Fol­low­ing the re­cent spate of vi­o­lent in­ci­dents in­volv­ing school­child­ren, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said the re­vised Na­tion­al School Code of Con­duct would be “a crit­i­cal tool in pro­mot­ing dis­ci­pline, ac­count­abil­i­ty, stu­dent sup­port and safer school en­vi­ron­ments.”

A sim­i­lar promise was made by then ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia when he launched the 2018 Code of Con­duct.

Dr Dowlath added that his code’s “suc­cess is strongest when com­bined with parental in­volve­ment, coun­selling ser­vices, com­mu­ni­ty sup­port and pos­i­tive school lead­er­ship.”

Dowlath al­so re­leased da­ta show­ing an in­crease in class­room dis­rup­tions and a re­duc­tion in dis­rup­tions out­side the class­room. This may re­flect grow­ing dis­re­spect for teach­ers or an in­abil­i­ty, or un­will­ing­ness, of teach­ers to main­tain class­room dis­ci­pline. In the past, teach­ers have been threat­ened and at­tacked by chil­dren of gang mem­bers who felt un­touch­able.

I was hor­ri­fied when I saw al­der­man Wayne Grif­fith be­ing as­sault­ed by school stu­dents. He was car­ry­ing out his civic du­ty in at­tempt­ing to stop a fight.

In March, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar called for stricter dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures, in­clud­ing ex­pul­sions, and urged par­ents “to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their chil­dren’s be­hav­iour and find some al­ter­na­tive for them to do if they can’t be­have ap­pro­pri­ate­ly at school.”

Way back in June 2001, af­ter 17-year-old Waynisha Williams was fa­tal­ly stabbed by a 15-year-old boy, then ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar ap­proved the in­stal­la­tion of met­al de­tec­tors in schools. The na­tion­al teach­ers’ union wel­comed the mea­sure, while se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers called for even tougher ac­tion, in­clud­ing be­ing equipped with tasers.

Then in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Dr Ramesh De­osaran de­scribed the move as a “pan­ic re­sponse” that would place a “metal­lic stig­ma” on af­fect­ed schools. In­stead, he called for com­mu­ni­ty po­lice to be in­te­grat­ed in­to school boards. The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce al­so weighed in, de­clar­ing: “Enough of the Del­i­cate Do­ra ap­proach. The fu­ture of our chil­dren and coun­try are in your hands. Take off the kid gloves now and face re­al­i­ty.”

Twen­ty-five years lat­er, the ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter of that era is now Prime Min­is­ter. Her pre-elec­tion rhetoric sug­gest­ed she had in­deed tak­en off the kid gloves, not on­ly in deal­ing with delin­quent chil­dren but al­so hard­ened crim­i­nals who wreak hav­oc on so­ci­ety.

Firm­ly con­fronting hard­ened crim­i­nals with the full force of the law can have a psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fect on youths by re­in­forc­ing the mes­sage that crime does not pay. How­ev­er, our low homi­cide de­tec­tion and con­vic­tion rates leave much to be de­sired.

Thanks to Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, we now have more judges in the High Court, but the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions must al­so be strength­ened with ad­di­tion­al staff, se­cure ev­i­dence man­age­ment, wit­ness pro­tec­tion and prop­er case mon­i­tor­ing to iden­ti­fy sys­temic fail­ures.

At the launch of the School Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Ini­tia­tive, which de­ploys Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice Of­fi­cers across 50 schools, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said: “Par­ents want to see their chil­dren in­side of a safe en­vi­ron­ment where they would not be bul­lied, ex­tort­ed or beat­en on a dai­ly ba­sis.”

The school en­vi­ron­ment is crit­i­cal. Schools of­ten com­pen­sate for the fail­ures of dys­func­tion­al and im­pov­er­ished homes marked by ab­sent fa­thers, drug abuse and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. The ethos of the school must stand in con­trast to the de­struc­tive in­flu­ences of so­ci­ety. So­cial ser­vices al­so play a crit­i­cal role in as­sist­ing fam­i­lies fac­ing eco­nom­ic hard­ship.

Pre­vi­ous ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ters at­tempt­ed var­i­ous ini­tia­tives to ad­dress the prob­lem. Hazel Man­ning in­tro­duced the Vi­o­lence Pre­ven­tion Acad­e­my and pushed for stu­dent sup­port ser­vices.

Tim Gopeesingh recog­nised the im­por­tance of preschools in eas­ing the bur­den on par­ents, par­tic­u­lar­ly sin­gle moth­ers with nowhere to leave their chil­dren. Ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion fur­ther pro­vid­ed ear­ly in­sight in­to dys­func­tion­al home en­vi­ron­ments. He al­so in­tro­duced spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers to pro­vide in­di­vid­u­alised at­ten­tion for stu­dents and sup­port over­worked teach­ers.

An­tho­ny Gar­cia, while serv­ing as T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, joint­ly host­ed the Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on Vi­o­lence and In­dis­ci­pline in Schools with Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Clive Pan­tin, who had pre­vi­ous­ly banned al­co­hol use in schools af­ter stud­ies linked it to delin­quen­cy and crime. To­day, how­ev­er, ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions of­ten send mixed mes­sages to youths through all-in­clu­sive Car­ni­val fetes.

Gar­cia lat­er be­came ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter and pushed for learn­ing en­hance­ment cen­tres for delin­quent stu­dents.

Min­is­ters are con­stant­ly play­ing catch-up as so­ci­ety changes. Chil­dren are ma­tur­ing ear­li­er, and so­cial me­dia is re­shap­ing young minds. My role mod­els and in­flu­encers were Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi and Mar­tin Luther King Jr. To­day’s in­flu­encers are Prince Swan­ny and IShowSpeed. AI has be­come their new ad­vi­sor.

While Dr Dowlath faces many of the same chal­lenges as his pre­de­ces­sors, he must now con­front a new re­al­i­ty: a gen­er­a­tion of young peo­ple shaped by Tik­Tok and the wider in­flu­ence of so­cial me­dia.