It is difficult for anyone who has never stood in front of thirty secondary school students averse to learning to understand exactly what is involved. In a general sense there will be no treating every student as an individual because the numbers are too large and lesson times too short, although if the bulk of the class is at the same stage, it is always possible to give personal attention to an individual having difficulty. In addition, a more individualistic approach can be adopted where learning is computer based – not something which happens much here ‒ or where a particular kind of instruction experience lends itself to breaking up the class into sets of one kind or another. In the normal run of things, however, methods of group control are what is required.
And control is absolutely essential if any schooling is to take place at all. No child learns anything in an undisciplined class. It helps if a teacher is on top of his or her subject matter and is confident as a result. But an excellent, well-educated teacher will still have problems if she or he lacks a commanding presence in a classroom and cannot impose their personality on the group as a whole. In the old days teachers bolstered their personas in the classroom by the use of corporal punishment as a means of enforcing discipline, and while it is still allowed if only in certain defined circumstances, it is not resorted to with anything like the frequency of an earlier era.
Everyone likes to reminisce on the days when educators had a high status in the community and commanded unquestioning respect in the classroom. Parents would never challenge decisions made by a teacher or the punishments they meted out, but then they were committed to education as a route of advancement for their offspring, while in any case the means of chastisement in the home were often of a similarly brutal character.
Remembering the discipline and the quality of education of those times, Guyanese are reluctant to relinquish the use of the cane in schools, even although the government is committed at the UN level to abolishing it. Leaving aside the human rights arguments frequently put forward, it can only be said that at a practical level it is nowadays clearly very ineffective as an instrument of maintaining order, so there is little point in retaining it.
In any case, it is not the more restrained use of the cane which is the cause of the indiscipline and now violence as well in our schools, it is that society itself has changed and our educational institutions are a reflection of that society. There are likely to be considerable variations in the levels of indiscipline between different schools, and possibly categories of schools. One supposes that there are far fewer problems in the senior secondary schools, for example, than some others for the simple reason that the students there have been given a place on the basis of their National Grade Six Assessment results and probably are looking at some kind of academic avenue to achievement. More important, their parents will be motivated to encourage the child to study and will be less tolerant of their misbehaviour in the classroom.
As far as segments of the rest of society are concerned, we may be looking at more than one generation of poorly educated adults who see no particular point in education for their children because in their view it will not earn them the money which they need. They have no particular respect for teachers, and may see their first duty as defending their child if he or she comes into conflict with the school authorities, never mind if that child is right or wrong.
In addition to that, youngsters are left unsupervised during the periods a single mother, say, is at work, or simply because there is no order in the home. Indiscipline on the streets will inevitably be transferred into the classroom. Among other things, too, migration has broken up the extended families which at one time oversaw children whose parents were not around.
Where discipline within schools is concerned, there need to be clear rules which are consistently applied by the entire staff. Even without the cane, there must be sanctions for misconduct, whether those are detentions or some temporary loss of a privilege or whatever else a head and the teachers consider appropriate in their situation. In addition, it is most important that heads be given back the power to discipline. The situation in schools with boards is different, but in the case of the others a school cannot wait on the Ministry of Education, for example, to decide whether it should approve the temporary suspension of a pupil guilty of a serious offence. The thing about punishment and young people is that to be effective it needs to be implemented immediately. By the time a bureaucracy has deliberated on what is appropriate, the punishment has become divorced from the behaviour which triggered it.
There will be a few cases where a student has become so consistently disruptive to learning in a school and possibly threatening to boot, that they should be removed for the good of all. Apart from anything else, other students who want to learn should not be deprived of doing so because of one offender. That offender, however, still needs an education, and there should be one or maybe two specialist schools catering for the rehabilitation on an individual basis of the small number of problem pupils who despite everyone’s best efforts have failed to respond to other approaches. There used to be one at Sophia, although no one has heard anything about it for a long time, or whether it even still exists.
Guyana Teachers’ Union President Mark Lyte has been reported as saying that there needs to be more counsellors in schools. He is not wrong about that, and it may be that the Ministry does not necessarily disagree with him either. One does have to wonder, however, given the large number of schools in this country – even if only secondary schools were to be catered for ‒ whether there are simply enough trained counsellors available to answer the need.
Where there has been a breakdown in discipline in a school, then it will increase the chance it will experience actual violence. This year there have been reported incidents at Houston Secondary School, an unnamed school in Berbice, Graham’s Hall Primary School, and the incongruously named Harmony Secondary School in Wismar. For obvious reasons the difficulties are usually associated with secondary schools, where the students are older and more resistant to disciplinary measures. Although one primary school was cited above, the age of the student is not known; Graham’s Hall may, for example, be one of the Primary Tops. Not surprisingly too, the schools are located if not always strictly in urban areas, in urbanised areas, where the culture is more likely to reflect an absence of civic order.
Much of the violence has taken the form of parents attacking teachers, and finding ways to give all parents the sense of a vested interest in the schools their children attend is not an easy matter. Only committed parents attend PTAs; most either have no interest, or if working single parents simply do not have the time to spare for such meetings. GOAL scholarships are all very well, but first the Ministry has to ensure that all students can get a decent education at lower age levels in a secure environment – an environment, it might be added, which is also safe for teachers.
In the past there have been open days for parents in some schools, but again, those whom staff really wanted to attend probably didn’t. Since it is unlikely that teachers would be able or willing to go to students’ homes to meet parents, the Ministry perhaps should commission an innovative promotional campaign with absolutely no political slant selling education to parents. Could this not be done on their phones, perhaps? In the wake of that, some parents might be more conducive to the idea of coming to school on invitation to meet teachers.
The most alarming case of violence this year was the invasion of Harmony Secondary School by an armed gang. Strictly speaking dealing with gang situations comes not within the purview of the Ministry of Education, but of the police. Once there are gangs out there in the community, then it is just a matter of time before they recruit teenagers who are still at school. The acting Commissioner of Police cannot allow the unhindered development of gangs, not just because they will infiltrate schools, but because of the danger they represent to society as a whole and the crime they bring in their wake. He doesn’t have to look far in this region to see examples of this. That apart, it does come within the purview of the Ministry to ensure the internal security of schools – that fences are of a good height and have no gaps, doors can be secured and guards are on duty.
For a long time there have been reports of drugs in schools, although there have never been any indications of anyone being arrested. Once again this is primarily, although not exclusively, a police matter. While the distributers in the schools are
presumably students, they are supplied by adults, and this goes back to the need for intelligence-led policing which is anything but the Force’s strong suit. In the absence of detailed information, it is very difficult to know how big a problem this is, but the Ministry and the police should put their heads together to develop a strategy to deal with it.
On a final positive note, it is worth mentioning that in the case of the appalling Harmony attack, parents came out to defend the teachers. In Wismar at least, parents and staff are pursuing the same educational objectives, never mind the gang.
