Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh

A few months ago, I was in France en­joy­ing what the coun­try does ex­cep­tion­al­ly well — its food, cul­ture and its way of mak­ing even a sim­ple meal feel like an ex­pe­ri­ence.

I re­mem­ber the smell of a fresh­ly baked crois­sant, rich with but­ter, as I walked through the streets. There were baguettes, mac­arons, nougat and kouign-amann — that won­der­ful­ly in­dul­gent pas­try made with flour, sug­ar and an ex­tra­or­di­nary amount of but­ter. I even ac­quired a taste for choco­late mousse with a lit­tle olive oil and a pinch of sea salt.

I was en­joy­ing France as a vis­i­tor. I saw the beau­ty, his­to­ry, food and so­phis­ti­ca­tion of the coun­try.

What I did not see was the frus­tra­tion that was ap­par­ent­ly sim­mer­ing be­neath the sur­face among many of its young peo­ple.

To­day, the im­ages com­ing out of France are fright­en­ing­ly dif­fer­ent.

French stu­dents have been protest­ing over over­crowd­ed class­rooms, teacher short­ages, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing school build­ings and in­ad­e­quate fa­cil­i­ties. Some schools re­port­ed­ly lack ba­sic items such as desks and chairs. Oth­ers have class­rooms that be­come un­bear­ably hot, while there have al­so been re­ports of rat in­fes­ta­tions.

Stu­dents have com­plained about ex­haust­ing work­loads and long com­pul­so­ry class­room hours. The protests have spread from sec­ondary schools to uni­ver­si­ties, with block­ades, demon­stra­tions and clash­es with po­lice.

There have been ar­rests, in­juries, tear gas and se­ri­ous con­fronta­tions.

Most dis­turb­ing is the re­port of a 15-year-old stu­dent who lost his hand on Mon­day from a ri­ot-con­trol grenade.

What­ev­er one’s po­lit­i­cal po­si­tion, that is a fright­en­ing sit­u­a­tion. And it made me think about Trinidad and To­ba­go.

We hear of some schools hav­ing prob­lems with leak­ing roofs, pi­geon in­fes­ta­tion, perime­ter breach­es and oth­er main­te­nance con­cerns.

But some­times I won­der whether we ap­pre­ci­ate how for­tu­nate we are when we look at the prob­lems else­where.

In T&T, a school re­quir­ing re­pairs can be­come the sub­ject of a po­lit­i­cal tit-for-tat.

The Op­po­si­tion may ac­cuse the Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing to re­pair a school on time. The Gov­ern­ment may re­spond by point­ing to what has al­ready been re­paired or ac­cuse the Op­po­si­tion of fail­ing to al­le­vi­ate the prob­lems when they oc­cu­pied of­fice.

Of course, schools must be prop­er­ly main­tained. Our chil­dren de­serve safe, com­fort­able and ap­pro­pri­ate learn­ing en­vi­ron­ments. There should be ac­count­abil­i­ty when re­pairs are de­layed, and gov­ern­ments should not re­ceive praise for sim­ply do­ing what they are sup­posed to do.

But per­haps we al­so need some per­spec­tive.

A leak­ing roof or a school in need of mi­nor re­pairs is a prob­lem. It should be fixed.

But imag­ine be­ing a young stu­dent in a coun­try where the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem it­self has be­come the cen­tre of wide­spread so­cial un­rest — where over­crowd­ing, teacher short­ages, in­ad­e­quate fa­cil­i­ties and frus­tra­tion have con­tributed to thou­sands of young peo­ple tak­ing to the streets.

There is a dif­fer­ence be­tween hav­ing prob­lems and hav­ing prob­lems that be­come a na­tion­al cri­sis.

We should not min­imise our short­com­ings. We should de­mand bet­ter. Our chil­dren de­serve schools that are prop­er­ly main­tained, teach­ers who are ad­e­quate­ly sup­port­ed and an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that pre­pares them for the fu­ture.

But per­haps we should al­so learn to recog­nise our bless­ings.

When I vis­it­ed France, I was en­joy­ing the food, ar­chi­tec­ture and cul­ture. I did not re­alise that be­neath the sur­face, sig­nif­i­cant frus­tra­tion among young peo­ple was build­ing.

It re­mind­ed me that a coun­try’s prob­lems are not al­ways vis­i­ble to the vis­i­tor.

We too have frus­tra­tions that some­times dom­i­nate our na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion. But we should be care­ful not to al­low every is­sue to be­come an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal bat­tle.

A school needs re­pairs? Re­pair it. If the work is de­layed, find out why. If mon­ey is wast­ed, hold some­one ac­count­able. If the work is com­plet­ed, let us sim­ply ac­knowl­edge that our chil­dren now have a bet­ter en­vi­ron­ment in which to learn. It should not al­ways be about which po­lit­i­cal side gets the cred­it. Our chil­dren should be the win­ners.

France is a re­minder that pros­per­ous, de­vel­oped and cul­tur­al­ly ad­mired coun­tries can still face se­ri­ous so­cial prob­lems. Beau­ti­ful streets, mag­nif­i­cent build­ings and ex­tra­or­di­nary food do not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly mean every­thing be­neath the sur­face is work­ing per­fect­ly.

And T&T, de­spite our very re­al chal­lenges, has much for which we should be grate­ful.

We have prob­lems to solve — but we al­so have bless­ings to pro­tect.

Per­haps be­fore we com­plain about every in­con­ve­nience, en­gage in an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal tit-for-tat or ar­gue about who re­paired a school, we should oc­ca­sion­al­ly stop and look around.

We may dis­cov­er that, com­pared with the strug­gles fac­ing young peo­ple else­where, we are luck­i­er than we some­times re­alise.