TTUTA Tobago: Society not serious about school discipline

Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) Tobago officer Bradon Roberts says the society is very hypocritical in its response to school indiscipline.

He was responding to an incident at the Mason Hall Secondary School on October 3 in which faecal residue was allegedly thrown on a student's schoolbag.

Roberts said contrary to a media report, faeces was not thrown on the 13-year-old form-two student.

"These allegations are not accurate," he told Newsday on October 8.

"The student would have been in school pretty early. It was a little after 7 am, when she would have left the classroom, and a student or someone probably went to the toilet or wherever. They got faeces water and threw it on the student's bag."

He said the bag did not contain many items "but the school would have put forward that they would have replaced the bag and the items. That's the report I got."

The incident occurred on the same day St Stephen's College student Jayden Lalchan, 15, died by suicide after being bullied for some time. Lalchan's funeral took place at the JR & D Convention Centre in Princes Town on October 8.

Roberts said school bullying exists.

"Sometimes the incidents come to the media and we have the sensationalisation around it. But when we have a society that has been quite hypocritical on the issue of school indiscipline, these things will continue.

"Because when we have, as part of the disciplinary matrix, we talk about hairstyle policy, we talk about cellphone use, we talk about uniform and dress code – this is the same public that comes and speak against it, because hairstyle in isolation is a very frivolous issue for schools to be fighting."

Roberts said hairstyles should not be viewed in isolation.

"It is part of the package of discipline in students. And when we have a minister who is eager to jump on a typewriter and issue memos that nullify or strike out hairstyle as a policy from schools and then we jump on top of that by issuing another memo talking about graduation, we are eroding the same things and policies that schools have as part of discipline.

"We somehow want to pull them out and itemise them. We already abolish corporal punishment; now you can't talk harsh to a student because that is 'verbal abuse.' And there are rules since 2016 that highlight everything that police officers cannot do to schoolchildren."

Roberts claimed the powers of schools in relation to discipline were being eroded.

"So we are tying the hands of principals and teachers and throwing them out on the deep, but complain about them not having a handle on their students for not doing well.

"I am not eager to answer to the question about what we can put in place, because we are taking our good time to erode everything that schools would have put in place historically to aid discipline in students.

"We are where we are because of the things we have been doing."

Roberts also said the Student Support Services Division, which is supposed to address bullying as part of its mandate, is significantly underresourced.

Tobago police is investigating.