, to be late? Would anyone in their right mind suggest suspending eight hundred to one thousand students?

Suspension for a few students, separating them from their peers, ostracising for a day or two, can be an effective deterrent if those students value school; and if they played sports and were debarred from participation during suspension. It can also provide a time out, a cooling off period between people who fought. Suspending one hundred of them devalues the punishment and makes a mockery of it. When Woodbrook Secondary School was opened in the early 1960s, the school took in one or two forms of one hundred and twenty students each, the next year another form was added. Would it have been wise to suspend 85 percent of an entire form for tardiness? Would it not have been more effective to keep them after school to get the lesson they missed due to tardiness, and then an equal amount of time extra, to help learn the error of their ways?

This may be difficult if teachers have second jobs and small children to take care of, but there needs to be a solid core of teachers who would give up something to maintain discipline in schools, and the Ministry needs to identify those teachers, pay them an hourly overtime rate if needed, and hold detentions so that unruly children could focus on quiet work. If students had to make up three minutes for every minute of tardiness, would they continue to be tardy? Most likely not. When my niece lived in San Francisco, and went to a private school, she cut classes one day, and was caught. She was made to go to school on Saturday morning, riding the bus in her school uniform. Everyone knew she had been a discipline problem. The shame overwhelmed her. That was her only time skipping school. Creative solutions need to be tried. Locking out one hundred children in the rain or hot sun, cannot reassure those children that they are valued members of the society, who need some more discipline.

Now if the total report was true, how much more suspension do they get for throwing stones? When do we get to cutting off a finger, or painting their faces, or branding on the forehead? Harsh discipline, taking a cannon to shoot an ant is counterproductive, and can lead to more violence. If ten men on death row stage a riot and kill a guard, would you give them two death sentences each? Would you hang them, pronounce them dead, then give a lethal injection? Or would they deserve being beaten to death in the public square?

LINDA EDWARDS
Port-of-Spain