Connected educational issues

Samuel Lochan

There are two educational issues in the public domain now where educational leadership is required and perhaps these two issues are connected.

One issue concerns the role of corporal punishment in schools, the other whether it is the duty of teachers to supervise children during break times, lunchtimes, after school etc.

One Member of Parliament seems to be suggesting that removal of corporal punishment from schools was a bad thing. Unfortunately, I am sure her position resonates with a lot of citizens.

However, I do not think this position is justifiable given our specific history as a society and the insights to be gained from educational theory.

In the desperate search for order the cultural reflex position of the society is: “Beat them! That is what I get and look how good I turn out.”

Kamla Persad-Bissessar and other leaders, including those in the present Government, should be brave and claim this position as the way forward for the society and educate citizens as to the justification for this approach both in our homes and in our schools.

The nature of the task facing us however is how to change behaviour when that behaviour is the “cultural reflex position.” In order to succeed, in addition to leadership in ideas we need programmes that skill parents in new child-rearing practices.

We also need programmes that skill teachers and school leaders in ways of engaging and managing difficult children in schools.

The policy of no corporal punishment has to be concretised into effective change programmes across the board if meaningful change is to be achieved.

With regard to the second issue, it is total madness to have the head of a teachers union saying that teachers are not responsible for the supervision of children during break times etc.

This is a very schizophrenic view of the role of the teacher. A teacher cannot just be the teacher of a subject; he/she is a teacher of the class, a teacher of the school and an educator for the society.

How students conduct themselves outside of the classroom space is important in their formation as people and this has to be the concern of every teacher in the school. If we wish to prepare students for life, then teachers cannot leave behaviours before school and during break as the concern of others.

Even from a narrow standpoint, what the children experience before class influences their readiness for learning inside of the classroom.

Admittedly, there are secondary schools where there has been a breakdown of order and teachers have lost ownership of the school space and have been forced to retreat to the safety of the staffroom.

In some of these environments teachers do not feel safe to intervene in the life of the corridors and byways of the school. However, it should be Ministry of Education policy and the goal of school leaders in such conditions to gradually claim back the school space for teachers.

In such contexts, the stakeholders of the school, including parents, teachers, the ministry, school leaders, need to devise programmes of meaningful engagement of students who arrive early to school and during the lunch periods. If such engagements begin from the time students enter first form then it can become part of the culture of the school.

When I was a secondary school teacher, two teachers were placed on duty each day to assist with supervision.

This meant that each teacher may have been on supervision only once a fortnight. I am sure that many creative solutions relevant to context can be generated by the more than 50 or so paid graduates who may form the staff of some of these secondary schools.

These schools have more graduate staff than some entire ministries.

Lochan is a reader who shared his views on education via email.