This link–www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=382982838477459–will take online readers to a cellphone recording of a fight in a classroom in a secondary school. The link was live as of Sunday, but I saw a bit of it on one of the weekend news shows, which reported the police were "looking into it," so it might have since been removed.
If it's gone, and for readers of the Guardian, the scene is as follows: two boys, in their early teens, are fighting. The shorter one (S) is apparently the aggressor, and the taller one (T) is the object of the aggression.Most of the blows are landed by S. T is defending, but not fighting back. He stands his ground, but he does attempt to walk away.As T does this, S throws a final cuff at his head.
At this point, T stops, rummages in his bag and produces a small knife, which looks like a kitchen knife. He then shows the knife to S, who grabs the knife hand and they wrestle for a while.No one gets stabbed, and the incident ends with T retreating to a wall. There are probably 15 other boys in the classroom.While all this is going on, there are shouts, obscenities, and egging-on by several of the onlookers. No one attempts to stop it. No teacher or authority figure appears.
It might be that there were extenuating circumstances which preceded the video, which enraged S to the point where he attacked T. However, from the video itself, the aggressor and target were evident.S is seen raising his shirt and daring T to stab him, but T is not the stabbing sort.
He plainly did not want to fight, but to run away would mean a loss of whatever self-respect he could salvage. From body language and the posturing, I would guess that T brought the knife because this had happened before, and he was fed up of it.The TV news report focused on the part of the video where T produces the knife. This might well be the part the cops focus on–and charge T.
Which would make the near-tragedy complete, with a typical atrocity of police "investigation." And had T stabbed S, it is unlikely these tiresome details–that T was probably pushed by bullying and the failure of authorities to protect him–would matter, and T would spend much, if not all, of his remaining life in jail as a reward for being failed by the system at all levels.
But if in this incident no permanent damage was done, except psychologically, many things are visible through this three-minute window into The Real Trinidad, where the majority of the population lives. The issues in that Trinidad seem to be the ubiquitous violence, the responses to it, and the overarching question of how a large part of the country has effectively become a prison.
The knee-jerk response to the violence was visible in the funeral of another boy, who was not so lucky, in a similar confrontation. Various people addressed the mourners passionately: the children should study dey book, and not do dat foolishness. By studying dey book, apparently, and passing dey subjects, all would be well.Around the same time, a professional counsellor on a TV talk show said her solution to the problem included children being taught civics in school.
She said the children were "getting unacceptable messages" from the surrounding environment, and should be taught "conflict resolution."The words were more from a brochure than a textbook, and the counsellor's body language and the "professional" dulcet tone communicated an artificial, patronising empathy any teenager would see through in a minute.Between those two poles lies the spectrum of response.
A return to de ole time days, civic values, TV-talkshow cliches, quasi-professional "counselling," and more often than not, this is all mixed liberally with religious claptrap. You get the impression the parents are at a loss and the professionals don't want to get too close.And here lies the difference between Real and Unreal Trinidad. The former is steeped in violence and has no mental, emotional and cultural tools to respond.
The Unreal Trinidad, which ostensibly has those resources, seems like an alien place, and wants to stay that way. In fact, the experience of the Real Trinidad has now become transformed to entertainment for Unreal Trinidad, via Crime Watch. The contrast was visible yesterday on the CNC3 Morning Brew, where two teenagers were talking about the Cascade Ballet Festival. One spoke about how ballet transformed her life, and the encouragement she got from her family.
The news brief right after reported a 15-year-old would appear before a magistrate charged with the stabbing of another teenager to death.This rift between Real and Unreal Trinidads is the legacy of a post-Independence politics. Some institutions were designed for the mass, to keep them in a permanent condition of dependence and helplessness, and others for the small, privileged middle class, to enable them to live more or less independent lives.
If a single institution exemplifies the Real Trinidad vis a vis the Unreal one, it's the junior sec system (or whatever it's called now) vs the "prestige school" one.The most disturbing thing about the Real Trinidad is that the parents, children and teachers there can't seem to figure it out or escape.The parents must send their children to those schools, because there's nowhere else, and the teachers must go there, because mortgages don't pay themselves.
So everybody is in a place no one wants to be. This seems to be the crux of the problem: escaping the system.
�2To be continued
