T&T PM defends removal of ‘licks’ in school

(Trinidad Express) Defending the decision taken while she was Education Minister to remove corporal punishment from schools, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said education and the learning environment should never cause intimidation.

“It must be something that motivates,” she said, while speaking at the launch of the Character Education and Citizenry Fund at the Hilton Trinidad, St Ann’s yesterday.

She said it was for this reason that corporal punishment was prohibited during the first United National Congress administration which came into office in 1995.

“I wanted children to know that no one was going to beat them to learn,” she said.

The Prime Minister said the next step of that transformation process, however, was unfortunately never taken forward by the administrations that followed.

“Having removed the proverbial ‘big stick’, the next intervention was for the introduction of character education…teaching life coping skills, guiding children through what is right and wrong and instilling strong, timeless values such as respect, honesty, compassion and justice. Nurturing a child to become that better person,” she said.

Persad-Bissessar said much of the school bullying and school violence that has been seen in the past years could well have been prevented if character education were brought much earlier.

“We must seek to make up for lost time and ensure it is fully implemented and guided, which brings us to today’s event,” she said.

The Prime Minister said Trinidad and Tobago would be the first country in the Caribbean region to integrate Character Education into the school curriculum. In this regard it would join countries like China, Singapore and certain parts of the US who have seen the value of making character education an essential part of teaching.

Persad-Bissessar said the launch of the Character Education and Citizenry Development programme was the fulfilment of a dream she had since she was Minister of Education.

As she spoke of the importance of character education, she noted that “children want this level of exploration. They can explore moral and ethical questions in so many traditional subjects, even in science.”