The Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to have armed po­lice of­fi­cers at some of the 50 high-risk sec­ondary schools where 95 spe­cial­ly trained Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice will be as­signed. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there will be po­lice pa­trols at 20 oth­er schools for the new school term.

This shouldn’t sur­prise any­one in this coun­try. For ten years, I called on the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion to deal with the in­creas­ing vi­o­lence, hooli­gan­ism and promis­cu­ity in main­ly gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry now re­ports that be­tween 2022 and 2025, there were over 21,000 sus­pen­sions for bad be­hav­iour in schools of this na­tion. Ut­ter­ly alarm­ing!

The trend has been there all along. Last year, it was re­port­ed that of the 111 gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools, 26 were on the watch list and 91 had safe­ty of­fi­cers at­tached. A T&T Guardian ed­i­to­r­i­al high­light­ed “the ex­treme dan­ger and trau­ma” faced by school chil­dren. A 16-year-old Form Five stu­dent of Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary was stabbed and beat­en in a class­room dur­ing a brawl of fierce fe­roc­i­ty, in­volv­ing four stu­dents who could have end­ed up “in the morgue.” Al­so, a 14-year-old St Mary’s Col­lege stu­dent was stabbed three times with a screw­driv­er by an old­er stu­dent in a dis­pute over a va­p­ing de­vice. “Vi­o­lence in the na­tion’s schools has reached a tip­ping point,” said the ed­i­to­r­i­al.

Hooli­gan­ism and crim­i­nal­i­ty in schools have long been ram­pant. Re­mem­ber 2013, when in just six months, 3,411 stu­dents were sus­pend­ed for vi­o­lence, drugs, al­co­hol use, and alarm­ing sex­u­al promis­cu­ity? One stu­dent stabbed an­oth­er to death at Wa­ter­loo Sec­ondary! Can we for­get 2014, when 12 fe­male stu­dents of Mu­cu­rapo West Sec­ondary kicked, cuffed and dragged an­oth­er by the hair on the street and hurled ob­scen­i­ties at adults who want­ed to in­ter­vene. At Cara­pichaima West Sec­ondary, an eight-mem­ber girl gang slapped a teacher sev­er­al times when she tried to stop them from beat­ing an­oth­er fe­male stu­dent. Near the Cara­pichaima West and East Sec­ondary schools, stu­dents were hav­ing “sex on the road, in ve­hi­cles and on peo­ple’s pri­vate prop­er­ties,” strip­ping, kiss­ing, fondling in pub­lic and al­so per­form­ing sex at the back of the class for video­tap­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion.

We can’t for­get folks. We have a du­ty to our­selves and the chil­dren. When you for­get, you let lead­ers off the hook, as we did for ten years. Let us be thank­ful the new Gov­ern­ment means busi­ness.

And when we for­get, his­to­ry re­peats it­self again and again! To­day’s school vi­o­lence is not new. In 2015, pupils at Williamsville Sec­ondary car­ried out a reign of ter­ror, at­tack­ing oth­er stu­dents, drink­ing al­co­hol and ston­ing a fe­male teacher who locked her­self in a class­room to save her­self. In 2017, 35 schools were “hot-list­ed” for vi­o­lent stu­dent be­hav­iour; and in 2018, in a melee at Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary, a bad­ly beat­en stu­dent suf­fered a frac­tured skull. That year, El Do­ra­do East Sec­ondary was over­run by drugs, gam­bling, lar­ce­ny and vi­o­lence. In 2019, a “cri­sis” at the Siparia West Sec­ondary saw a stu­dent knocked al­most un­con­scious; one stabbed; an­oth­er chopped; one beat­en with a piece of wood, his back blue-black from blows; stu­dents throw­ing dust­bins and chairs at one an­oth­er; throw­ing knives and cut­lass­es over the school’s fence and then col­lect­ing the weapons; screams, ob­scen­i­ties and smash­ing of fur­ni­ture. Life-threat­en­ing may­hem, for heav­en’s sake!

And it hap­pened again in 2020, when four teach­ers at a school in Barataria/San Juan called for pro­tec­tion from their “war zone of com­bat­ants.” A stu­dent was raped. A fe­male stu­dent venge­ful­ly shat­tered the wind­screen of a teacher’s ve­hi­cle. Why in heav­en’s name didn’t the gov­ern­ment take ac­tion?! It took COVID-19 to bring peace in 2021 af­ter schools were closed! Shame!

But schools re­opened and the hooli­gan­ism re­turned. In 2022, the gov­ern­ment had to as­sign po­lice of­fi­cers to 15 schools. A 15-year-old Form Two stu­dent stabbed her fe­male school­mate and faced crim­i­nal charges. An Ex­press ed­i­to­r­i­al said, “the sit­u­a­tion now is worse than nine years ago.” And it con­tin­ues to this day.

And how did for­mer prime min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, re­act? “Some­thing is hap­pen­ing,” he mused, “be­tween our nine- and ten-year-olds and our 17-year-olds that is caus­ing our so­ci­ety to be what it is.”

That was the lev­el of vac­u­ous­ness this na­tion had in its lead­er­ship for ten years while a so­cial vol­cano boiled be­neath us.

In 2020, I said, “our de­cay­ing so­ci­ety is a gi­gan­tic womb spawn­ing crime.” But Row­ley again at­tempt­ed to es­cape his du­ty to ar­rest the so­cial de­cay and plant the seeds for re­gen­er­a­tion. He called on par­ents and guardians to “as­sume the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty” for their chil­dren. But as Dr Everold Ho­sein wrote, “Our cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of par­ents sim­ply don’t know how.”

In­deed. We have an epi­dem­ic of teenage preg­nan­cies, 3,777 in four years for ex­am­ple; many girls un­able to iden­ti­fy the fa­ther of the com­ing child. Who as­sumes ‘re­spon­si­bil­i­ty’ for this off­spring in a coun­try where com­mu­ni­ty and fam­i­ly life have de­clined dis­as­trous­ly?

It there­fore shouldn’t sur­prise us that court records over a re­cent four-year pe­ri­od re­vealed 1,771 crim­i­nal mat­ters against chil­dren ages 7-18 for pos­ses­sion of firearms, rob­bery with ag­gra­va­tion, shoot­ing with in­tent, lar­ce­ny, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, drug of­fences, even kid­nap­ping, manslaugh­ter and mur­der.

This Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing ac­tion to save the chil­dren