The Linden School of Excellence (LSOE), a private secondary school in the bauxite mining community, is piloting the six-week Aggression Replacement Training (ART). The programme got underway on Saturday in Linden and has enrolled twenty-five students from the LSOE, the Linden Technical Institute (LTI) and the Wismar/Christianburg Secondary School.
ART is a cognitive, behavioural-intervention focused on adolescents, training them to cope with their aggressive and violent behaviour. It is a multimodal programme that has three components: social skills, anger control training and moral reasoning.
Speaking with the Stabroek News about the programme, Principal of the LSOE Marlon Pearson said that it is being undertaken by the school with the assistance of officers from the disciplined services-specifically the Guyana Defence Force, the Fire Service and the Guyana Police Force. Ranks from these units have dedicated their time to assisting with the programme-free of cost-and, according to Pearson, the ranks have a vested interest in creating a behaviour change among the youth of the Linden community. “The LSOE is not only focused on providing academics to the children enrolled at our school, we have realised that the rounded development of quite a number of children is being hindered by a number of psychological issues that they face on a daily basis and in an attempt to deal (with) or cover those issues a lot of our children have resorted to aggressive behaviour,” said Pearson. He added that some of the children have been a part of several gangs and have been involved in violent encounters with their peers. It was noted that most children enrolled in the programme are very smart and have the ability to perform well academically.
Anger control training is the affective component of the ART. It ranges from the teaching of social skills to losing anti-social skills and replacing them with pro-social skills. The anger control training uses the anger control chain-a process taught to the students to deal with situations that cause them to get angry. “In addition to utilising the voluntary services of members of the disciplined services, we are also collaborating with a number of capable social workers who would be working on the psychological aspects of things. Most, if not all, of these children have suffered various forms of abuse, abandonment and neglect. Their issues are very serious and we need to help them and I think with this programme we will,” Pearson explained. He added that the programme was intended to target students of his school but, as word got around, they were approached by parents of other students. “We emphasised that for a child to benefit from this programme, they must be enrolled in an educational institution,” he said.
Since the commencement of the programme on Saturday, the children were engaged in a number of drill activities designed to improve their abilities to effectively follow directives and to work as a team. The participants are also benefiting from capacity building sessions. Pearson was keen on pointing out that the programme is not a ‘boot’ camp.
The programme runs for eight hours on Saturdays and Sundays and two hours on week days with funding provided by the team of volunteers. “If at the end of the six weeks we are not satisfied with their performance, they would have to join the next batch and go through the programme for another six weeks and that trend would go on until we are satisfied that a behaviour change has occurred,” said Pearson.
As the programme matures, Pearson hopes to expand it to facilitate more children from more schools across Linden.
