Rhon­dor Dowlat

Neigh­bours, in­clud­ing sev­er­al busi­ness peo­ple near Cara­pichaima West and East Sec­ondary Schools, yes­ter­day re­vealed jaw-drop­ping and shock­ing rev­e­la­tions of stu­dents meet­ing and hav­ing sex on the road, in parked ve­hi­cles and on peo­ple's pri­vate prop­er­ties.

When the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day, sev­er­al res­i­dents of Friend­ship Hall Dri­ve and Mc Leod Street, Chase Vil­lage, Cara­pichaima, ad­mit­ted many stu­dents at­tend­ing both schools are to­tal­ly out of con­trol, un­man­ner­ly and rude.One woman, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said she had sev­er­al run-ins with the stu­dents from the Cara­pichaima West School and de­scribed it as ut­ter­ly dis­gust­ing."Teach­ers from the school had to call me sev­er­al times to in­form me that pupils were strip­ping and kiss­ing in front my yard and to chase them away."One ex­am­ple was that one day, this male pupil from the East Sec­ondary School had his hand up this girl's skirt and they were kiss­ing and car­ry­ing on."I was shocked but had to run them away. I don't know where they went af­ter but it is dis­gust­ing," she added.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, who iden­ti­fied him­self on­ly as Samuel, said every day was ei­ther fights or "street porn." "They does be lined up to meet the fel­las and them, some from the area right here and some from neigh­bour­ing schools. Bring back the cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment in schools. Bring in the po­lice," he said.A Form One pupil said he be­came trau­ma­tised af­ter he was a vic­tim of bul­ly­ing and "school-tax­ing" (where a child is bul­lied to hand over lunch mon­ey). He said he was even scared to tell his par­ents what hap­pened to him be­cause he did not want to be beat­en by the old­er stu­dents.

A Form Three stu­dent said he was forced to turn his back while in the class­room while oth­ers per­formed sex in the back of his class."They does tell we to turn around and we does on­ly hear them. Some of them does be video tap­ing every­thing and send­ing it to oth­er chil­dren from the east school," the stu­dent said.

A teacher of one of the schools con­firmed there were crit­i­cal is­sues to be ad­dressed at both schools, in­clud­ing sex, vi­o­lence and drugs, and added they were forced to re­main qui­et on the is­sues.The teacher said: "We try our best to teach these chil­dren but they are so rude and rough to­ward us. "There are those who do ex­ceed­ing­ly well aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly but then there are the ones who are de­ter­mined to be con­tin­u­ous rebels."I am afraid for my life when these chil­dren start fight­ing and curs­ing us but I can't do any­thing about it. I was not sur­prised to see the ar­ti­cle on the Guardian to­day (yes­ter­day) and I was not sur­prised to see that my prin­ci­pal de­nied it as well."

Teach­ers Talk?

A se­nior teacher at the school com­ment­ed un­der the shar­ing of the T&T Guardian's ar­ti­cle on a Face­book page, say­ing it was to­tal­ly false and fab­ri­cat­ed and chal­lenged oth­ers to pro­vide their ev­i­dence.Sec­onds af­ter the post was cre­at­ed, a re­ply was made by a teacher, iden­ti­fied as Nerukhi, who agreed to have the post quot­ed in the T&T Guardian.The teacher told the se­nior teacher, (name called): "I to­tal­ly un­der­stand your po­si­tion (be­ing in a sit­u­a­tion and see­ing it re­port­ed oth­er­wise)."Please, how­ev­er, kind­ly ex­cuse those of us that still ac­cept what we read in the news­pa­pers. It would be re­al­ly help­ful if the re­al facts were told or maybe a re­trac­tion of the sto­ry."How­ev­er, many of us have had ex­pe­ri­ences sim­i­lar to this one. Many of us have the bruis­es and scars from part­ing fights be­tween stu­dents, etc, and there­fore we can re­late. So please ex­cuse us."

TTUTA/NPTA con­cerned

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA), Zeena Ra­matali, said yes­ter­day that up­on at­tempts to get in touch with the school's PTA body, it was dis­cov­ered the school's PTA had for some un­fore­seen rea­son left the NPTA. She, how­ev­er, not­ed they were try­ing to have the school's PTA re­turned as a mem­ber of the NPTA."We are do­ing this be­cause we have found that, yes, the school has sev­er­al is­sues go­ing on and we are try­ing to get the PTA back on board," she added.

T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent De­vanand Sinanan when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted that the na­tion's teach­ers, not on­ly the ones at CWSS, are un­der siege.He said: "This is noth­ing new and unique. Teach­ers are fight­ing hard to deal with their com­plete break­down in dis­ci­pline among the pupils. The teach­ers' hands are tied legal­ly be­cause all the pupils can­not be searched just like that...so what can they re­al­ly do?"They are fear­ful for their per­son­al safe­ty. They are forced to work un­der duress and they al­so re­treat from per­form­ing their du­ties."The teach­ers are not to blame and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is not to blame. A lot of par­ents are not par­ent­ing prop­er­ly so there has been a break­down in the fab­ric of so­ci­ety. There is a com­plete break­down of law and or­der."He added there should be im­ple­men­ta­tion of coun­sel­ing and anger man­age­ment ses­sions for the en­tire pupil pop­u­la­tion.