School vi­o­lence is not en­tire­ly a new phe­nom­e­non in T&T, al­though pub­lic aware­ness of the is­sue, am­pli­fied by so­cial me­dia, has in­creased in re­cent years.

It is a prob­lem with roots deeply em­bed­ded in this coun­try’s broad­er cul­ture of vi­o­lence.

There have been min­is­ters of ed­u­ca­tion dat­ing back as far as Clive Pan­tin, a leg­endary ed­u­ca­tor be­fore he en­tered pol­i­tics, who grap­pled un­suc­cess­ful­ly with the prob­lem. Pan­tin’s pro­nounce­ments on cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment pre­cip­i­tat­ed changes to dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tions in schools but failed to stem the ris­ing tide of vi­o­lence.

Dur­ing her tenure as ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter from 1999 to 2001, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had to deal with school-based vi­o­lence and should have dis­cov­ered that there isn’t a sin­gle mag­ic fix to that prob­lem.

That should al­so be well known to Dr Michael Dowlath, the lat­est for­mer school prin­ci­pal to be ap­point­ed Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Pan­tin and An­tho­ny Gar­cia.

Dowlath is now faced with es­tab­lish­ing poli­cies to tack­le school vi­o­lence along pa­ra­me­ters re­cent­ly set by Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Usu­al­ly ma­ter­nal in her ap­proach to is­sues in­volv­ing chil­dren and young peo­ple, Per­sad-Bises­sar took the tough stance she has been adopt­ing of late on ma­jor is­sues in her re­sponse to a re­cent bru­tal at­tack on a Form Five stu­dent at a Port-of-Spain school.

Her de­c­la­ra­tion of ze­ro tol­er­ance is a warn­ing to ed­u­ca­tors, stu­dents, and par­ents about le­gal and ed­u­ca­tion­al reper­cus­sions for acts of vi­o­lence in a school set­ting.

That puni­tive ap­proach may, in the short term, re­sult in the sup­pres­sion of ag­gres­sive and delin­quent stu­dent be­hav­iour through harsh pun­ish­ments but could pro­duce the type of long-term out­comes this coun­try can­not af­ford.

With T&T al­ready grap­pling with a high mur­der rate and spikes in oth­er vi­o­lent crimes, it should learn from the ex­pe­ri­ences of oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions where that ap­proach not on­ly re­sult­ed in a high­er dropout rate but al­so placed some young peo­ple on a “school-to-prison” path.

Ze­ro tol­er­ance, as ap­peal­ing as it might be to cit­i­zens anx­ious to see safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty main­tained in schools, can pro­duce in­creas­ing num­bers of young peo­ple who are more like­ly to re-of­fend lat­er in life.

Puni­tive dis­ci­pli­nary pro­grammes de­liv­er quick, vis­i­ble con­se­quences but do not cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment for learn­ing and per­son­al growth or op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of young of­fend­ers. They do not iden­ti­fy or ad­dress the root caus­es of vi­o­lence—such as so­cial and emo­tion­al chal­lenges.

While there must be se­ri­ous con­se­quences for young peo­ple who com­mit acts of vi­o­lence against fel­low stu­dents, teach­ers and oth­er mem­bers of the school com­mu­ni­ty, they al­so need to ben­e­fit from strate­gies for pre­ven­tion, sup­port, and growth. 

In­ter­ven­tions should not on­ly re­duce in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence but al­so di­vert young of­fend­ers from neg­a­tive paths and help them de­vel­op in­to well-round­ed, re­silient in­di­vid­u­als. 

In­stead of fo­cus­ing sole­ly on pun­ish­ment, pro­grammes should aim to re­pair the harm caused by mis­be­hav­iour and equip stu­dents with skills to man­age their emo­tions, nav­i­gate con­flict con­struc­tive­ly and proac­tive­ly ad­dress be­hav­iour that might be root­ed in trau­ma.

This is not about giv­ing a slap on the wrist to stu­dents guilty of se­ri­ous dis­ci­pli­nary breach­es but en­sur­ing that dis­ci­pli­nary frame­works in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem do not in­ad­ver­tent­ly add to T&T’s crime cri­sis.

Restora­tive prac­tices that are im­ple­ment­ed con­sis­tent­ly over time can help re­duce in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence and pro­vide a frame­work for long-term be­hav­iour­al change.