Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA), Wal­ter Stew­art,  has con­demned the fight be­tween two moth­ers out­side Ce­dros Sec­ondary School which has gone vi­ral on so­cial me­dia.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the school called the par­ents on Mon­day to ad­dress a bul­ly­ing is­sue in­volv­ing their chil­dren. One par­ent be­came ag­gres­sive and had to leave the com­pound.

As the oth­er par­ent ex­it­ed the school, the women ex­changed words that es­ca­lat­ed in­to vi­o­lence in front of stu­dents. In two short video clips, last­ing 41 sec­onds and 13 sec­onds, both women were bare­foot, pulling each oth­er’s hair, with one of them on the ground. One of them wield­ed a cut­lass and used it to beat the oth­er woman, who sus­tained in­juries. At one point, one woman held both the cut­lass and a glass bot­tle, which even­tu­al­ly fell to the ground and broke.

A fe­male stu­dent at­tempt­ed to in­ter­vene but a man stopped her, hav­ing tried to part the fight. He al­so in­ter­vened when an­oth­er man tried to at­tack one of the women with a car jack.

Stew­art said what was more rep­re­hen­si­ble was that the daugh­ter of one of the women ap­peared to be in the midst as some­one was heard say­ing, “Mum­my, mum­my.” He called for the par­ents to be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions.

“Now be­sides the in­volve­ment of law en­force­ment be­cause of the fight and the use of a weapon, we strong­ly want to ad­vo­cate that law en­force­ment in­ves­ti­gates this mat­ter ur­gent­ly and seeks to make ar­rests where pos­si­ble,” he said.

He ques­tioned what ex­am­ple they were set­ting for their chil­dren and what had trig­gered the vi­o­lent out­burst. “This is to­tal­ly, to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able. We de­nounce it in the strongest terms and we want our par­ents to en­sure that they see them­selves as ex­em­plars, as role mod­els to their chil­dren, to their charges and at all times to con­duct them­selves in the man­ner be­fit­ting of prop­er and ac­cept­able par­ent­ing.”

Stew­art said this was al­so an op­por­tune time for par­ents to look at their abil­i­ty to deal and re­solve con­flict in an am­i­ca­ble way. He was al­so con­cerned that such be­hav­iour was spilling over in­to schools. “Hence, this is al­so spilling over in­to our schools. The rea­sons the schools are in this man­ner is be­cause of acts of vi­o­lence and in­de­cen­cy sim­i­lar to what we have seen in that video. It is al­most as though mon­key see, mon­key do.”

He said chil­dren are play­ing out what they see in their homes, in so­ci­ety, in com­mu­ni­ties, and the na­tion, among their peers in schools, re­sult­ing in school in­dis­ci­pline and vi­o­lence. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that one of the par­ents sought med­ical treat­ment at Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal, while the oth­er par­ent made a re­port at Ce­dros Po­lice Sta­tion.

Ce­dros po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.