Our first PM, Dr Er­ic Williams un­equiv­o­cal­ly told his young coun­try that the key out of a bru­tal colo­nial past to­wards soar­ing pros­per­i­ty and heal­ing was in our chil­dren's school­bags; hence free ed­u­ca­tion, free school lunch­es, tech­ni­cal schools for the non-aca­d­e­m­ic, UWI schol­ar­ships.

How Williams must have rolled in his grave when, last year, a stray bul­let was fired from a gun by men in­volved in gang war­fare grazed a wall in a class­room.

Too much oil and cash be­fore we de­vel­oped tools to gov­ern our­selves led to vo­ra­cious greed from the top, an in­abil­i­ty to live with­out noise (guns, drugs, fetes, elec­tron­ics) di­vert­ed us. In 2020 thou­sands of chil­dren and adults are func­tion­al­ly il­lit­er­ate, 25,000 men be­long to 250 gangs in POS alone.

In­creas­ing­ly gov­ern­ment schools are turn­ing in­to a mi­cro­cosm of shat­tered com­mu­ni­ties con­trolled by gang lead­ers who ush­ered in an­oth­er mur­der­ous year by spray­ing rounds from ubiq­ui­tous ma­chine guns, care­less of their own lives and that of the peo­ple they kill.

The fol­low­ing is a first-per­son ac­count of a teacher who fears for her life at the school where she teach­es, which re­sem­bles a war zone rather than a work­place:

"The vi­o­lence to­wards teach­ers in this school start­ed last Oc­to­ber af­ter a stu­dent pushed the teacher against the wall and hit him. The stu­dent was sus­pend­ed, not ex­pelled. There were no con­se­quences. This lack of con­se­quences opened the flood­gates to gang war­fare with­in school walls.

"Gang mem­bers in the area be­gan throw­ing mar­i­jua­na, knives, al­co­hol over the ten-foot wall for stu­dents. A man ran in, bare­backed and at­tacked a young boy on the school com­pound. A stu­dent was found with a litre of gaso­line in his bag. Stu­dent wit­ness­es are threat­ened and as­sault­ed and shut up.

"They be­gan throw­ing mis­siles at teach­ers, drench­ing us with bot­tles of urine and wa­ter, walk­ing around the school in cir­cles with weapons and il­le­gal drugs, van­dal­is­ing teach­ers' cars, van­dal­is­ing the staffroom.

"They drew gang graf­fi­ti over the school walls, desks, staffroom, "Ras­ta City," "Kill a Reg­u­lar Ras­ta (KRR)," "Mus­lims". There are fre­quent skir­mish­es be­tween stu­dents be­long­ing to the gangs be­cause this per­son is Mus­lim, we from town and they are from Y or C Trace.

"The stu­dents who ter­rorise us like this make up on­ly five per cent of the school, but they poi­son every­one, with fear, and paral­yse learn­ing.

"Since Oc­to­ber we have for­mal­ly made 60 re­ports about neg­a­tive dis­re­spect­ful be­hav­iour to so­cial work­ers and stu­dent sup­port ser­vice. Noth­ing was done. Child laws pre­vent the po­lice from deal­ing with them.

"The young of­fend­ers/crim­i­nals are deal­ing with pover­ty, ne­glect, liv­ing in im­pov­er­ished con­di­tions, with­out a prop­er uni­form or shoes; chil­dren who have mat­ters in fam­i­ly court, abu­sive fa­thers and step­fa­thers; aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly chal­lenged stu­dents who start sec­ondary school with 30 per cent marks in com­mon en­trance. Their par­ents can't help be­cause they are work­ing, tired and with­out job se­cu­ri­ty. If they take re­peat­ed leave to deal with their chil­dren, they can get fired. Some don't care. They are try­ing to sur­vive.

"Teach­ers are ex­pect­ed to shoul­der it all and teach these dam­aged chil­dren all the sub­jects of the cur­ricu­lum when they can bare­ly func­tion.

"The Ju­nior Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter vis­it­ed my school and as­sured teach­ers that the min­istry would build a guard booth, raise the school walls, in­crease se­cu­ri­ty, up­grade the school from ju­nior sec fa­cil­i­ties to the five-year school (which it is now) with a lab and com­put­ers, fix the roof, and wall, deal with the snake and rat in­fes­ta­tion, but noth­ing was done. Fund­ing was cut.

"Every­one who has a school-go­ing child ex­pects their child to come home af­ter 2.30, safe. If the child is harmed, the first ques­tion asked is where the teacher was. The min­istry must bring in so­cial work­ers to deal with chil­dren pos­ing a threat to every­body's se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty, in­clud­ing their own. As a coun­try, we need to stand with teach­ers tak­ing care of the na­tion's chil­dren.

"All teach­ers are ask­ing for is a safe work­ing en­vi­ron­ment. Every­thing that goes wrong with the chil­dren is an echo of what is wrong with the coun­try. Schools are a mi­cro­cosm of our coun­try which is cur­rent­ly held hostage by crime and guns. If you fix the schools, you fix the coun­try. We are ap­peal­ing to the pow­ers that be to do what is right by stu­dents and teach­ers."

A T&T teacher's plight and plea as told to Ira Math­ur.