The making of a criminal

By *Jomo Thomas

The problem of gangs and violence, explicit sex and open drug use at a few schools must be placed squarely at the door of the Ministry of Education. This accusation does not absolve students whose mindless decisions and actions place their academic futures and very lives at risk. The actions and/or inactions of authorities negatively affect students’ life chances in failing schools.

We are all for nipping truancy, violence and other dangerous activities in the bud. We are equally convinced that the decision by the government to place police at schools, just like the call for the death penalty to stem homicides, is a band-aid approach that may have popular appeal but does very little to solve the overblown problem that our security minister seems intent on addressing.

To place this vexing problem in context, answer this question: How does deploying police in schools ensure that no child is left behind? It does not. The principal at West St. George School calls in the police every Monday morning, yet the problems at that school appear to be entrenched and endemic. A similar problem obtains at JP Eustace Secondary School in Edinboro. Have we ever stopped to wonder why there are fewer incidents of gangs and violence at the Girls’ High and the St. Vincent Grammar schools? Could this have anything to do with the fact that some of the best-performing students and most qualified teachers are at those schools? 

A few years ago, we reached the informed conclusion that education officials used some schools as dumps. That is to say, many students, considered slow learners, deemed ill-disciplined, violent and uneducable, were steered into these schools. For voicing this innocent, yet inconvenient truth, Plain Talk was widely condemned. Those quick to herald what they glibly call our “education revolution” were woefully unwilling to identify and, more importantly, address the many problems that continue to plague our educational system.

Few of us may remember Ellena Allen, the young Convent student who was conspired against by her school’s leadership, and the Chief Education Officer, now-diplomat Lou-Anne Gilcrist, and other education ministry officials. She graduated at the top of her class in Taiwan and is now pursuing graduate studies. She charged her teacher with bullying; yeah, bullying, that thing that all of us talk about now. In frustration, she wrote an inappropriate comment responding to the bullying teacher in her homework book. 

For this transgression, she was kicked out of Convent and transferred to JP Eustace school in Mespo. Young Ellena was a science-tracked student at Convent, but our education cabal, uncaringly, transferred her to JP Eustace, where there was no science lab. Had it not been for Ellena’s defiant mother, who pushed back with a successful court challenge against Gilchrist’s rude remark, “I have two things to say to you: take your daughter to JP Eustace and get out of my office”, Ellena might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

And so it is with West St. George, JP Eustace and other low-performing schools across our country. In every school across the nation, there might be what some call “bad apples”. However, when a school is packed with non-performers, or with an overwhelming amount of students reading below grade level or where we are graduating entire classes that cannot read, we are creating cesspools and breeding grounds for deviance and crime, teenage pregnancy and failure.

Plain Talk is overly excited when students from non-traditional high-performing schools, Sandy Bay, Barrouallie, Buccament, and North Union, do well. We expect stellar CPEA scores from students who attend Kingstown Preparatory, St. Mary’s Roman Catholic, Sugar Mill and Windsor Academy and outstanding CXC results from Girls’ High, Grammar, St Joseph Convent, and Thomas Saunders. They have the best staffing, great alumni support, and the attention of our middle and upper classes.

Small wonder, then, that some of us go goo-goo-ga-ga when students from schools with low expectations break through and top the academic charts. These students are “accidents” in a system stacked against them.

Now, what is to be done? First, our society must recognise that many of our educational problems are of our own making. We must disavow the stigmatisation of students, abandon the ingrained, sometimes unconscious self-fulfilling prophecy that some students are destined for failure. We must truly embrace and inculcate the idea of no child left behind. Our teachers must all be focal points of light and encouragement. A systematic long-term 10- to 15-year plan must be devised to address the educational failures of so many young people, especially young boys. 

Many of the problems relating to attention deficit, aggression, violence and other deviant behaviours have their root in generational poverty, poor nutrition, processed foods, excessive consumption of sugary energy-spiking drinks and copycat mimicking that students pick up from friends and or social media. Unless these issues are addressed, we will have even greater problems in the future.

We should immediately stop sending students to these “problem schools”. Let the current cohort clear out and start afresh in five years with a new plan. Send better-trained, prepared and strong teachers to these institutions with the hope of uplifting and saving rather than dismissing and condemning students. Bring in alert and dedicated counsellors to stop and help young students work through their problems, which may be related to puberty, home issues and more. 

Administrative approaches which emphasise throwing them out, jailing them, and hanging them when they run afoul of the law will please some but damage far too many people. A school lacking the culture of success would not be transformed by police presence. We all know that Vincentian police are feared but not respected. Police presence and aggressive enforcement of discipline will predictably go sideways.

*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

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