The time has come to collect hard data in relation to the myriad of problems facing the school system in T&T. These problems include, but are not limited to, school violence, bullying, disobedience, disrespect, lying, narcotics and ammunition possession and general indiscipline. There's no question that poor parenting is the root cause of the aforementioned problems facing the school system. However, we need to go deeper and data collection and analysis would reveal the reasons for poor parenting or lack thereof.
Data should be gathered to determine if the following are linked to the issues facing schools:
1. Parental supervision after school. Some children are being raised by siblings, neighbours, boyfriends and girlfriends who are ill-equipped to be guardians;
2. Income of household. Sometimes the parents are "hustling" to make ends meet and very little priority is placed on education. Food, bills, rent and clothes come first. As such, children get very little training at home;
3. Being a single parent or a sole guardian. These parents/guardians are trying their best and may need to spend most of their time at work, leaving little time for their children. Who are themselves left to their own devices, which in many cases lead to trouble in one form or another;
4. Age of parents. Relatively young parents may not have the maturity, socialisation or even proper role models to imitate good parenting. They may mean well but lack knowledge of how to be a good parent;
5. Unwanted children via unwanted pregnancies. Some children may grow up in a loveless environment where they are viewed as burdens and starved for attention. This leads to "acting up" in school, where undesirable behaviours are portrayed;
6. Fatherless children. Some boys lack strong male figures in their lives. The unfair, daunting burden falls on mothers; children are sometimes neglected as war is waged for financial support. Parenting workshops, after school home-work centres, paid time off from work for mandatory parent-teacher conferences, readily available social workers and guidance officers and more "big brother" mentoring programmes are some ways to assist.
When the reasons are made known, through data collection, then and only then can we remedy the challenges faced in schools.
Andy Jangeesingh
via e-mail