So the Ministry of Education has finally verbalized a commitment to supporting teachers who come under in-school attacks by parents. That is at least a step up from its customary “we are investigating” response. One might add, of course, that whatever action the Ministry takes also seeks to protect teachers from such in-school attacks, in the first place. Incidentally, it is good that the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) appears to be at one with the Ministry here.
Of course, up to this time, the Ministry’s commitment remains conspicuous in its lack of detail. When one reflects on the many years of official leaden-footedness on this matter, the Ministry must understand that teachers are due a detailed and explicit pronouncement on just what kinds of support they can anticipate in instances of assault by irate parents and whether those forms of support include a preparedness to press, where the circumstances so warrant, for maximum sanction against offenders. Of course it has to be said that they would be interested, first and foremost, on such immediate plans as the Ministry might have for their in-school security in the first place.
Mind you, the proceedings and their outcomes arising out of the recent instances of reported parent assaults on two teachers at the St. Agnes and Winfer Gardens schools, respectively, ought to serve as a test of the seriousness of the Ministry’s undertaking to intervene decisively. Those should be monitored closely. All that being said we acknowledge, again, that the Ministry’s pronouncement that, going forward, it will be ‘batting’ for its teachers marks something of a departure from its years of seeming indifference, those years having been littered with undertakings to ‘take action,’ which, on the basis of the historical evidence have not amounted to much.
The pronouncements of the kind that have customarily been made by the Ministry in response to parent/teacher altercations have been largely placatory in nature, designed to take the immediate volatility out of the incidents themselves. The assumption here, it seems, has been that, given time, the incident will go away. It is a ‘strategy’ that takes advantage of the chronic public shortness of memory in such matters. The serious downside of this approach, of course, is that it may well have had the effect of emboldening bullying parents. It may also have had the entirely unintended but unsurprising effect of impacting the morale of teachers, victims of parent assault or otherwise.
There is nothing for the Ministry of Education to do now but to put its foot down by moving beyond its customary lip service and in the direction of action that sends a clear signal that it is prepared to ‘take on’ those parents who believe that they can target teachers for violence. It is high time that the Ministry understands not just that this menace presents teachers with an unacceptable vulnerability but also that vacillation between silence and hot air does not represent anything even remotely resembling effective pushback against this menace.
There is an issue of critical importance that should be raised here. We cannot stress too strongly that this editorial is not, in any shape or form, about the merits or otherwise of the perceived ‘grouses’ that irate parents might have. One cannot, however, make the point too strongly that instances of perceived wrongdoing on the part of a teacher cannot, under any circumstance, justify verbal or physical retaliatory measures on the part of parents. Here, we venture to wonder aloud as to whether the Ministry is equipped with the resources to handle potentially inflammatory situations (here we mean functionaries trained in conflict resolution and mediation, among other relevant skills) between parents and teachers. If it doesn’t it should seek to acquire those quickly since, going forward, those skills will increasingly have to be pressed into service in the handling of in-school matters.
The Ministry, one hopes, has now come to understand that the way forward reposes in policies framed into clearly and simply defined rules/circulars (call them what you will), the key here being that the Ministry must possess, first, the rules, secondly the institutional capability and finally the will to implement those policies.
On the issue of creating in-school policies that seek to bring an end to the targeting of teachers we have already, in previous editorials, broached the subject of the need to fashion and implement security measures and protocols that should obtain on school premises. Current available evidence suggests that the security measures in place at some state schools are seriously deficient if not altogether non-existent. Beyond that, we have also commented on the need for well thought-out procedures for in-school teacher/parent engagements to ventilate complaints against teachers regarding the treatment of children. From what we have learnt about the procedure applied in the instance of the St. Agnes incident, there may well be a case for suggesting that the organizational arrangements for the teacher/parent ‘encounter in that instance might have been defective and may have contributed to the fracas that ensued during the attempt at an in-school probe into the particular issue.
There is also a case here, we believe, for the more exhaustive use of Parent-Teacher Associations to strengthen parent-teacher relationships. Here is a forum that is uniquely positioned to enable exchanges that can foster better understanding between the two. Properly run PTA’s can help to foster enhanced parent/teacher relationships that can be brought to the fore to good effect in the settlement of issues relating to the in-school treatment of children by teachers. That, however, will only happen if PTA’s are strengthened through official emphasis on the importance of stepped-up involvement by both teachers and parents. It is the joint responsibility of the Ministry, the individual school administrations, the teachers and the parents to make that happen.
The trend, over the years, has been for these kinds of incidents to come and go quickly and without any attempt at comprehensive remedial action. We must be clear on one thing. If we neglect (as we have been doing, over time) to implement remedial measures with maximum alacrity then the responsible parties, including and particularly the Ministry of Education, must be prepared to put their hands up in the instance where these incidents reach the point of some regrettable and irretrievable tragedy.
We have every right to place the ball in the Ministry’s court. The history of this particular problem suggests that it has long been fast asleep at the wheel; so that whatever materializes out of the Winfer Gardens and St. Agnes’ incidents in terms of their legal outcomes it is to the Ministry that we must look to put adequate and workable mechanisms in place for removing the scourge of violent parents from our school system. The key point here is that the official palavering on this issue has to end now.
