Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Clin­i­cal ther­a­pist and trau­ma­tol­o­gist Dr Hanif Ben­jamin says it is “quite un­for­tu­nate” to hear school vi­o­lence and bul­ly­ing be­ing politi­cised, es­pe­cial­ly at a time when the is­sue is at such a crit­i­cal stage.

“We have peo­ple talk­ing about whose chil­dren it might be, whether it’s a PNM child, a UNC child, or a who­ev­er child,” he said yes­ter­day.

He said all chil­dren be­longed to this coun­try and should be pro­tect­ed, re­gard­less of the po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion of their par­ents or com­mu­ni­ties.

Ben­jamin was re­spond­ing to a com­ment made by for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly on the Gov­ern­ment’s no tol­er­ance for school vi­o­lence stance.

Speak­ing dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment meet­ing at the An­gel Harps Pa­n­yard in Ari­ma on Sat­ur­day, Not­ing that the Gov­ern­ment planned to ar­rest and charge stu­dents in­volved in vi­o­lent at­tacks in schools, Gads­by-Dol­ly said dur­ing her tenure, the ma­jor­i­ty of the school vi­o­lence oc­curred amongst stu­dents from PNM house­holds.

In an au­dio re­sponse yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin said he was dis­ap­point­ed to hear the for­mer min­is­ter’s com­ment, es­pe­cial­ly since the school sys­tem had faced many chal­lenges for many years.

He said in­dis­ci­pline was a ma­jor is­sue among the school pop­u­la­tion, and that was why it was im­por­tant to un­der­stand how chil­dren were be­com­ing so vi­o­lent.

“We must be­gin to ex­am­ine from a re­al sense why the fights are hap­pen­ing. So, we need to be pay­ing more at­ten­tion to our home, we need to be pay­ing more at­ten­tion to our com­mu­ni­ties, and we need to be pay­ing more at­ten­tion to our school sys­tem as a whole,” he said.

In re­sponse to the crit­i­cism, Gads­by-Dol­ly said she spoke from a place of in­for­ma­tion, not sen­sa­tion­al­ism.

She said she was in a unique po­si­tion to have in­for­ma­tion that oth­ers sim­ply would not have.

“On this ba­sis, I am acute­ly aware that the PNM has an im­por­tant role to play, as does the Gov­ern­ment and civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions, in sup­port­ing par­ents. To this end, pro­vid­ing this type of sup­port through the Na­tion­al Women’s League is crit­i­cal,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

Mean­while, child rights ac­tivist Mar­cus Kissoon said school vi­o­lence in Caribbean coun­tries, in­clud­ing T&T, de­mand­ed ur­gent, strate­gic, and in­clu­sive ac­tion, as he said re­spons­es must go be­yond pun­ish­ment, es­pe­cial­ly for chil­dren with be­hav­iour­al and so­cial chal­lenges.

“When schools sus­pend or ex­clude these stu­dents, they of­ten repli­cate the lim­it­ed re­sources of fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties rather than of­fer­ing the sup­port those sys­tems could not pro­vide,” Kissoon said.

He said this on­ly deep­ens in­equal­i­ty, re­ward­ing on­ly those who al­ready have strong sup­port net­works. The ac­tivist sug­gest­ed a na­tion­al child re­sponse bud­get which must pri­ori­tise chil­dren’s de­vel­op­ment, their safe­guard­ing, and jus­tice in­stead of ex­clu­sion.

“Re­sources should be di­rect­ed to­ward meth­ods that re­form, sup­port, and in­te­grate chil­dren in­to so­ci­ety, en­sur­ing that no child is left be­hind be­cause of the chal­lenges be­yond their con­trol,” he said.

Psy­chi­a­trist Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh sup­port­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sive ac­tion against school vi­o­lence. He said for too long, par­ents had been reach­ing out to those in au­thor­i­ty to pro­tect their chil­dren from oth­er stu­dents.

He said stu­dents need­ed to un­der­stand that the school sys­tem had rules and the be­hav­iour they saw por­trayed in pub­lic should not be re­peat­ed while they were at the in­sti­tu­tion amongst their peers.

“School rules ap­ply; let the stu­dent sup­port ser­vices see if these chil­dren are in need of es­cape even from their homes,” he said.

He warned against just plac­ing stu­dents in a boot camp with­out pro­vid­ing the rel­e­vant sup­port they need.

Child and fam­i­ly ther­a­pist Sarah Sub­han said while a strong mes­sage about school vi­o­lence was need­ed, ar­rests and ex­pul­sions must on­ly be used for the most se­vere of­fences.

She said the Na­tion­al School Dis­ci­pline Ma­trix had ev­i­dence-based in­ter­ven­tions in­te­grat­ed in­to it but needs to be en­forced. She added that so­cial work­ers, guid­ance coun­sel­lors and psy­chol­o­gists were cur­rent­ly deal­ing with is­sues of un­der­staffing.

She said the Gov­ern­ment could al­so look at ex­ist­ing ef­fec­tive in­ter­na­tion­al mod­els and use those to sup­port the strength­en­ing of sys­tems in T&T while con­sid­er­ing our cul­tur­al fac­tors.

Da­ta on school vi­o­lence

* In 2023-2024 aca­d­e­m­ic year there were:

* 1,116 fights and as­saults in term one

* 786 in term two

* 713 in term three.

* There was an over-50 per cent re­duc­tion in sus­pen­sions at some of the 11 schools where the Restora­tive Prac­tices ini­tia­tive was be­ing im­ple­ment­ed. (Cour­tesy Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly)