Copying more than homework

DINESH RAMBALLY

THE RECENT and disturbing incident involving the substantial gashing of one schoolchild’s face by another can make every parent’s stomach churn. There’s no point in our saying, “Thank God it was just a knife,” because that’s a slippery slope down the path to saying, “Thank God it was just an ordinary handgun and not a sub-machine gun.”

With hands in the air and a sigh on our lips, we resign ourselves to the idea that it could have been worse, and slowly we begin to normalise the horror as our accepted standard of living. One day we could even be mapping our nation’s history based on the milestones of crimes that grew to be progressively more horrific. It is indeed a slippery slope.

We have been accused of being a copycat nation, with references to our penchant for the glitzy trends of First World countries. This is reflected in our appetite for new, gas-guzzling cars, fast and processed food, brand-name shoes and clothing, and many other creature comforts. Just as an example, many people held out for the Pfizer vaccine, largely because it was from a country whose branding we crave, justifiably or unjustifiably so.

However, copying does not only happen across nations, but also across the different sectors of our society. Trinidad and Tobago is wrestling with the unprecedented scourge of crime. Men are beating and killing women mercilessly. Criminals are breaking into homes and assaulting people. Children are being molested and sexually abused in children’s homes, run by the State. Our youth are being bullied in schools and in cyberspace. Human trafficking, sex trafficking and piracy make us want to hold our heads and bawl. Certain people in the security apparatus of the State are enabling crime and are benefitting from it. Kidnapping for ransom and gender-based crimes are seriously challenging the resources of our officers in uniform.

Based on all of this, can we really say that we are surprised that our children are copying the behaviour that they see all around them? The very behaviour that pervades the news on a daily basis, in one form or another; behaviour that they see in their physical environment all the time?

This government’s track record for handling crime is abysmal. There seems to be no letting up by the criminals who continue to keep the country on edge and shoo away would-be investors. They squelch any real prospect of our becoming a First World nation. We are collapsing inward because of crime, suppressing our creative talents and our proud ability to find our little selves all over the global stage. Such potential has peeped through time and again.

The recent violence on display by the schoolchildren and the startling number of suspended students from schools should be sending off alarm bells. It is not enough to treat with such incidents in isolation. It is not enough to see what happens at the end of such a story. Endings are often intolerable – sometimes justice is badly delayed and in the process destroys other lives. Sometimes justice simply cannot be delivered, as where evidence is mysteriously washed away.

It would therefore be extremely foolish for us to treat with school-based violence as isolated incidents when our children are copying the behaviour of so many deviants in our society. It would be foolish to punish them when they practice what amounts to vigilante justice, as they have already learned that the wheels of justice roll way too slowly in this society, if it can begin to roll at all.

Schools have traditionally been seen as a bastion of hope, where the silent revolution was taking place, enabling transformation from poverty to wealth, illiteracy to education, from merely subsisting to accessing the frills and niceties of life. Children were children. They were expected to be obedient, respectful to teachers and even feel fear and remorse if they were found going contrary to instructions. And yes, they copied each other’s homework. But today, they have gone past that. They are copying the homework of criminals and con artists that are freely available for the taking.

Let us hope that the time to say goodbye is not yet upon us, that we have a chance to salvage what might have been the ideal Caribbean childhood – where children walk barefooted in the sand, play hopscotch, as they laugh without compromise, dream without limits, and live without any fear whatsoever, understanding that those in charge would never let them down.

Dinesh Rambally is the Member of Parliament for Chaguanas West