Most young people making bookings with jailers and gravediggers are males. Absentee fathers and lack of positive role models are recurring topics in discussions about criminal behaviour, especially among male children. Some are born into female-headed households, go to nursery, primary, and secondary schools where most of the teachers are likely to be female, and if they enter the workplace, their supervisors are also likely to be women.
Globally, on average, about one-quarter of all families are headed by single mothers. The 2019 United Nations Report on Patterns and trends in household size and composition defined female heads of households as those that "do not have an adult male member." In sample countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, the median was 34 per cent. Across Europe, 35 per cent. In T & T (CSO 2011 data), the average is similar, 33 per cent.
In some cases, it’s a choice many women had made, and historically, billions of people had been nurtured by female breadwinners who’d raised them to live productive lifestyles. Admittedly, single-parent households are more vulnerable to social problems including exploitation and poverty, but it’s time to dis the gender-based cliché. The lack of male role models in the home isn’t going away, and increasing trends, including gender diversity, challenge the notion of what is a family. Those trends didn’t start yesterday. Policy planners should see the world for what it is and becoming.
Yes, parents and guardians have the responsibility for the upbringing of children. If some of them haven’t been educated and socialised to exercise that responsibility, then there must be external interventions. These interventions shouldn’t happen in isolation of established community and nation-building quality-of-life goals.
If we want to lessen the risks of high crime in the future, we must intervene meaningfully now, especially in communities where there are endemic problems of poverty, and intergenerational behaviours and habits hampering the healthy growth of children.
Thousands of children enter the secondary system unable to read. Why? Because health and development deficits and other severe problems hamper their growth. Do we have the relevant data to understand the depth of that problem and are there enough teachers certified in special education?
As to race and ethnicity, research-driven understandings of the structural processes for delivering equitable and quality education should guide curricular development. There’s a need to identify and reinforce positive perspectives of cultural identity within the syllabus. The history of our peoples didn’t start with slavery and indentureship, neither the history of our indigenous peoples one of savagery. As for religion, which plays a profound role in shaping beliefs, children of African descent don’t see angels, cherubs and saints in religious institutions that look like them. Well, maybe one sad-looking one. But other children see the beauty of themselves reflected in divine symbols and images. Do shapers of education policy understand the subliminal messages intended or unintended, that are imprinted in the subconscious and processed to affect self-image and self-esteem negatively or positively? Do they appreciate the scope of mental abuse and the impact of the education system failures?
Since the lack of positive male role models is considered a significant problem, then would recruitment strategies to engage a balanced cadre of qualified and highly-motivated male and female teachers be a viable response? Based on media stories, has anyone observed that most of the abusive student/teacher encounters appear to involve male students and female teachers?
Do boys and girls learn the same way? If we agree on that, then is the co-ed system a significant issue?
Let’s dispel the myth that the Secondary Entrance Assessment is a fair merit system. Fish don’t climb trees, eagles don’t walk on fours, and lions don’t flutter like hummingbirds? They are all beautiful and precious creatures in the balance of nature.
To satisfy the current and future needs of job markets, STEM-based education models—Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics—is receiving worldwide attention. Companies are already recruiting skills in robotics. Children as young as three years old navigate smartphones and computers. Toy robots thrill them. Technology-driven curricula provide phenomenal opportunities to engage otherwise bored students. How do we bring scientific creativity in the everyday lives of children from the primary stage, engaging them in a fun learning environment? What about technology-based schools in regional districts imbued with sports, art and music? Is a modified COSTAATT an answer?