Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Prof Emer­i­tus Ramesh De­osaran says a lot of the cur­rent school mis­ery, vi­o­lence and delin­quen­cy could have been pre­vent­ed if ac­tion had been du­ly tak­en when the signs and grow­ing ev­i­dence were point­ed out.

He was speak­ing about the re­cent acts of vi­o­lence which have placed the Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary School in the spot­light.

De­osaran said a school, like the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem it­self, had lim­its in chang­ing a com­mu­ni­ty or a so­ci­ety.

"So the ex­tent to which a com­mu­ni­ty is se­vere­ly frag­ment­ed, crim­ino­genic, law­less and large­ly oc­cu­pied by slack par­ent­ing, to that ex­tent will its school be­come vul­ner­a­ble to such per­ver­si­ties.

"If you look at the na­ture of many of the com­mu­ni­ties sur­round­ing the Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary School and some oth­ers so af­fect­ed, you will see the ex­tent to which this com­mu­ni­ty-school re­la­tion­ship ex­ists," he not­ed.

For this rea­son, he said, in­sert­ing an­ti-vi­o­lence and delin­quen­cy pro­grammes in a par­tic­u­lar school should al­so be firm­ly ac­com­pa­nied by com­mu­ni­ty restora­tion pro­grammes. In ad­di­tion, he said, a new type of teacher was al­so re­quired for such schools.

Be­yond in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sues, De­osaran said, teach­ers' views from the ground lev­el up­wards need­ed to be tak­en more se­ri­ous­ly and at­tend­ed to more ex­pe­di­tious­ly.

"The ex­tent to which many teach­ers have them­selves be­come de­mor­alised in tack­ling the prob­lem has al­so con­tributed to the ap­par­ent in­crease in both fre­quen­cy and se­ri­ous­ness."

De­osaran said the Gov­ern­ment must note that many pri­ma­ry schools were al­so be­com­ing in­fect­ed with in­creas­ing delin­quen­cy.

Asked whether boot camps, as sug­gest­ed by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ed­mund Dil­lon, was a good idea, he said there was al­ready an ex­pen­sive set of pro­grammes for youths who drift­ed away from for­mal school­ing.

De­osaran said first find out what were the re­wards of the boot camp.

"To jump spo­rad­i­cal­ly from pro­gramme to pro­gramme can well be an­oth­er pol­i­cy that wastes tax­pay­ers' mon­ey.

"In any case, we are yet to hear the pre­cise frame­work, en­rol­ment type and ob­jec­tives of this boot camp idea," he added.

School vi­o­lence 'a

sad­den­ing mon­stros­i­ty'

It was bet­ter to now fo­cus on recog­nis­ing the se­ri­ous­ness of the school vi­o­lence and delin­quen­cy prob­lem and per­haps, more se­ri­ous­ly, ask in­stead why those who had a chance to bring pos­i­tive change did not do so, De­osaran said.

"The en­tire sit­u­a­tion has be­come one of sad­den­ing mon­stros­i­ty."

He said the man­age­ment of stu­dent dis­ci­pline had to be an in­ter-con­nect­ed sys­tem–from teacher, dean, prin­ci­pal, su­per­vi­sor, min­istry and pos­si­bly the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC).

De­osaran said as a for­mer mem­ber of the TSC, there were su­per­vi­so­ry and man­age­ment breach­es at each point in the sys­tem, that even when a dean or prin­ci­pal sought to act prop­er­ly, "the chain be­comes as strong as its weak­est link."

As for cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment, he said as a pub­lic pol­i­cy, it faced a con­tin­u­ing dilem­ma; and apart from the phi­los­o­phy be­hind it, the man­ner in which it was abrupt­ly dis­band­ed cre­at­ed a spe­cial chal­lenge for teach­ers.

"The dilem­ma is that while sur­veys show over 80 per cent of teach­ers sup­port cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment with ap­pro­pri­ate con­trols, both TTUTA and the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment do not sup­port it," he added.

How­ev­er, he said, the irony was that a re­lat­ed sur­vey re­vealed that par­ents im­posed a high­er pro­por­tion of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment at home than teach­ers did at school for sim­i­lar of­fences.

De­osaran said glob­al reme­dies for all schools and all teach­ers would no longer work ef­fec­tive­ly since, as has been quite ev­i­dent for a long time, schools dif­fered from one an­oth­er in so­cial char­ac­ter­is­tics, com­mu­ni­ty con­di­tions and stu­dent chal­lenges.

In the present cir­cum­stances, he said, the more strate­gic ap­proach was to take each af­fect­ed school, as a pri­or­i­ty, prop­er­ly mea­sure and then in­sert an ap­pro­pri­ate set of ame­lio­ra­tive reme­dies with bench­marks for im­prove­ment.

He said: "Each such se­lect­ed school should be eval­u­at­ed on its own terms–aca­d­e­m­ic out­put, stu­dent dis­ci­pline, lead­er­ship and ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties. It is no longer good gov­er­nance to wait un­til a school cri­sis ex­plodes to rush in­to ac­tion."