Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

In an era dom­i­nat­ed by ab­bre­vi­at­ed lan­guage like ‘LOL’—Laugh­ing Out Loud—for­mer Na­pari­ma Col­lege prin­ci­pal Dr Michael Dowlath warns that over-re­liance on tex­ting is stunt­ing stu­dents’ com­mu­ni­ca­tion abil­i­ties, a crit­i­cal skill for em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty in to­day’s job mar­ket.

Speak­ing at the UNC’s ed­u­ca­tion con­sul­ta­tion on Mon­day at Na­pari­ma Col­lege, Dowlath stressed the ur­gent need for schools to fo­cus not on­ly on in­tel­lec­tu­al and tech­ni­cal skills but al­so on de­vel­op­ing well-round­ed, so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble in­di­vid­u­als with re­al-world skills.

He al­so ad­vo­cat­ed for men­tal health ser­vices in all schools and the re­turn of the Stu­dents Coun­selling Hot­line to as­sist stu­dents fac­ing bul­ly­ing.

Dowlath and Princes Town at­tor­ney Shi­va Bal­lyram were the UNC’s pre­sen­ters for the con­sul­ta­tion. They spoke on cur­ricu­lum im­prove­ment, bul­ly­ing, and tech­nol­o­gy. Bal­lyram said UNC MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Bar­ry Padarath asked him to speak.

“In schools, we re­alise many of our grad­u­ates lack the skillset to be em­ployed. Our young peo­ple get so in­volved in tex­ting in these ab­bre­vi­at­ed ‘LOL’ and things like that, that their com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills are trun­cat­ed and stunt­ed. So when they have to dis­cuss an idea, some­times they don’t know how to speak,” he said, adding youths have to learn to com­mu­ni­cate, be col­lab­o­ra­tive, and have job mar­ket rel­e­vance.

Dowlath shared rec­om­men­da­tions to curb bul­ly­ing, which he said came from con­ver­sa­tions he had with school prin­ci­pals.

These in­clud­ed, he said, “school su­per­vi­sors speak­ing to par­ents on the con­se­quences of stu­dent bul­ly­ing and hav­ing con­tracts with par­ents for a code of con­duct with stu­dents. Al­so in­clud­ing the be­hav­iour of par­ents with a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy for in­dis­ci­pline, vi­o­lence and bul­ly­ing. Be­cause we have par­ents leav­ing meet­ings, go­ing out­side and planass­ing oth­er par­ents and fight­ing.”

Bal­lyram said he didn’t know if the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment’s Na­tion­al Stu­dents’ con­fi­den­tial coun­selling Hot­line was work­ing.

“Maybe if it was, the young man from St Stephen’s Col­lege would have been alive,” Bal­lyram added.

Dowlath called for com­pre­hen­sive men­tal health ser­vices in every school and a hot­line,” Many stu­dents are afraid to talk to their teach­ers or friends. They need some­one who’s in­de­pen­dent and they know they can trust. We al­so must have these an­ti-bul­ly­ing cam­paigns to in­crease aware­ness to su­per high lev­els.” Al­so rec­om­mend­ed was open­ing spe­cialised cen­tres in each ed­u­ca­tion dis­trict with guid­ance of­fi­cers, spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion per­son­nel, a TTPS of­fi­cer and so­cial work­ers to deal with dis­turbed/sus­pend­ed chil­dren. A fur­ther rec­om­men­da­tion was for the PP pol­i­cy on af­ter-school/home­work cen­tres staffed by re­tired teach­ers and peo­ple from the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s mer­it list await­ing jobs.

Dowlath al­so cit­ed rein­tro­duc­ing the Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice and func­tion­ing Child Pro­tec­tion Unit.

For­mer school prin­ci­pal Ro­ma Achat-Saney, who was in the au­di­ence, said the “tax­ing “ of busi­ness­es by el­e­ments be­gan in pri­ma­ry schools since some “lit­tle boys and lit­tle girls” tax oth­ers to go to the toi­let.

“It starts from age six, sev­en, eight, nine. If we don’t curb it, we’re turn­ing them in­to crim­i­nals when they get old­er,” she added.

So­cial me­dia in­flu­encer Brins­ley “Giz­mo” Mcken­zie, 20, called for job op­por­tu­ni­ties in T&T. He de­tailed his gru­elling sched­ule of work­ing shifts in the oil/gas sec­tor while at­tend­ing school to help his fam­i­ly.

PEP leader Phillip Alexan­der re­it­er­at­ed sup­port for UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He re­quest­ed abol­ish­ing home­work for stu­dents to al­low chil­dren to be chil­dren and al­so spoke about end­ing the SEA once and for all. Con­sul­tant Beni­son Jages­sar said Per­sad-Bisses­sar should, like US Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump, give “ex­ec­u­tive or­ders” like re­turn­ing the Bible to schools. Ali­cia Ali, dressed in Mus­lim wear, said she’d ”just crossed the floor” and is a UNC mem­ber. Ali added.

“In 2025 if I get to be­come a gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date for this par­ty the PNM will be cry­ing -all we’ll have to do is to buy pig­tail buck­ets for them to wipe up the tears.”