Geisha Kow­lessar

An ur­gent call has been made by the Na­tion­al Par­ent/Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) for clos­er mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion of prin­ci­pals who run pri­vate schools. The as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent, Zena Ra­matali, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said it was long over­due for such prin­ci­pals to be care­ful­ly mon­i­tored es­pe­cial­ly in the ad­min­is­ter­ing of dis­ci­pline. She added that the time was al­so ripe for the re­vi­sion of the Con­cor­dat. Ar­lene Black­man, prin­ci­pal and pro­pri­etor of Mar­aval-based Black­man Pri­vate School, ap­peared yes­ter­day be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate charged with as­sault­ing two pupils of her school on Jan­u­ary 24. Ra­matali, who re­turned to the coun­try a few days ago, af­ter re­ceiv­ing a hu­man­i­tar­i­an award from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­tial Arts Hall of Fame in New Jer­sey, said she had been in­un­dat­ed with calls from con­cerned prin­ci­pals. Ra­matali said if a prin­ci­pal was charged and sub­se­quent­ly found guilty, that must then be a les­son for prin­ci­pals across the coun­try to take stock of them­selves. "We have to look at the kind of prin­ci­pals we are ap­point­ing, both in the pub­lic and pri­vate schools," she said. "If prin­ci­pals re­alise they are un­der pres­sure, then they should take time off rather than be­ing cru­el to a child. "The job could be very stress­ful at times but prin­ci­pals must be in con­trol at all times."

She said re­ports of prin­ci­pals be­ing cru­el to chil­dren in­clud­ed forc­ing chil­dren to stand in the blaz­ing sun and kneel­ing in the cor­ner for hours. Not­ing there were some chil­dren who were al­ready abused at home, Ra­matali ap­pealed to prin­ci­pals to be hu­mane to­wards their charges. "If a child is abused at home and comes to school and is fur­ther abused, then we are cre­at­ing in­stances of dou­ble jeop­ardy for the child," she said. "There are oth­er al­ter­na­tives to dis­ci­plin­ing a child." If the prin­ci­pal of a pri­vate school was found to guilty of child abuse or ex­er­cis­ing cru­el­ty, Ra­matali said there was very lit­tle the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry could do in dis­ci­plin­ing that prin­ci­pal. And in this vein, she said the time had come for the re­vi­sion of the Con­cor­dat and there­fore to im­ple­ment mea­sures which would en­able the min­istry to ex­er­cise greater pow­ers. Ra­matali al­so ap­pealed for a greater work­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Prin­ci­pals As­so­ci­a­tion and the NPTA. The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry this week placed full-page news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ments, em­pha­sis­ing that vi­o­lence was not dis­ci­pline and that dis­ci­pline must nev­er be vi­o­lence.