Prof Ramesh Deosaran is proposing a unique plan to deal with the scourge of violence at schools. A renowned educator, criminologist and researcher of international standing, the former independent senator strongly feels the schools safety officers initiative will go a long way in coming to grips with the matter which has resulted in students landing up in courts on various criminal charges.
Dr Deosaran claims the signs of such a situation were there for a long time but were not acted upon expeditiously.
Q: Professor, are we seeing the virtual collapse of our education system, in the context of the recent resurgence of serious acts of violence at some of our nation’s schools?
A: (Wearing a grim expression, in his Police Service Commission office, Pasea Road and the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway, Tunapuna, Thursday morning) The signs of an imminent collapse were there many years ago but everybody thought it would be just a blip.
What were those signs?
Well, children not attending school, their teachers facing many challenges, parents having less and less time at home and so the prevalence of delinquency and violence in the schools started to rear their respective heads. And I could say with confidence because we (his research teams at the University of the West Indies and more recently at the University of T&T) began to do research on violence and delinquency in schools and made proposals for reduction about 20 years now.
Is it the case, Dr Deosaran, that the authorities were not observing, or they ignored these signs that you all were presenting on diverse occasions?
I wouldn’t say they ignored it but we were all quite optimistic more than which was justifiable at the time, thinking that was going to be a passing phase in the schools, but those phenomena...they grow up on each other like lawlessness in the country. They start with minor offences leading to more serious transgressions.
Indiscipline has always been a fact of life at schools but in our time at primary school we never had this kind of violent activities…
So true, and on Friday when school closed, fights in the schoolyard was the furthest it would reach. You had the children in a big circle surrounding the combatants slugging it out with their fists and shouts of “heave, heave” from the students. Now what we have today is of a higher rank and also it is the kind of violence that permeates the society both on television and the movie houses. That combination provides a very lethal output.
You are saying, Professor, the early signs were not acted upon as they ought to have been?
You see, there is a serious deficiency in public policy and the reaction by all governments that I have known in such instances, that is, it is always more difficult to take preventive action than it is to take crisis-driven reaction. And a lot of public policy is based on a sort of fire-brigade mentality which leaves a lot of preventive methodology and opportunities far behind.
We have to look at our public policy in a smarter way, in a more expeditious way rather than waiting until the flood comes upon us and we have to learn from our past mistakes which is the opportunity facing this Government now.
One of your many publications is a 2006 book entitled African Youths In Danger on the East-West Corridor. What was the book premised on?
(Clearing his throat) Well, at that time and it still is, a lot of young people in that catchment area were committing serious crime—murder, robbery house-breaking—and the Public Services Association had a lot of their members who lived in those areas and many were parents.
So the PSA commissioned us do a study of the black youths as a start and we tackled secondary schools as an output factor to see if the schooling created the dispositions for criminality, or whether there were some who were looking at those schools as a checkpoint against further criminality. We came up with strategic recommendations which the PSA took to the Ministry of Education.
Which was?
That what these young people need most of all, apart from parenting and good parenting, is a vision of themselves, a set of goals for themselves, have a career orientated mentality. So to facilitate that we proposed establishing career empowerment centres in about 15 locations on the corridor, more so in the Morvant/Laventille area.
Those centres would be under the auspices of Government, labour and the private sector so that when the students were about to leave secondary school the facility would provide them with a career opportunity. So that they would have served as a powerful restraining factor from them being tempted to do other devious activities.
Was the proposal accepted?
No. And the PSA felt very disappointed, because after they met the ministry, they reported to me their disappointment. If that was accepted it would have been one of the positives in the life of the East-West Corridor students, a career path would have been created and they would have seen some usefulness in going in that direction. But there is still the opportunity to look at this very forward-thinking proposal.
Apparently, Dr Deosaran, all the measures implemented by the ministry are not coming to terms with student violence. If you had the power, how would you have dealt with this challenge?
Clevon, this is not a one-answer solution because it has to be tackled in a very clinical and holistic manner. A few years ago, on my recommendation, a programme of schools safety officers was introduced as one of the measures to combat this terrible phenomenon. In hindsight it was not working properly and I have decided to tweak it so that it becomes more relevant to the needs of schools today.
Why do you think this is an effective tool to deal with school violence?
As I said, it is only one ingredient in a basket of items and the SSOs would be a third eye as it were, in that they would be patrolling the schools during break times and on the streets when classes end. They would have the mandate to report to the principal any infractions being committed by pupils in the confines of the school and in the public domain.
Do you envisage this being a costly venture to the Ministry of Education?
No, not really, because I am prepared to implement this programme free of charge to the ministry and it is my way of giving back to our national community and it is not everything you can measure in terms of dollars and cents. All I need is a call from the ministry and I would be willing to get cracking immediately to implement the venture.
So you do have faith in the education system apart from the areas that are cause for concern?
(Gently rubbing his right cheek, as he did for most of the interview) Well, it should be known as well that all is not totally lost; you have some very good schools in the country, you also have this troublesome dichotomy between what you call prestige schools and the government schools.
Dr, some people are afraid to call a spade a spade in relation to violence in the school, which is being perpetuated mainly by Afro-Trinis.
(A contemplative pause) Clevon, you see I am hesitating to stigmatise the young black children because you are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in the public imagination. So that as soon as you see a black youth and so on, you sort of impose a stereotype which would defeat the opportunity for solving that problem. The last PNM administration wanted to use the educational system to accept a higher proportion of black youths so that they would be reformed and so on…and I think these are the measures you have to...
Yeah, but this was dropped almost immediately after the idea was floated.
That is what I would recommend to the country because you cannot be like a mousetrap, jumping into the ethnic arena every time a little problem arises, because when the problem might exist to some extent in different communities, if you want to have a solution you have to be careful that you don’t create a self-fulfilling prophecy either in the school or in communities.
How do you rate the performance of Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh, in terms of dealing with the schools-based violence?
He is trying his best, but he has to take some courageous decisions including…
Reintroduction of corporal punishment in schools, which up to last week he has come out against?
I cannot say if I am for or against it, but what I would tell you is that and this is another piece of research we have done which we gave to the ministry when Mrs Manning was there, and we found that more than 80 per cent of teachers felt there should be some form of corporal punishment, after proper rules and guidance.