Bo­bie-lee Dixon

"Lit­tle girls must be seen and not heard!" What­ev­er hap­pened to that say­ing? Ev­i­dent­ly in this era, that adage is com­plete­ly ig­nored by most. Hav­ing had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to view the live im­ages of the most re­cent case of young girls be­hav­ing dis­turbing­ly out of or­der in the Barataria Sec­ondary School fra­cas, one thing came to mind-sec­ondary school stu­dents should be se­vere­ly dealt with for any mis­con­duct or vi­o­lent act, as their be­hav­iours con­tin­ue to give schools a bad name. The video post­ed on the pop­u­lar so­cial net­work–Face­book, showed the fright­en­ing re­al­i­ty of what some stu­dents are faced with re­gard­ing school vi­o­lence. In what seemed like an un­pro­voked sit­u­a­tion, a stu­dent was at­tacked by two of her col­leagues and what ap­peared to be an adult fe­male. The girl was beat­en-cuffed and kicked by one of the girls and the adult woman, as she lay in a drain in­to which she fell try­ing to es­cape her at­tack­ers. While this un­called for and ill act was in progress, oth­er stu­dents were heard cheer­ing on the al­leged per­pe­tra­tors to con­tin­ue beat­ing the girl.

"Yes, beat up she #@*," was one of the com­ments heard, while oth­ers just stood around watch­ing the en­tire event from be­gin­ning to end. No one in­ter­vened to put a stop to what could have turned in­to a trag­ic event. The video im­me­di­ate­ly sparked out­rage among many par­ents and even the gen­er­al pub­lic. The vic­tim was al­so in­ter­viewed on Crime Watch, and gave an ac­count of her un­for­tu­nate at­tack. The sit­u­a­tion is now be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the po­lice. Ac­cord­ing to the prin­ci­pal of the school, as far as dis­ci­plin­ing the stu­dents was con­cerned, the mat­ter was out of his hands as the stu­dents had com­plet­ed the CXC ex­am­i­na­tions on that very day, mak­ing them no longer at­tached to the school. He added that all he could do was ban the stu­dents from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the school's grad­u­a­tion cel­e­bra­tion and re­frain from is­su­ing any form of rec­om­men­da­tion to them.

Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion pre­pared to deal with school vi­o­lence

On the is­sue of school vi­o­lence, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said it was work­ing on a se­ries of ini­tia­tives to curb acts of vi­o­lence in schools. Ac­cord­ing to me­dia co-or­di­na­tor, Yolan­da Morales Car­val­ho, the Min­istry was in the process of re­vis­ing all rec­om­men­da­tions and poli­cies made in the past re­gard­ing vi­o­lence and mis­con­duct in schools. "We are work­ing on an aware­ness cam­paign geared to­wards sec­ondary schools at the mo­ment –The Na­tion­al Code of Con­duct. This pol­i­cy al­ready ex­ist­ed but it is go­ing to be reprint­ed and dis­trib­uted to all schools for the new term," dis­closed Car­val­ho. "The pol­i­cy is look­ing at the re­train­ing of prin­ci­pals, deans and all school per­son­nel who has to deal with and en­force dis­ci­pline."

Car­val­ho said the Min­istry had al­so es­tab­lished a dif­fer­ent ini­tia­tive-The Task Force on School Vi­o­lence. She ex­plained that dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing mem­bers of TTUTA, PTA, the Prin­ci­pals As­so­ci­a­tion, mem­bers of the De­nom­i­na­tion­al Board, and Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices, chaired by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Min­is­ter Clifton De­Coteau, were all in­volved in the de­vel­op­ment of this ini­tia­tive. "The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to­tal­ly re­jects these neg­a­tive im­ages of stu­dents. Mis­con­duct and vi­o­lence in schools will not be tol­er­at­ed, and the Min­istry, through our plans and up­com­ing projects and pro­grammes, will make sure that vi­o­lence reach­es the point of non-ex­is­tence in schools.