The ma­jor­i­ty of the coun­try was stunned last Thurs­day when an in­ci­dent in which a Bish­op’s High School (To­ba­go) stu­dent dis­rupt­ed an on­line Zoom class af­ter shar­ing porn dur­ing the ses­sion was high­light­ed.

The in­ci­dent nat­u­ral­ly dis­turbed both the teacher and oth­er stu­dents in the class and even­tu­al­ly prompt­ed the sus­pen­sion of the math ses­sion.

The in­ci­dent was so grave that it prompt­ed To­ba­go East MP Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy to take to Face­book to vent her dis­gust at the sit­u­a­tion, one of her daugh­ters hav­ing been in­volved in the in­ci­dent and thus open to the vul­gar­i­ty.

At the time, the min­is­ter may have been re­act­ing from a con­cerned par­ent’s per­spec­tive. And why should she not have act­ed in such a fash­ion? Com­ing from a pub­lic fig­ure and Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, how­ev­er, her re­sponse took on greater sig­nif­i­cance since it is like­ly to prompt the kind of ac­tion which a com­plaint from an av­er­age cit­i­zen would not.

To­bag­o­ni­ans were par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turbed at the in­ci­dent, es­pe­cial­ly since it in­volved one of the most suc­cess­ful ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions on the is­land. That very day, a sim­i­lar on­line class con­duct­ed by a Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary teacher was al­so dis­rupt­ed by a stu­dent ex­hibit­ing dis­re­spect­ful be­hav­iour.

The fact is that this is­sue is not unique to these two in­sti­tu­tions and this and oth­er types of dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour has been plagu­ing teach­ers at­tempt­ing to ad­min­is­ter on­line class­es to stu­dents at all lev­els dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­down mea­sures.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion of on­line class­es presents a unique ex­pe­ri­ence for teach­ers who, pri­or to now, have been ac­cus­tomed to teach­ing in a phys­i­cal class­room set­ting. It is what prompt­ed the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion’s call for teach­ers to be giv­en some train­ing on on­line teach­ing pro­to­cols be­fore the process ac­tu­al­ly be­gan. The sud­den na­ture of the COVID-19 mea­sures did not al­low for this process so we must now deal with the fall­out.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, these in­ci­dents stem from the over­all is­sue of in­dis­ci­pline with­in the cur­rent school sys­tem – a prob­lem that must be ad­dressed by all the stake­hold­ers in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. In­deed, un­til par­ents, teach­ers, stu­dents and all the stake­hold­ers who are part of the process take a more ac­tive role in in­still­ing prop­er dis­ci­pline with­in stu­dents and for deal­ing with acts of in­dis­ci­pline, we will prob­a­bly nev­er rid our­selves of such be­hav­iour.

On that note, a blame game de­vel­oped dur­ing the dis­cus­sion on the Bish­op’s High School in­ci­dent, with the teach­ers blam­ing the par­ents and par­ents, in turn, blam­ing teach­ers on the is­sue of lack of dis­ci­pline that led to the be­hav­iour. But all sides should bear that bur­den.

The re­al­i­ty is that all stake­hold­ers have a role to play in rid­ding the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem of such dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour. Hope­ful­ly, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry will give Bish­op’s High, Sig­nal Hill and oth­er schools with such is­sues the kind of sup­port need­ed to rec­ti­fy their is­sues so that the learn­ing process can run smooth­ly dur­ing the con­tin­u­ing COVID-19 mea­sures.