Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) is call­ing for a bal­ance be­tween dis­ci­pline and sup­port af­ter four school­boys were pub­licly filmed apol­o­gis­ing for fight­ing on the first day of the new school term.

NPTA pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art said stu­dents must un­der­stand that there are con­se­quences for their ac­tions, but dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures should fo­cus on cor­rec­tion and restora­tion rather than pub­lic hu­mil­i­a­tion.

“Stu­dents have to re­alise that there are con­se­quences for their ac­tion,” Stew­art said while ap­pear­ing on The Morn­ing Brew on CNC3 Tele­vi­sion yes­ter­day.

He said while wrong­do­ing must at­tract pun­ish­ment, stu­dents al­so need sup­port to ad­dress the rea­sons be­hind their be­hav­iour.

“Dis­ci­pline should al­ways be in col­lab­o­ra­tion with some kind of sup­port as well, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly pub­lic hu­mil­i­a­tion,” Stew­art said.

The video of the boys apol­o­gis­ing cir­cu­lat­ed wide­ly on so­cial me­dia, af­ter they were filmed fight­ing in their school uni­forms on the first day of school.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has said it did not sanc­tion the pub­lic apol­o­gy.

Stew­art said the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the apol­o­gy should be ex­am­ined, par­tic­u­lar­ly if the in­ten­tion was to pub­licly shame the stu­dents.

“If at all the in­tent was to bring on pub­lic shame and hu­mil­i­a­tion on the boys, I don’t think that should have been the in­tent at all,” he said.

Stew­art said the boys had al­ready been sus­pend­ed and were re­port­ing to the San­gre Grande Sus­pen­sion Cen­tre, and he be­lieves there should be con­tin­u­ous fol­low-up and sup­port.

He said more at­ten­tion must be paid to the root caus­es of in­dis­ci­pline among stu­dents.

“What is the root cause? I keep say­ing this all the time,” Stew­art said.

“On­ly if we get back to the gen­e­sis of why these boys are re­act­ing and be­hav­ing this way, that we are go­ing to be able to give them the req­ui­site sup­port that they need in or­der to bring them back from the brink.”

Stew­art said school so­cial work­ers and guid­ance coun­sel­lors have an im­por­tant role to play in ad­dress­ing such be­hav­iour.

He al­so re­newed his call for the con­tracts of school so­cial work­ers and guid­ance coun­sel­lors to be ad­dressed, say­ing their roles are crit­i­cal in deal­ing with in­dis­ci­pline in schools.

“We need to be able to as­sist in in­stances like these when we have these kinds of in­ter­ac­tions in our schools,” he said.

Stew­art said sup­port should be­gin from the ear­ly stages of a child’s ed­u­ca­tion, with so­cial work­ers and guid­ance per­son­nel work­ing with par­ents and schools on in­dis­ci­pline from the out­set.

He al­so called for con­sul­ta­tion among stake­hold­ers to de­ter­mine how pub­lic apolo­gies should be han­dled in schools.

The NPTA pres­i­dent said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s po­si­tion that it did not sup­port the apol­o­gy raised ques­tions about who au­tho­rised the video.

“Where did this come from then? Did the school ad­min­is­tra­tion de­cide on its very own to go pub­lic with this?” he asked.

Stew­art said the mat­ter should be dis­cussed among stake­hold­ers to de­ter­mine whether pub­lic apolo­gies should be­come an ac­cept­ed dis­ci­pli­nary prac­tice.

He said the NPTA ex­ec­u­tive, along with its gen­er­al coun­sel, would meet to dis­cuss the is­sue and make a pub­lic state­ment.

“We will def­i­nite­ly meet and make a pub­lic state­ment on this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter,” Stew­art said.

While Stew­art ques­tioned the use of pub­lic hu­mil­i­a­tion, he ac­knowl­edged that an apol­o­gy could have a place in the dis­ci­pli­nary process if it re­flect­ed gen­uine recog­ni­tion of wrong­do­ing and a de­sire to change.

He said the boys had al­ready faced pub­lic em­bar­rass­ment af­ter footage of their fight went vi­ral.

“The apol­o­gy, I am all for it,” he said.

Stew­art said he hoped the in­ci­dent would cause oth­er stu­dents to think twice be­fore en­gag­ing in sim­i­lar be­hav­iour, while stress­ing the im­por­tance of lis­ten­ing to dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on the is­sue.

He said the NPTA would con­tin­ue to ex­am­ine the mat­ter be­fore tak­ing a for­mal po­si­tion on whether the pub­lic apol­o­gy should be­come a prece­dent.