What the recent incidents at the Lodge and Campbellville secondary schools appear to be telling us is that parts of our school system may well be in a condition of ‘siege.’ It is not just the unpalatable occurrences that have become par for the course in some schools across the country but, as well, the disturbing reality of the authorities failing comprehensively to make any headway in reining in what are, in many instances, serious threats to the country’s education system.
Some of the decidedly dangerous challenges to the school system have manifested themselves in the form of occurrences like inter-school ‘gang violence,’ menacing student challenges to teacher authority, teacher-parent confrontations some of which have turned violent and the targeting of schools by drug dealers seeking soft target markets for their products. These, mind you, are only some of the discipline-related challenges that face our schools system. They come and go with monotonous regularity and notwithstanding numerous outbursts by both the Ministry of Education and the Guyana Police Force, almost all of which can be likened to delicate barriers erected to hold back gale force winds. Unsurprisingly, they have failed to make any discernable dent in the pattern of the aforementioned occurrences.
Some important questions arise here, a key one being whether we are not, incrementally, heading towards the transformation of parts of our state school system into formidable “battle zones” over which the authorities now have tenuous control.
A case exists, one is inclined to believe, to raise the question as to whether the scale of the problem has not become far greater than the ability of the Ministry of Education to roll back. Have parts of our school system not, at this stage been ‘captured’ by out-of-control and dangerously destructive wrecking balls?
Up until now the Ministry of Education and law enforcement have failed to come up with some kind of ‘blueprint’ for at least beginning to address what we know to be the recurring challenges to the normalcy of the school system. Those that come readily to mind are the ‘importation’ into the school system of gang-related violence; the infiltration of weapons (including in one recent instance, an air gun) into schools; the identification of schools as soft targets for drug peddlers; assaults on the school system by confrontational parents and guardians in pursuit of the ‘settlement’ of issues involving the school authorities and their children and the targeting
of teachers, specifically for threats, verbal and on occasion physical abuse by parents and children alike. These, one might add, have become run-of-the-mill challenges, which, taken together, eminently justifies the conclusion that in some of our communities, the school system is literally ‘under siege.’
Between the Ministry of Education and the Guyana Police Force, the two often appear to be focused on outing individual fires rather than seeking to resort to approaches that might cause some of those fires not to occur in the first place. It is, for example, perfectly clear, that given the nature and scale of the challenge, an overarching schools security regime that is equal to the scale of the problem, must be devised. It is not known that any attempt has ever been made to move in that direction. Secondly, since some of the challenges are linked to parents and communities, the need exists not just to seek to strengthen links between schools and communities but also to introduce and uncompromisingly implement a dimension of compulsoriness to effective Parent-Teacher Associations since the nature of some of the challenges is linked to what would appear to be a serious disconnect between home and school.
In the matter of the infiltration of drugs into the school system little if anything – as far as this newspaper is aware – has been heard publicly about the February 2018 promised CANU probe into what we were told was the discovery of drug rings in some schools.
Beyond those considerations serious question marks hover over the issue as to whether the Ministry of Education possesses the human resource capabilities to mount a solutions-based response to the serious discipline-related challenges that obtain in the school system. Nor is there any evidence, as far as this newspaper is aware that current and serious efforts are being made to correct the problem by adding new dimensions to the country’s teacher training regimen.
As has become commonplace in the broader political pursuit of challenges to societal problems, the official approach is always informed by a drowning out of the problem itself by points-seeking political pronouncements which, more often than not, have the effect of shoving the substantive problem to one side.
The recent occurrences at the Lodge and Campbellville secondary schools, taken together, unmistakably make the point that the circumstance of overwhelming dysfunctionality that obtains in sections of our school system is still a considerable distance away from being effectively tackled, far less solved.
