There are par­a­digms which are sim­ply too hard to up­root. In­grained ar­che­types skew­ing minds to clichés and not in­no­va­tion.

Much had been said about race, crime, and ed­u­ca­tion. In Hans Rosling book, “Fact­ful­ness—Why We’re Wrong about the world,” he demon­strat­ed how peo­ple’s per­cep­tions of the present are based on their learn­ings, and im­ages in the me­dia bom­bard­ing them every day. Rosling point­ed out that pol­i­cy­mak­ers of­ten miss the mark in ar­riv­ing at vi­able so­lu­tions for en­dem­ic prob­lems of pover­ty, so­cial in­equity and crime be­cause their de­ci­sions weren’t fact-based.

Say crime, and im­me­di­ate­ly Laven­tille and Beetham come to mind, but vi­o­lent crime sta­tis­tics show that it’s wide­spread al­though there’s a high­er con­cen­tra­tion in Port-of-Spain. The gang pop­u­la­tion is lethal, just un­der 1,500 among 138 gangs, and pre­dom­i­nant­ly of African de­scent. Oth­ers are most­ly mixed-race and In­di­an. About five per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is un­der 17 years. Gangs’ strong­holds are shift­ing to Ari­ma, San­gre Grande, and oth­er lo­ca­tions along the east-west Cor­ri­dor. Gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders hap­pen across the coun­try, but there are hun­dreds of in­de­pen­dent op­er­a­tors com­mit­ting vi­o­lent crimes.

Think of fe­male-head house­holds and one group with many chil­dren come to mind. But while African fe­males ac­count for 43 per cent of fe­male-head­ed house­holds, the In­di­an, Mixed-Race, and oth­er eth­nic groups ac­count for the re­main­ing 57 per cent. Most are sta­ble house­holds with chil­dren per­form­ing well at schools. One may wish to dis­pute the CSO, 2011cen­sus in­for­ma­tion, but it’s what ex­ists, and like such sur­veys world­wide, there’s a small mar­gin of er­ror. Cen­sus­es are tak­en every ten years, and changes over that pe­ri­od are gen­er­al­ly mar­gin­al un­less there were de­lib­er­ate in­ter­ven­tions or dra­mat­ic de­vel­op­ments to cause sig­nif­i­cant shifts.

Per­haps, the most sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to crime is un­em­ploy­ment among the age group 15 to 49—av­er­ag­ing about 46 per cent of the un­em­ployed, or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21,000 peo­ple have no sus­tain­able source of in­come. (Min­istry of Fi­nance Eco­nom­ic Re­view 2019).

So­cial pro­grammes have tar­get­ed Laven­tille, Beetham, and oth­er so-called hot spots. Pub­lic com­men­tary had fo­cused on so­lu­tions to the prob­lems pri­mar­i­ly in these ar­eas af­ter a spate of killings of and by pre­dom­i­nant­ly African males. Much had been said about in­equity in ed­u­ca­tion, and the “ed­u­ca­tion of black chil­dren” that had, alarm­ing­ly, and per­haps un­in­tend­ed, an un­der­tone of sep­a­ratism. Much had been said about the un­der-per­for­mance and con­di­tions of gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools and the in­equity of the Sec­ondary Ex­am­i­na­tion As­sess­ment (SEA), but most chil­dren of the two ma­jor eth­nic groups at­tend these schools and pass that ex­am.

It is why fact-based de­ci­sions are es­sen­tial in ar­riv­ing at so­lu­tions to crime and so­cial in­equity; oth­er­wise, the re­sult is the mis­align­ment of en­er­gies and bil­lions of dol­lars with the re­al un­der­ly­ing prob­lems. The ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem shouldn’t be viewed in iso­la­tion of stub­born so­ci­etal is­sues. Most chil­dren in sec­ondary schools per­form sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly, the ma­jor­i­ty are well-be­haved, fo­cused and mo­ti­vat­ed, and it’s gross­ly un­fair to neg­a­tive­ly brand all of them and their par­ents be­cause of the very few who are dis­rup­tive and those who drop out and com­mit crimes.

While the po­lice ser­vice does its work to re­duce homi­cides and vi­o­lent crimes, oth­er strate­gies could be em­ployed to stem the flow of chil­dren and youth mi­grat­ing to crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions, and to cre­ate jobs. That’s where col­lec­tive think­ing on ed­u­ca­tion, health, and em­ploy­ment should get on the so­lu­tion grid to ad­dress child abuse and de­vel­op­men­tal prob­lems, bul­ly­ing, vi­o­lence among chil­dren and youth, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, and mul­ti-di­men­sion­al pover­ty.

In prin­ci­ple, ef­fec­tive in­ter­ven­tions should be trans­for­ma­tive and not aid de­pen­dence or pro­vide more op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­file peo­ple and low­er es­teem. One of the world’s great ten­nis play­ers and civ­il rights ac­tivist, the late Arthur Ashe, had recog­nised the na­ture of “stereo­typ­ing and teas­ing black chil­dren about the du­bi­ous glo­ries of pro­fes­sion­al sports.” It will earn on­ly a very few a liveli­hood

The Gov­ern­ment had im­ple­ment­ed nu­mer­ous projects to de­vel­op skills among per­sons be­tween the ages of 15 and 45 years. These in­clud­ed YTEPP, the Mul­ti-Sec­tor Skills Train­ing Pro­gramme (MUST), the Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme de­signed for “high needs” youth. There are a host of so­cial pro­grammes in­clud­ing par­ent ed­u­ca­tion, ado­les­cent moth­ers’ cen­tres, com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, free health care, trans­porta­tion, low-cost hous­ing and every imag­in­able form of as­sis­tance for peo­ple need­ing it. At the high­er end, are COSTAATT and UTT ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the gov­ern­ment of­fer many in­cen­tives for agri­cul­ture, agribusi­ness, mi­cro and small busi­ness­es. Still, crime seemed to have grown ex­po­nen­tial­ly with all these ef­forts. Why?

Where are the gaps, and what are some so­lu­tions?

1) Grad­u­ates must find jobs to feed them­selves and their fam­i­lies. 2) Il­lit­er­a­cy. Peo­ple who can’t read and write can’t ac­cess pro­grammes, far more get jobs. Stem school drop-outs. The SEA isn’t an in­di­ca­tor of learn­ing abil­i­ty or suc­cess. It’s as trau­ma­tiz­ing as the Com­mon En­trance had been. Many chil­dren feel a sense of fail­ure when they don’t pass for their school of choice, or at all. That’s ex­act­ly what a com­mit­tee of the late 90s that in­clud­ed Mr An­tho­ny Gar­cia, now Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, had said about the Com­mon En­trance— “a psy­cho­log­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe.” The SEA is an­oth­er for­mat of the Com­mon En­trance. Many chil­dren are not en­gaged. 3) In­ter­ven­tions have fo­cused pri­mar­i­ly on the sec­ondary and ter­tiary lev­el stages of the prob­lems, ne­glect­ing the cru­cial ear­ly stages of chil­dren’s lives. This isn’t to say there’s a void of ear­ly child care cen­tres and pro­grammes. There’s an ur­gent need for col­lab­o­ra­tive child de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives based on re­li­able da­ta on chil­dren with de­vel­op­men­tal prob­lems. Col­lab­o­ra­tion among par­ents, so­cial work­ers, teach­ers, doc­tors, psy­chol­o­gists and oth­er spe­cial­ists is es­sen­tial to so­lu­tions. There’s a need for cer­ti­fied spe­cial­ist teach­ers. 4) Poor im­ple­men­ta­tion and politi­ci­sa­tion of pro­grammes like CEPEP and gang in­fil­tra­tion. 5) A shame­ful lack of prop­er re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive chil­dren’s in­sti­tu­tions. 6) Par­ent ed­u­ca­tion must cater to work­ing moth­ers, some of whom do two or more jobs to make ends meet. Are pro­grammes eval­u­at­ed for the im­pact on val­ues, and the qual­i­ty of chil­dren’s lives? 7) Re­pro­duc­tive health and fam­i­ly plan­ning ed­u­ca­tion may not be reach­ing the tar­get groups, and prob­a­bly has lit­tle or no im­pact on teenage preg­nan­cies. 8) Ig­no­rance of the im­pact of an un­healthy phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment on crime and the qual­i­ty of life. The school en­vi­ron­ment would be en­hanced with the or­der­ly de­vel­op­ment of clean towns and cities. That calls in­to ques­tion the qual­i­ty of lo­cal gov­ern­ment.

The ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is in a colo­nial time warp. Teacher ap­point­ments, pro­mo­tions, trans­fers, sec­ond­ment and dis­ci­pline rest with the anachro­nis­tic Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC). It had orig­i­nat­ed with the Per­son­nel Branch of the Colo­nial Sec­re­tari­at hark­ing back 200 years ago in the ear­ly nine­teen cen­tu­ry. Are we se­ri­ous? To abol­ish it is where com­mon sense would clash with the dys­func­tion­al po­lit­i­cal sys­tem. The com­po­si­tion of school boards should be ex­am­ined to sup­port the dif­fu­sion of au­thor­i­ty while recog­nis­ing the need for a new sys­tem that en­sures time­ly de­ci­sion-mak­ing and fair­ness.

The pol­i­cy­mak­ers should weigh the pros and cons of co-ed schools, and the ex­pe­ri­ence of the de­nom­i­na­tion­al and oth­er high-per­form­ing schools. Co-ed has ad­van­tages of so­cial­i­sa­tion, di­ver­si­ty, equal­i­ty, and prepar­ing stu­dents for the re­al world. How­ev­er, there are con­sid­er­able dis­ad­van­tages, in­clud­ing dis­trac­tion, the dif­fer­ent learn­ing needs of boys and girls, is­sues of in­tim­i­da­tion, em­bar­rass­ment, con­fi­dence, and ear­ly sex­u­al re­la­tion­ships.

Since the lack of pos­i­tive male role mod­els in many boys’ lives is con­sid­ered a con­trib­u­tor to delin­quen­cy, why not re­cruit more male teach­ers, and in­crease the in­vest­ment in teacher train­ing and de­vel­op­ment. Get the Cadets and Scouts op­er­at­ing in all schools, if they aren’t al­ready there. In­tro­duce med­i­ta­tion, which should have a re­lax­ing and calm­ing ef­fect on stu­dents. Re­view the cur­ricu­lum to in­clude ses­sions that sen­si­tise stu­dents on the beau­ty of di­ver­si­ty, and nur­ture a pos­i­tive sense of his­to­ry and iden­ti­ty.

There should be a pol­i­cy to im­ple­ment STEM from the pri­ma­ry lev­el.

Re­de­fine tech­ni­cal ed­u­ca­tion to blend project-based (ro­bot­ics) and col­lab­o­ra­tive learn­ing. Why not sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy boot camps? Or, en­tre­pre­neur­ial camps where in­no­v­a­tive prod­ucts and vi­able com­mu­ni­ty co-op­er­a­tives are re­ward­ed?

Per­haps, the crit­i­cal is­sue is youth un­em­ploy­ment, which may well be on the in­crease. In­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions are need­ed to sus­tain jobs for grad­u­ates com­ing in­to the labour force an­nu­al­ly. As­sum­ing all else had been fixed, if peo­ple can’t earn a liv­ing, some will re­sort to ac­tiv­i­ties that hurt them and so­ci­ety.

The prob­lems are not lim­it­ed to any dis­trict or group and af­fect all of us. Nev­er­the­less, Tony Fras­er’s rec­om­men­da­tions for “Hu­man de­vel­op­ment be­hind ‘d’ Bridge,” to cre­ate a hub for hu­man, so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment based on his­to­ry, cul­ture, sports, in­tel­lec­tu­al de­vel­op­ment and in­no­va­tion,” is a mod­el with po­ten­tial to cre­ate en­tre­pre­neur­ial and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties. It could be repli­cat­ed through­out the coun­try. The ideas are end­less if we put our minds to­geth­er.