Shas­tri Boodan

Bul­ly­ing and va­p­ing re­main two of the most se­ri­ous is­sues con­fronting Trinidad and To­ba­go’s school sys­tem, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath has said, urg­ing stu­dents to speak out against both be­hav­iours.

Dowlath made the dis­clo­sure while ad­dress­ing a Na­tion­al Youth Fo­rum host­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion at the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce au­di­to­ri­um on Cam­den Road, Cou­va, last Thurs­day.

He said the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s 2024 School Cli­mate Sur­vey iden­ti­fied bul­ly­ing and va­p­ing as sig­nif­i­cant is­sues dis­tract­ing stu­dents from their ed­u­ca­tion, their pur­pose and the dis­ci­pline need­ed to achieve suc­cess.

“I want you to stand up and speak out against bul­ly­ing in schools. I want you to stand up and speak out against va­p­ing,” Dowlath said.

He urged stu­dents to use their in­flu­ence to en­cour­age their peers to re­ject both be­hav­iours.

“You don’t have to be­come a bul­ly. You don’t have to vape for some­one to pay at­ten­tion to you.”

He al­so called on adults to bet­ter un­der­stand the lan­guage and cul­ture of young peo­ple if they are to com­mu­ni­cate ef­fec­tive­ly with them.

Us­ing the phrase “six, sev­en” — which he said he learned from an eight-year-old stu­dent — the Min­is­ter point­ed out that young peo­ple of­ten use ex­pres­sions that adults may not un­der­stand.

He said adults need­ed to make an ef­fort to un­der­stand the lan­guage young peo­ple speak be­fore at­tempt­ing to en­gage them on se­ri­ous is­sues.

“We have to learn the lan­guage that the young peo­ple speak be­fore we talk to them,” Dowlath said, while stress­ing that the voic­es of young peo­ple were pow­er­ful.

He urged stu­dents to re­main in school and choose ed­u­ca­tion over ig­no­rance.

“I want you to choose ed­u­ca­tion over ig­no­rance. I want you to stay in school.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing to im­prove con­di­tions with­in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, in­clud­ing re­pair­ing schools, en­sur­ing that schools are ad­e­quate­ly staffed and us­ing tech­nol­o­gy and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to en­hance learn­ing ma­te­ri­als.

Dowlath said schools were al­so im­por­tant spaces where young peo­ple could learn how to par­tic­i­pate re­spon­si­bly in civ­il so­ci­ety.

He en­cour­aged stu­dents to speak out against in­jus­tice but said they should learn how to do so con­struc­tive­ly.

“Yes, we want you to stand up for in­jus­tice. We want you to speak out. But we want you to learn how to speak as a mem­ber of civ­il so­ci­ety,” he said.

Dowlath al­so high­light­ed the grow­ing in­flu­ence of peers and so­cial me­dia on young peo­ple, warn­ing par­ents that peer pres­sure can be­come in­creas­ing­ly pow­er­ful dur­ing ado­les­cence.

He said par­ents should recog­nise that as peer pres­sure in­creas­es, the in­flu­ence of par­ents can di­min­ish.

Dowlath end­ed his ad­dress by re­in­forc­ing the im­por­tance of ed­u­ca­tion in giv­ing young peo­ple a path­way to a bet­ter fu­ture.

“Ed­u­ca­tion has the key to your fu­ture,” he said.