School anecdotes of the dark side

TTHE EDITOR, Madam:

HE NATION has swung back hard at a teacher catapulted into the spotlight in her polemic against a student deemed to be out of line. The collective conscience of many in the nation is understandable, given the tenets of professionalism aligned to the teaching profession.

What the video has done is to furnish a worm’s eye view of the goings-on in some of the schools in our education system. True, this type of teacher behaviour is unacceptable, but for us to simply condemn and hurl invectives at the teacher, asking even for forthwith dismissal without looking deeper into the education system and its dark side, would frankly be myopic.

I, for one, though an educator, had little sympathies for teachers who behaved like the one seen in the video. This was until I recognised that I was never in their shoe. Thanks to a compatriot of mine in the secondary-school system, I have now removed the cycloptic lens, owing to the every-other-day horror stories he reports to me and which haunt his school.

THE EVIDENCE

Consider the anecdotal evidence:

No name is called so as to maintain the ‘reputation’ of the school. 1 . A student went to the guidance counsellor’s office, took the key, drove her vehicle out of the school, and had it written off. The staff member, desperately seeking guidance, now takes public transport. 2

. My friend mentioned that in class, a student blurted: “Sir, every day yuh come yah a kin out u yellow teet dem afta wi”. Other students laughed. He said the day never ended before he ended up at the pharmacy to buy white strips for his teeth. 3

. He said to a male student: “Young man, where do you live?” The boy responded: “You mad, fi go tell yuh mek yuh come a mi yard an *&(#* mi.”The students laughed. 4

. A big boy tried to pull a male teacher aside. One day, he said, the bully lifted him up and the students said: “Carry him com”. Upon telling other teachers, another male teacher said that that boy wrestled his shirt off him, and two female teachers have reported him to the police. 5

. A parent was called in because a boy was harassing a female teacher. The mother said: “Look yah no, a dis unnu call mi yah fa. So wah? Di teacher a ooman an shi look gud, so wah if mi son tell har or even look har, a man yuh want him look?” 6

. An education officer assessed the institution and said it was not a school. Another student was reported to have made this proclamation ahead of the ministry official. 7

. Some of the things my teacher friend mentions cannot be written about, and time would fail me.

Let us be careful that we do not so empower these already badly empowered students, “a generation and offspring of vipers”.

This is an SOS call to the ministry. INTERVENTION BADLY NEEDED!