Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith an­nounced on Car­ni­val Tues­day that about 100 boys had been de­tained by po­lice over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.

He said the boys, who were be­tween the ages of 13 and 16, had been de­tained af­ter po­lice re­ceived in­tel­li­gence that they were plan­ning to dis­rupt the fes­tiv­i­ties with acts that in­clud­ed as­sault and theft. The me­dia has been dom­i­nat­ed by news of chil­dren be­ing in­volved in school vi­o­lence, at­tacks on teach­ers, van­dal­is­ing school prop­er­ty and teach­ers' cars and en­gag­ing in dare games such as the dan­ger­ous Jump/Trip Chal­lenge.

This has prompt­ed re­tired vice-prin­ci­pal and school teacher Drau­patie Ma­haraj to re­lease a CD and song book called "Grow­ing Up With Val­ues" specif­i­cal­ly for at-risk chil­dren to teach them about love, right ac­tion, truth, non-vi­o­lence, and peace.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at its St Vin­cent Street of­fices, Ma­haraj said "The coun­try is in such a bad state where crime is af­fect­ing every­one's life and we thought we will start with the chil­dren.

"It is a book and a CD pre­pared for pri­ma­ry school chil­dren and even younger than that. With chil­dren, what their ears hear, their minds ab­sorb.

"I strong­ly be­lieve that they need to start with chil­dren. When they grow up with these val­ues they will think twice be­fore em­bark­ing on a life of crime.

"To­geth­er with my grand­chil­dren, Vaish­navi, Saak­shi, Nishesh and Sharvi, we've done this book and CD. You can fol­low in the books, but very soon chil­dren will be­come ac­cus­tomed to hear­ing it."

She said once they go for a dri­ve with their par­ents in the fam­i­ly car, they will play the CD with ten songs (some ti­tles are Don't Give Up, The Time To Be Hap­py is Now and Stand To­geth­er).

She said par­ents can en­cour­age them to sing and sing to­geth­er, it be­comes fun.

Ma­haraj said singing al­ways does some­thing pos­i­tive to the mind and psy­che; when you have a hap­py child his fo­cus will not be on crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

She said she had been a teacher for over 40 years at Tran­quil­i­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School, Ch­agua­nas Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive School and Ch­agua­nas Ju­nior Sec­ondary School, vice-prin­ci­pal for over five years, and a se­nior teacher at the last school.

Ma­haraj said she was very pas­sion­ate about chang­ing the val­ue sys­tem in the coun­try.

Ma­haraj, who holds a BA and Diplo­ma of Ed­u­ca­tion, said even af­ter re­tire­ment, she has been work­ing with a group of teach­ers do­ing re­me­di­al work with chil­dren in the low­er-in­come brack­et ar­eas and un­der­priv­i­leged chil­dren.

She said they have class­es every two weeks, con­duct re­li­gious in­struc­tion class­es at the Ch­agua­nas Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and em­pathised with the chil­dren. She said these ar­eas were where they were start­ing with them.

Ma­haraj said teach­ing was her pas­sion and chang­ing the lives of those chil­dren who may be crim­i­nal­ly in­clined was a chal­lenge, but they must do it.

She said when they speak to chil­dren on a one-on-one ba­sis, they see that they can change, while there was life, there was hope. Ma­haraj said she strong­ly be­lieved that was the way to keep them away from a life of crime, the words and tunes in the songs were very catchy, chil­dren will ben­e­fit from them and she hoped that the pos­i­tive mes­sage spreads.

The CD and song book are avail­able at Char­ran's Book­stores in Tu­na­puna, San Juan, and Trinci­ty, Jadoo's Book­store in Ari­ma, Sookhai's Diesel in Ch­agua­nas, tele­phone and Ma­haraj is al­so on Face­book.

She said the in­tro­duc­to­ry price was just $20; it was an in­vest­ment in chil­dren's fu­ture and was well be­low cost which was done to reach a wide mar­ket as pos­si­ble.