Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Se­nior Mag­is­trate Lu­ci­na Car­de­nas-Ra­goo­nanan says the coun­try is forced to re­spond to the vi­o­lence in­fect­ing schools. She said the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem con­tin­ued to have "daunt­ing" chal­lenges which were "down­right im­pos­si­ble." Car­de­nas-Ra­goo­nanan said ed­u­ca­tion should be the first tool em­ployed to cre­ate more sat­is­fy­ing, more mean­ing­ful, health­i­er and less dan­ger­ous ways of liv­ing.

She was the fea­ture speak­er at the T&T Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion's spe­cial con­fer­ence of del­e­gates at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Val­sayn cam­pus yes­ter­day. Car­de­nas-Ra­goo­nanan said she was au courant with what hap­pened at schools hav­ing been on the board of the Mara­bel­la Se­nior Sec­ondary School for four years.

She is now at the Ari­ma Mag­is­trates' Court. "In our rapid­ly chang­ing world, we need new tools and gears for think­ing and act­ing in or­der to ef­fec­tive­ly at­tack these grow­ing dan­gers that our chil­dren face," she said. It was her view that much of the so­cial is­sues plagu­ing so­ci­ety were as a re­sult of a break­down in the fam­i­ly unit and the neg­a­tive in­flu­ences of so­ci­ety.

Car­de­nas-Ra­goo­nanan said she re­fused to adopt a de­featist at­ti­tude re­gard­ing the na­tion's chil­dren. She said there was much work to be done and that it re­quired the pop­u­la­tion to once again be­come a car­ing vil­lage that part­nered to­geth­er us­ing all its re­sources to re­store the val­ues of the "good old days."

She said it was a fact that many crimes were com­mit­ted by youths be­tween the ages of 15 and 21. Ex­cel­lence in ed­u­ca­tion should not be mea­sured by ex­ams but should fo­cus on the "whole" child, she added.