Scores of cit­i­zens were left aghast over the past 48 hours, af­ter videos sur­faced on so­cial me­dia of yet an­oth­er vi­o­lent school fight. It was the lat­est in a se­ries of such in­ci­dents since stu­dents re­turned to phys­i­cal class­es fol­low­ing an al­most two-year hia­tus due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. More im­por­tant­ly, how­ev­er, was the fact that in this lat­est case on Mon­day, a fe­male Williamsville Sec­ondary stu­dent was in­jured by an­oth­er fe­male stu­dent.

Ini­tial re­ports sug­gest there is more to the case than can be gleaned from the videos, it ap­par­ent­ly be­ing the end re­sult of a case of bul­ly­ing in which the main at­tack­er was, in fact, the bul­lied vic­tim, who, un­for­tu­nate­ly, chose to lash out at her tor­men­tors. The in­ci­dent could have had a far worse end than what tran­spired, since the stu­dent wield­ing the weapon was sep­a­rat­ed from the oth­er girl she at­tacked by one of her male school­mates.

While the of­fend­ing fe­male stu­dent may have jus­ti­fi­ably used provo­ca­tion as a cause for her re­sponse then, vi­o­lence was cer­tain­ly not the way to re­spond, es­pe­cial­ly since she will now have to face the full brunt of the law for what be­came an act of vi­o­lence.

And this brings us to the deep-seethed is­sue of in­dis­ci­pline and vi­o­lence with­in the na­tion’s schools.

On­ly last week, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, as part of its re­sponse to vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline with­in the school sys­tem since its re­open­ing for phys­i­cal class­es, pro­posed a Na­tion­al School Dis­ci­pline Ma­trix. Among its fea­tures was a de­mer­it sys­tem meant to re­ward good be­hav­iour amongst stu­dents while pun­ish­ing the ill-dis­ci­plined stu­dents. The in­tend­ed pro­gramme is still to be dis­cussed fur­ther with stake­hold­ers, but we dare say at this stage, a pro­gramme like this will clear­ly not work in schools where there are high-risk stu­dents.

Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Dr Pe­ter Smith al­so not­ed that se­ri­ous fights and sus­pen­sions were down to al­most ze­ro in schools due to a few ini­tia­tives im­ple­ment­ed in the cur­rent term, in­clud­ing the in­volve­ment of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice. But, clear­ly, in the case of the Williamsville in­ci­dent and one in To­ba­go last week, the stu­dents are tak­ing their un­savoury ac­tiv­i­ties out­side the schools to avoid the glare of the po­lice and teach­ers.

As such, it seems more fea­si­ble that the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion’s re­cent call for more re­sources for the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Unit must be con­sid­ered. This is be­cause the vi­o­lence be­ing dis­played by stu­dents now is but a mi­cro­cosm of what is hap­pen­ing in wider so­ci­ety.

As such, the on­ly way to get to the bot­tom of this is for psy­chol­o­gists and be­hav­iour­al ex­perts to probe is­sues, get to the heart of the prob­lems and craft re­spons­es which will achieve the de­sired pos­i­tive end re­sults for the af­fect­ed stu­dents. What we do know is that the cur­rent mech­a­nisms to deal with in­dis­ci­pline in schools, which ba­si­cal­ly takes stu­dents out of the sys­tem by way of sus­pen­sions, have failed up to now. How­ev­er, we are not sure the dis­ci­pline ma­trix un­veiled last week will be more re­spon­sive to trou­ble stu­dents’ needs or is mere­ly more of the same ap­proach to the is­sue.

Clear­ly then, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry needs a much deep­er dive in its ap­proach to curb­ing this wor­ry­ing trend with­in the school sys­tem.