Students lack moral values

THE EDITOR: I agree with the views expressed by Senator Roy Augustus during the debate on the Offences Against the Person Amendment Bill in the Senate about stopping the Junior Soca Monarchy. Year after year, it is becoming necessary for the Police to intervene to prevent school children from getting out of hand. The bad behaviour of these children did not come about suddenly. What festivals like the Soca Monarch do is to aggravate the anti-social behaviour of these children by providing an opportunity and an occasion for this to occur. The bad behaviour of mainly junior and senior secondary students exists already in the schools. The Junior Soca Monarch supported by the Ministry of Education, provides them with the occasion for that bad behaviour to be transferred to the streets.

Teachers have to put up with this on a daily basis. On the streets, the students unruly behaviour has to be addressed by the Police and they acted appropriately. In fact, the public is fully aware that very often the Police have to be called in to schools to control unruly school children. In most of these state owned “Government” secondary and high schools, there are carnival functions. It is as though this is not enough so Ministry of Education officials go further to sponsor functions like the Junior Soca Monarch. The Minister of Education must therefore be held responsible for the socialisation and the culturalisation these children in a particular way. The children seem to be already bent in a particular way. The impact of their teachers and the school to instill wholesome values seem to be marginal.

The behaviour of the parents at the police station indicate this. As Senator Augustus observed, the children were “enjoying themselves.” Instead of being traumatised as normal children should be in being carried to a police station, especially Besson Street Police Station, and having a sense of shame, the Senator commented that the only thing they did not do was to give each other “hi five.” There is the need to have corporal punishment in our schools. There is the need to give principals greater authority to deal with unruly and even dangerous students in their schools. Are these the makings of the future “community leaders” Mr Ken Valley talked about, and the need to “ground” with them for the sake of the security of the country? We are in crisis and this is so because our leaders at all levels are failing us.

KHASTRA SINGH
Couva