Kevin Baldeosingh

School gangs in cen­tral Trinidad now en­joy a pow­er and pres­tige they didn't have two weeks ago, thanks to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon and Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley. More­over, if there is a gang prob­lem in the Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary School, none of the mea­sures tak­en has solved it; rather, the au­thor­i­ties' over­wrought re­sponse will prob­a­bly ex­ac­er­bate the bul­ly­ing, rob­bery and oth­er in­tim­i­da­tion faced by stu­dents in that in­sti­tu­tion. And I em­pha­sise the con­di­tion­al "if", be­cause it is quite pos­si­ble that there nev­er was any threat of gang vi­o­lence in the first place.

This whole thing start­ed when a stu­dent flagged down a teacher who was dri­ving to school through the En­ter­prise area. The stu­dent is re­port­ed to have warned the teacher to not go to work be­cause gang mem­bers had dis­guised them­selves as stu­dents to get in­to the com­pound ei­ther to ex­act re­venge against an­oth­er stu­dent or to kill a teacher.

So here is my first ques­tion. What is more prob­a­ble: that gangs were plan­ning to com­mit mur­der in­side a school, or that the stu­dent was wind­ing up the teacher? Af­ter all, there nev­er has been any such in­ci­dent even at the hotspot schools in Laven­tille, Mu­cu­rapo or Ari­ma. As far as I can re­call, there have been just three gang-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents, on­ly one of which took place on a school com­pound as dis­tinct from just out­side. On the oth­er hand, stu­dents have been fool­ing teach­ers since the days of Pla­to. Nonethe­less, TTUTA pres­i­dent De­vanand Sinanan in re­count­ing the is­sue in a ra­dio in­ter­view thought it was "di­vine in­ter­ven­tion" that a De­fence Force sol­dier hap­pened to stop off at the school with his col­leagues when the lock­down oc­curred: which tells me that no­body in­volved took a ra­tio­nal or even mea­sured re­sponse to the sup­posed threat.

Now it may seem that the "bet­ter safe than sor­ry" ap­proach was the op­ti­mum one in these cir­cum­stances. But, when it comes to gangs, this re­sponse on­ly helps them. Mar­cus J Fel­son, one of the world's lead­ing crime an­a­lysts, in his book Crime and Every­day Life (co-au­thored with Mary A Eck­ert) notes that, "Squads of so­cial work­ers and SWAT teams fall in­to ex­act­ly the same er­ror: en­hanc­ing the gang's nasty im­age, hence aug­ment­ing its ser­vice to mem­bers."

In oth­er words, the hys­te­ria that start­ed with me­dia cov­er­age due main­ly to the sol­diers' pres­ence was then height­ened by the in­volve­ment of Min­is­ters Gar­cia and Dil­lon, cul­mi­nat­ing in Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley's de­scrip­tion of delin­quent stu­dents as "mon­sters". What bet­ter noun could a group whose very sur­vival de­pends on fear hope for? "Like oth­er youths, gang youth are un­fo­cused of­fend­ers, large­ly aim­less, com­mit­ting a va­ri­ety of or­di­nary of­fences," Fel­son and Eck­ert write. "The im­age of the gang ex­ag­ger­ates their bad re­al­i­ty, scar­ing every­body in the process. Gangs don't try to re­as­sure peo­ple, since scar­ing them is the main ser­vice they pro­vide."

And what is this ser­vice? The usu­al per­spec­tive on youth gangs is that its mem­bers are evil and the gang pro­vides a fam­i­ly struc­ture that the youths lack. But the re­al­i­ty may be far more pro­sa­ic. "A ju­ve­nile street gang of­fers its mem­bers a spe­cial ser­vice–a promise to scare oth­ers," write Fel­son and Eck­hart. "The defin­ing and dri­ving force be­hind a ju­ve­nile street gang is its abil­i­ty to in­tim­i­date through num­bers and a threat to fight out­siders...The gang of­fers this spe­cial ser­vice to mem­bers for a rea­son: many youths con­front a re­al prob­lem from liv­ing in a dan­ger­ous lo­cal area–or even from hav­ing to go to high school with oth­er youths. Young peo­ple are es­pe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to per­son­al and prop­er­ty at­tack, and many feel a need for pro­tec­tion that sim­ply can­not be pro­vid­ed by par­ents, teach­ers, or po­lice."

In this con­text, there is no doubt that the Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary School has prob­lems. My daugh­ter at­tends a kinder­garten a few miles away, and sev­er­al morn­ings af­ter drop­ping her off I have passed through Lange Park and seen stu­dents wan­der­ing about as though class­es have al­ready been dis­missed. So it seems that the prin­ci­pal and teach­ers of­ten have rea­sons for not work­ing. How­ev­er, when­ev­er a school has prob­lems, it is al­ways the chil­dren and the par­ents who are blamed, as though no stu­dent could ever have a good mo­tive for be­ing an­gry at a teacher. In this con­text, it is not at all sur­pris­ing that Min­is­ter Dil­lon should have sug­gest­ed re­sum­ing cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment as a so­lu­tion or that Dr Row­ley should have blamed par­ents for mak­ing mon­sters.

Be­hind all this is an as­sump­tion that, if in­dis­ci­pline in schools is con­tained, stu­dents will learn. Yet the op­po­site is more like­ly to be true: that, if stu­dents are learn­ing, in­dis­ci­pline will be erad­i­cat­ed. Seigfried En­gel­mann, in­ven­tor of the Di­rect In­struc­tion ped­a­gog­i­cal method, holds to this cre­do: If the child has not learned, the teacher has not taught.

I doubt such a per­spec­tive was raised by any­one in the re­cent Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on Ed­u­ca­tion Re­form, how­ev­er. And as long as ed­u­ca­tion­al re­forms are not tru­ly child-cen­tred, schools will con­tin­ue to set prob­lems rather than make so­lu­tions.

Kevin Baldeosingh is a pro­fes­sion­al writer, au­thor of three nov­els, and co-au­thor of a his­to­ry text­book.