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Priest: Violent children are hurting other children

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#meta[ag-author]
20220508203648
20220508

KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As the po­lice take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for deal­ing with school vi­o­lence and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) sets up a team to ad­dress the over­whelm­ing fights seen week­ly, Vic­ar Gen­er­al of the Ro­man Catholic Church Fr Mar­tin Sir­ju says these ju­ve­nile ag­gres­sors are sim­ply hurt chil­dren.

Ad­dress­ing the Feast of La Div­ina Pas­to­ra at the La Div­ina Pas­to­ra RC Church in Siparia on Sun­day, Sir­ju said the place for stu­dents en­gaged in vi­o­lence was not prison.

“The so­lu­tion is not to ex­pel them from school­ing. The so­lu­tion is not to ex­clude them from an ed­u­ca­tion­al fu­ture.

“Prison, my dear friends, is not where these chil­dren be­long.

“What these chil­dren need is a sense of fam­i­ly and ad­mi­ra­tion and love and know­ing that they are in­tel­li­gent. All you have to do is find the right key. If you find the right key, you can un­lock their minds,” Sir­ju said.

Last Month, the MoE an­nounced that Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice would be at 15 sec­ondary schools to deal with out­breaks of stu­dent vi­o­lence.

As it works on a draft na­tion­al school dis­ci­pline ma­trix, the min­istry al­so wrote act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob for ad­vice on re­mov­ing vi­o­lent stu­dents from the school en­vi­ron­ment to one that can of­fer them re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive ser­vices.

The MoE al­so asked the TTPS to pa­trol out­side and near the schools in ques­tion at the close of the day.

Sir­ju, a for­mer Parish Priest, told the con­gre­ga­tion that chil­dren were not born vi­o­lent but learned it through so­cial in­ter­ac­tion.

He said they need­ed a Shep­herd to reach out to them and touch their souls.

He be­lieves the vi­o­lence in­tro­duced to T&T by for­mer colo­nial mas­ters neg­a­tive­ly af­fects so­ci­ety to­day.

There­fore, he said the coun­try should look in­to the caus­es of the vi­o­lent acts and do bet­ter for the chil­dren.

He said: “A child is not born vi­o­lent. A child be­comes vi­o­lent as a child is so­cial­ly de­ter­mined by vi­o­lence. In Psy­chol­o­gy, hurt­ing peo­ple hurt oth­ers.

“They are hurt­ing dear friends, and if we are go­ing by the news­pa­per re­ports, it seems that most of the chil­dren are from one class and from one eth­nic group, and some­thing is very wrong with that, and most of them are boys.”

He said re­searchers found that sui­cide among males was four times high­er dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, show­ing that some­thing was sig­nif­i­cant­ly wrong.

Sir­ju said chil­dren some­times get an­gry with their moth­ers if they have a per­cep­tion that she prefers oth­er peo­ple’s chil­dren.

He said it was not the case as some­times oth­er peo­ple’s chil­dren need more love, and she is shar­ing.

He said just like Mary is the moth­er of all fam­i­lies, so should wor­ship­pers.

Sir­ju re­count­ed a sto­ry told to him as Parish Priest by An­gela Phillip.

Phillip’s chil­dren were younger, her son con­fid­ed that some­one was bul­ly­ing him at school. When her son asked her to do some­thing about it, Phillip asked her son why did he not in­vite the bul­ly home.

“How many of you would do that? How many of you would think like that?”

The boy ac­cept­ed the in­vi­ta­tion to go to Phillip’s home, and Sir­ju said over time, his be­hav­iour changed.

“And so, through her wis­dom: what she and her fam­i­ly dis­cov­ered was that the boy need­ed love.

“The boy need­ed at­ten­tion. The boy need­ed a fam­i­ly. The boy need­ed com­mu­ni­ty.”

Sir­ju said Phillip taught her chil­dren the val­ue of fam­i­ly and in­clu­siv­i­ty.

He likened this to Mary, who taught Je­sus in­clu­siv­i­ty and fam­i­ly, who lat­er shared these prin­ci­ples when he start­ed his min­istry.

Sir­ju said Je­sus was not born with hu­man­i­ty but learned from Mary, and his earth­ly fa­ther, Joseph.

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