Underfunded schools to overcrowded prisons

For far too long governments have neglected schools that aren’t considered ‘prestige’, and this neglect results in the fostering of the same criminals that have taken over our country.

In this state of increased crime, many people are wondering where all of these criminals came from so suddenly. It seems as though Trinidad and Tobago woke up one day to find criminality as ubiquitous as oxygen. This may surprise you, but there were no “Jack and the Beanstalk” magic crime beans dispersed across the country that sprung up overnight. Not at all; these were slow growing crime beans that have now flourished into what we are experiencing every day.

I recently had the most delicious lunch at a Tea House on the compound of St Joseph’s Convent (SJC) in Port-of-Spain, and as I walked through the yard, I was blown away by the school’s pristine condition. Now, when I compared SJC to the dilapidated state of several other secondary schools, there was a glaring disparity.

Basing my perception on the exterior alone, I can tell that the environment at SJC is conducive to learning, whereas many others, especially what we previously referred to as “Junior Secs” and Composites are in such a state that those children are at a clear disadvantage.

A cursory survey of blue-collar, and even those blue-uniformed criminals highlights a similarity that is really not surprising: the majority of them attended schools not considered to be ‘prestige’.

And the reality is that students at a Junior Secondary (call it whatever you want to call it), Composites and other regular secondary schools are neglected and do not receive the necessary funding to equip a school with everything required to teach at the same level of the ‘prestige’ institutions. There are schools with poor ventilation, lighting and sanitation, while others are so well-maintained, one would think it is located in a firstworld country.

It is highly unlikely to find a CIC or QRC graduate sitting in jail for a blue-collar crime, but you would find many of my brothers who attended Junior Secs all across the country populating the prisons in disproportionate numbers.

Doesn’t anyone realise that there is an obvious disadvantage for these students, thus more effort should be placed on their educational development? Or is it that the prestige-educated oligarchic dictators think that only they deserve to be successful? Where a person attends or attended school is extremely important.

This is not news; everyone knows that there is a greater chance of success in life if one attends a ‘prestige’ school, which is not always based on educational achievements, instead, in some cases, it is based on the perception that ‘prestige’ students are automatically much more intelligent than a non-prestige comparator.

Apparently students get a “good” education at a prestige school, which seems to imply that the others are bad? And if that’s the case, why not work towards making all schools good? I want to point out here that attending a ‘prestige’ school does not make anyone superior to a non-prestige graduate because as a former college boy myself, I have seen that many of the delinquent students came from privileged backgrounds with business empires waiting for them to inherit.

How some of them ended up there in the first place is beyond me.

There must be an equal playing field for all students regardless of social status or home address and it should start from the primary school level. Why should schools like SJC resemble American college campuses while other primary and secondary schools look like abandoned buildings? At some point, a Trinbagonian government will have to address this imbalance. The pipeline that runs straight into a prison cell from an underfunded school can be disrupted by politicians who care not just about their children who attend ‘prestige’ schools, but also about those students who go to school every day to learn in deplorable conditions. One would never see SJC or Fatima parents and teachers protesting over bad smells or rodent infested classrooms, but at least once a week there is at least one group of students, parents and teachers somewhere clamouring for attention to have their school repaired.

As a society, we have failed our students. We ignore these schools and their students and watch them fall by the wayside or into the police service, and then complain about those same students who are now full-blown criminals.

Crime is our fault and until we accept that fact, we will remain in this situation for a very long time.