Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der yes­ter­day urged par­ents and their chil­dren to en­ter the new school term with a re­newed sense of pur­pose to make the most of their ed­u­ca­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter at­tend­ing an in­ter-faith ser­vice com­mem­o­rat­ing the St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary School’s 50th an­niver­sary, Alexan­der said par­ents had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to take con­trol of their chil­dren even be­fore they en­tered school by in­still­ing dis­ci­pline.

He stressed that par­ents of way­ward chil­dren should re­mem­ber that schools were not day­care cen­tres for chil­dren, as they too should step up and do their part in quelling an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour from home.

“When you take charge of your chil­dren, you’ll be tak­ing charge of their fu­ture. Don’t come and drop off your chil­dren as if this is a day­care cen­tre for 15 and 16-year-olds. This isn’t a kinder­garten... teach them the right thing at home, things like re­spect, dis­ci­pline and tol­er­ance,” Alexan­der said.

“Teach them these things at home and then drop them off at school where it can be re­in­forced, but don’t just leave it to the teach­ers be­cause you don’t pro­vide that en­vi­ron­ment at home.”

Alexan­der al­so warned trou­ble­some youths that in­dis­ci­pline would not be tol­er­at­ed by school of­fi­cials for the new aca­d­e­m­ic term.

Re­fer­ring to his ex­pe­ri­ence as a po­lice­man, in see­ing the tran­si­tion from delin­quen­cy to crim­i­nal­i­ty, Alexan­der said prop­er guid­ance and sup­port were nec­es­sary to steer chil­dren away from the dan­gers of crime.

“Think about your fu­ture, un­less you came here to live fast and die young, the next choice is yours. But if you came here to have a fu­ture, we en­cour­age you. At the end of the day the choice is yours, if ed­u­ca­tion comes ac­cept it.”

Dur­ing his ad­dress, Alexan­der urged stu­dents to fo­cus their en­er­gies on their aca­d­e­mics in­stead of so­cial me­dia, not­ing that while some young peo­ple sought pop­u­lar­i­ty through “likes” and “views,” this meant noth­ing com­pared to a good ed­u­ca­tion.

While at the school yes­ter­day, sev­er­al par­ents were seen walk­ing their chil­dren to the gates as MTS se­cu­ri­ty guards and an armed po­lice of­fi­cer greet­ed them on en­try.

Par­ent Sean Sankar said while he was ex­cit­ed that his daugh­ter was en­ter­ing Form Two, he felt at ease know­ing po­lice of­fi­cers were as­signed to the school. He said he felt hav­ing po­lice on the com­pound through­out the day would en­cour­age stu­dents to be on their best be­hav­iour.

“The chil­dren, nat­u­ral­ly, when they see them (the po­lice), they may be in­tim­i­dat­ed a bit, so that they can cool them­selves and stop get­ting on so row­dy.”

The of­fi­cers are as­signed to the guard booth and will pa­trol the school grounds dur­ing class time.

One fa­ther of a Form Two South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary School stu­dent, Mau­rice De Sil­va, said the ini­tia­tive would en­sure high­er se­cu­ri­ty on and off the com­pound, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the lo­ca­tion of the school on Nel­son Street.

“Some chil­dren may see the guns and be fright­ened... even though they know it’s a po­lice of­fi­cer with the gun they may be fright­ened, but I’m glad that the of­fi­cers are here, es­pe­cial­ly in this area,” he said.

Ven­dor Cur­tis James, who has sold chow out­side the school for ten years, said while he was con­fi­dent the po­lice would quell fights and bul­ly­ing, the in­ci­dents usu­al­ly in­volved large groups of chil­dren and he ques­tioned whether a few of­fi­cers would be enough to main­tain or­der.

“Most of the fights hap­pen in large groups, it de­pends on if they can han­dle a group, teach­ers might part a fight and things es­ca­late, but I think they can cool it down.”

Mom of at­tacked stu­dent hopes for change

Mean­while, the par­ent of a 16-year-old stu­dent who was at­tacked says she is dis­ap­point­ed no charges have been laid against her son’s at­tack­ers. How­ev­er, she says she is hope­ful that as­sign­ing po­lice of­fi­cers to sec­ondary schools will be enough to pre­vent at­tacks against oth­er chil­dren.

The woman, who asked not to be named, said she felt the ini­tia­tive, which seeks to ad­dress bul­ly­ing and as­saults on and off school com­pounds, was over­due in tak­ing a firm stance against school in­dis­ci­pline.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, the woman said her son, who re­turned to school as a Form Five stu­dent yes­ter­day, al­so felt at ease with ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty on the com­pound.

“He wasn’t bad­ly in­jured or any­thing. He suf­fered headaches and was a bit shak­en af­ter the beat­ing, but he was in oth­er­wise good health.

“Still, this isn’t some­thing any par­ent wants to go through. At least with po­lice there, I know they can take charge of the sit­u­a­tion and let them (undis­ci­plined stu­dents) know this is se­ri­ous.”

The woman said de­spite fil­ing an of­fi­cial po­lice re­port and shar­ing a video of the as­sault with po­lice, of­fi­cers claimed they were un­able to clear­ly iden­ti­fy the at­tack­ers from the footage.

“They kept say­ing they couldn’t make out the chil­dren who were beat­ing him. I’m not pleased with how they deal with this. I felt like they could have done more, but it hap­pened al­ready and I am hop­ing they stop this from hap­pen­ing more of­ten.”