In Barbados, as in some other Caribbean Community states, there are too many distressing reports of escalating physical violence at schools – from Jamaica in the northern sub region to Guyana on the South American mainland.
The spiralling violence is often attributed to various factors, with a mix of poor parenting, poverty levels, domestic disputes in homes, as well as lack of proper supervision at schools that, at times, involves open detachment by teachers, some of whom have themselves been among the victims or subjected to threats.
The circulation of illicit drugs and possession by students of knives and other dangerous weapons, at times even guns, are all factors at play in the spreading violence, with bullyism being quite a rampant feature at some secondary schools.
Coincidentally, just last Friday, while the Weekend Nation was reporting the distressing story of a mother’s pain over the cruel beating of her 14-year-old son (Kemar Franklin) with a piece of wood, across in Guyana, the Daily Chronicle was informing readers of the stabbing in his left eye of an 11-year-old student (Ishmael Pollard) by a classmate.
While national police reports and assessments from international agencies like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and financial institutions such as the World Bank often point to the negative consequences of spreading gun-related and drug-trafficking crimes, there is the danger of paralysis of the spirit to more vigorously and creatively arrest the problem of violence in our school system.
The Jamaica Teachers’ Association has considered it necessary to, among other suggestions, call for more regular police presence at schools, particularly those with recurring violence among students and where teachers have to cope with threats to their own safety.
Here in Barbados, perhaps the time has come for a national consultation, organised with involvement of the Ministry of Education, to address the challenges of violence at schools.
The focus should be on the prior circulation of working documents that offer specific recommendations for action rather than an event where rhetoric from the floor dominates the event.
It should involve, among others, unions representing teachers as well as spokespersons for parent-teacher associations. Involvement of the law enforcement agencies and the church would also be expected. Better to pursue new initiatives than engage in recurring lamentations over the spreading violence at schools.