El Do students move ‘beyond boundaries...Towards greater goals’

It was a morning of celebration for students of the El Dorado Secondary School as they held their graduation ceremony heralding the end of one phase of their academic life. The service entitled “Beyond Boundaries...Towards Greater Goals”, highlighted the achievements of over 200 students. Delivering the feature address was Rhoda Reddock, Head of the Centre for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI).  She challenged the students to stray from the “tradition” of violence. “Violence is often equated with power and strength,” she said, “but those who have legitimate power which is recognised and respected do not need to be macho and use violence to assert that power.”

Reddock revealed that US research states that the average 18-year-old would have viewed 200,000 acts of violence on television and that television alone is responsible for ten percent of youth violence. A 2001 review of the 70 top-selling videos, she said, found that 89 percent contained some kind of violence, 49 percent contained serious violence and 40 percent contained comic violence. “TT and the world are waiting for you to make a difference, we are waiting for you to choose your cause, it can be as small or as large as you wish it to be. Remember that you do have to go with the flow,” she said.