As the na­tion con­tin­ues to reel in shock over yes­ter­day’s mass shoot­ings in Ari­ma which claimed four lives, in­clud­ing that of ten-year-old Faith Pe­terkin, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says her min­istry has em­barked on a char­ac­ter-build­ing and val­ues pro­gramme in schools as part of the fight against crime.

Lament­ing the loss of four young per­sons, whose ages ranged from 10-19, she de­scribed the mur­ders as “heart­break­ing and deeply trag­ic.”

Ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, Gads­by-Dol­ly, who is a moth­er of three, said, “As a moth­er, I can­not imag­ine what the fam­i­ly is go­ing through.”

Say­ing the min­istry was ready to act, she con­firmed, “The friends and teach­ers of these chil­dren will al­so need the sup­port of the MoE and are cur­rent­ly re­ceiv­ing it through the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion.”

Not­ing that the MoE was cur­rent­ly en­gaged in a Na­tion­al Con­ver­sa­tion on Ed­u­ca­tion, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “One of the ar­eas I have been speak­ing to is cul­tur­al trans­for­ma­tion through ed­u­ca­tion. This is where the MoE is chang­ing the cur­ricu­lum to in­clude a stronger fo­cus on Val­ues Ed­u­ca­tion.”

Shar­ing the ra­tio­nale be­hind it, she ex­plained, “We are pro­duc­ing cit­i­zens who see noth­ing wrong with com­mit­ting this and oth­er heinous acts should be deeply con­cern­ing to all of us.”

“It calls for ac­tion to turn things around and that is why at the MoE, we have made the de­ci­sion, which comes out of our con­sul­ta­tions of 2020 and 2021, and has been ap­proved by Cab­i­net, to make for­mal time-tabling changes which will broad­en our cur­ricu­lum fo­cus to de­vel­op­ing the char­ac­ter of our cit­i­zens.”

She added, “We can­not con­tin­ue to spend our time in the class­room fo­cused main­ly on aca­d­e­mics. Equal­ly crit­i­cal is the char­ac­ter, the val­ues, the be­hav­iour, and the at­ti­tude of our cit­i­zens. To make this change, we need all hands on deck and that is why we are out this en­tire week ex­plain­ing to the pub­lic what we are do­ing, and why it is re­quired.”

Ad­vis­ing that fail­ure was not an op­tion, she warned, “Should we fail to trans­form what has be­come the cul­ture and norm in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we can ex­pect more of these hor­ri­ble crimes.”

Con­cerned over the brazen in­ci­dent, T&T Uni­fied Mean­while, T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) first vice pres­i­dent, Adesh Dwari­ka, said the re­sul­tant trau­ma which nor­mal­ly fol­lows such an oc­cur­rence had left both staff and stu­dents need­ing pro­fes­sion­al help.

He said there will be class­mates of ten-year-old Faith Pe­terkin who would be un­able to un­der­stand and ful­ly grasp the grief pro­ce­dure and/or ful­ly com­pre­hend that lev­el of vi­o­lence.

“It is go­ing to be a dif­fi­cult thing for the stu­dents to come to terms with,” he said.

Look­ing at the big­ger pic­ture of how crime is af­fect­ing young peo­ple on a dai­ly ba­sis, Dwari­ka said, “Many of the teach­ers are not trained in that as­pect of deal­ing with vi­o­lence and even at the lev­el of the dean, they are not trained to deal with that.”

He said this was af­fect­ing the qual­i­ty of the teach­ing and learn­ing process in the class­room.

“Hav­ing to mit­i­gate against these so­cial is­sues and those emo­tion­al and men­tal is­sues, and then ad­min­is­ter the cur­ricu­lum, is an ex­treme­ly tall ask of teach­ers.”

The TTUTA of­fi­cial said they are very con­cerned about the wors­en­ing crime sit­u­a­tion, since it’s ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing staff and stu­dents at all lev­els.

A se­nior of­fi­cial from the Ari­ma West Pri­ma­ry School mourned the loss of three of her for­mer stu­dents—Shane Pe­terkin and Adris Craw­ford, both 17; and Tiffany Pe­terkin, 19; not­ing it had left the staff mem­bers who knew them, tear­ful and sad.

Cox: So­cial sup­port avail­able to fam­i­ly

Ex­tend­ing con­do­lences yes­ter­day, So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox said the fam­i­ly will be of­fered psy­cho-so­cial sup­port via her min­istry.

“The Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Di­vi­sion would nor­mal­ly reach out to the fam­i­ly and ask them if they would like to have coun­selling be­cause we can­not force it on them. Some do take it im­me­di­ate­ly and some will tell you lat­er on, as they may not al­ways be ready at the time, but we stay in touch with them.”

Stress­ing that every life is im­por­tant, Cox said when mur­ders oc­cur, “we have to be out there as­sist­ing the fam­i­lies, as some are vul­ner­a­ble be­cause if the bread­win­ner is not there any­more, then the fam­i­ly would not need on­ly psy­cho-so­cial sup­port but al­so sup­port in the form of grants and so on”.

Deny­ing they had ex­pe­ri­enced an in­crease in re­quests for fu­ner­al grants, she said her min­istry nor­mal­ly car­ries out a means test to en­sure those ask­ing for help ac­tu­al­ly de­serve it.

Cox con­clud­ed, “What is hap­pen­ing here is a se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion and we all have to pay spe­cial at­ten­tion to it. We have to stop the blame game. We all have to look in the mir­ror and we all have to take stock of our­selves. There are a lot of per­sons who are out there and they mean to do harm to oth­ers.”