Faced with increasing incidents of violence in schools, the government is examining heightened security as well as the introduction of counselling as part of schools’ curriculum, Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon said yesterday.
Over the past few months there have been reports of student on student violence in both primary and secondary schools and only last week there was a report in Linden about a gang of persons entered a school and severely beat two students.
Asked about government’s response to the recent upsurge, Luncheon yesterday acknowledged that Guyana, like many other countries, has seen “more and more expressions of violence.” He added that there continues to be “a recognition that a highly focused approach would need to be taken and some of it has to do with infrastructure, in safe guarding the confines of the schools…” He noted that at many schools there are no fences to keep out persons from the community and he mentioned that there is need for more heightened security as well. Luncheon said this continues be the government’s focus in addition to investigating the incidents as fast as they occur.
He said too that the Ministry of Education and its stakeholders are addressing the issue of introducing counselling in the curriculum.
Finally, this government is catching in one regard to the rest of the world when it comes to education.
Every well run school has counsellors, paraeducators and educational therapists. Our system is so archaic that it is laughable. Our philosophy is to reintroduce retired teachers into the system to make a difference with a totally new generation, hooked on Ipods, computers, video games- who are generally more kinesthetic.
How then can you have outmoded methodology addressing the needs of a new educational populace?
Every school needs to have a student services department run by counsellors and other educational support staff. These people of course have to be trained as such. There also needs to be a school controlled security outfit which monitors the hallways during class time so as to prevent drug use in washrooms or sexual behaviors in hidden places. After all, how many cameras do we have installed in schools?
We need to wake up and see that improved education does not correlate with new buildings. Education occurs from informed practice, not obsolete repetition.
We spoke about this a few years ago……Guyana can solve this problem.
A Court for school children…..if found guilty confine them to their home under the watchful eyes of a Probation Office. You brake the law send them off to school jail where they will continue to go to school if you cannot be controled at home them you will be controled by the state in one of the ten regions……..you will lern to cook, read, write, keep yourself tidy, and you will complet school under government conditions.
Put the school jail in Kamarang, one way in, and only one way out, and that is by aircraft.
No fences around schools …
An abdication of parental responsibility…
People are a product of their environment. So why not children? Does anyone know of anything that makes kids immune to what they see each day? Let’s try leading by example. I believe that will help.
HuH what about those security company the govt contract……..LoL or the govt need to privatise the guyana police force to……lol
blacksage, if our schools are so archaic how come we constantly top the rest of the carribbean?
Those at the top top the C’bean, while those at the bottom bottom the C’bean.