I asked for directions to a school I was invited to speak in. After being guided, I was told, “yuh cyah miss it, the wall high like a prison!” As I entered the school, the security guards wanted to know the purpose of my visit. I explained the purpose of my visit and the name of the teacher that was facilitating the session. One guard contacted the staff room to confirm. As I waited, the security guards searched the book bags of each student as they entered the compound; three guards conducting searches at the beginning of the school day. The teacher walked out front and signed me in. Without sharing my observations, she began apologising for the usual hostility of the guards because they are known to be indiscriminate in their aggression. I asked her about the major issues facing the school; she said, “In here is the worst. They don’t respect teachers. They fight. Persons from outside the school fight them. And they speak violently toward each other.”
Our country is at war with itself.
Schoolbooks fresh off the shelf but some book bags are empty or worse have weapons in them. We are quite certain this is a minority of the student population. But, maybe this is why people look away from the issue. This is what happens in a society that celebrates hundreds of CAPE A’Level scholarships annually of the “bestest and brightest”; this is what happens in an island where the Minister of Education makes it thier business to ritually hug and congratulate the top student in primary school for S.E.A and not make a visit to many schools where students struggle with reading and doing Mathematics, where students fail examinations and still have to make the jump from primary to secondary school. If you have been to the schools throughout this country, you would know there are two types of schools – prestige schools and not-prestige schools.
The status anxiety of parents and the processes and lengths they go to get their child into a good school is something we need to sit with.
For years, what we have taught and thought is that it is easier to manage and control youth but this has not worked. The surveillance architectural design of some schools, timetable regimes, authoritarian teaching and administrative style, and increasingly militarised school environments, have not significantly dented the outcome of certified failures and school-based violence.
Students in the national community feel alienated from the learning material because it is disconnected the realities of life, especially the harsh realities. There are some serious things we need to address before moving forward:
Treat school violence as a social, cultural and economic issue.
We have grown accustomed to treating school violence as a psychological issue, another behavioural problem, and it has shown that pathological explanations of students’ behaviour do not address the conditions for which students work in the classroom.
If you have 108 murders in 81 days (as at Tuesday 22nd March 2016) in a country, that violence will enter the classroom.
Do not think short-term
Short-term measures will not address the fundamental organisation of power. So far, there have been calls for a zero tolerance approach and the presence of metal detectors and police searches do more to curb parents (legitimate) fears about school-based violence than transform the culture of violence itself. The illusion of security is both expensive and risks criminalising a number of students.
Pay more attention to mental health than marks.
Most people are concerned with children’s school marks and not their mental health. There is no national discussion about children’s mental health. How are they dealing with the pressures of schooling and the stress of families under pressure? The same feelings of insecurity parents have, our children have. Children sit in on conversations about the murders, they see the news, and they ride the maxis in and out of unsafe communities where their schools are.
Students are members of families under economic strain, students witness violence in classrooms and in their communities, students are under stress with exam preparations, students are under surveillance in the school – there are a plethora of challenges facing students. Each student is a walking body of emotions and the school system needs to focus of children and adolescents mental health…and not continue to overlook it at the expense of valuing marks, politeness and manners.
We do not actually know where students feel safe
What we do know is that the school is not always a safe space for students and staff. Schools need to be safe spaces.
Sexual Harassment is Violence
What do constant feelings of insecurity result in, especially for girls who are particularly looked at by men from the time they are 7 or 8 years old? There is a tendency for us to overlook how gender relations organise our lives. By the time many girls bodies’ develop they are not only victim to the eyes of wolfish and thusty (older) men but also sexual harassment in the school. The school, especially secondary school, is a site of gender inequalities of unrelenting sexual harassment that attacks the dignity of many girls. Sexual harassment is not normal.
It’s not just bullying…It is violent masculinities
Unless we come to terms with the fact that many young boys perform violent masculinities that gives them status, rank and stripes then we miss the point of what is happening. The saying boys will be boys excuses aggressive and violent behaviours of boys that hardens in adolescence and adulthood. If a serious discussion of the patriarchal order of male violence is not on the table then we are not serious in examining the reality of male academic underachievement.
Homophobic Violence
A teacher at Naparima College publicly shared her desire for a gun for atheists and homosexuals. Fortunately, the students and alumni had enough influence to tell her and the school administration that homophobic statements are not okay.
This not a question about “good” and “bad” students.
How do we build safe schools?
What would an education without fear look like?
On Friday 1st April 2016, UWI Socialist Student Conference will mobilise students from across the country to be part a movement to begin answering these questions with the launch of our #BooksNotDeath campaign.
Blog Feature Image retrieved from Facebook, UWI Socialist Student Conference, March 28, 2016
