Minister of Education Shaik Baksh bluntly declared this week that his ministry will not tolerate violent students in school. Children who pose a threat to their peers and/or teachers, Minister Baksh said quite forcefully, will be expelled. He suggested that they be placed at the Sophia Special School where they would receive “proper guidance and counselling to reverse their negative behaviour.” And one assumes that if this fails the New Opportunity Corps would be the next likely venue for these violent students.

While this is commendable, it still suggests a reactive approach to school violence, which has been increasing in recent years not only in terms of the number of incidents, but also the extremity of the violent behaviours. Mr Baksh, who was speaking at an open forum this week on promoting safe, acceptable behaviours and positive values in schools at which head teachers, teachers, parents and various officials were present, also referred to several other measures that were being put in place. One such is a pilot in Region Two schools to introduce a child-friendly environment. He also mentioned the ministry’s Health and Family Life Education programme; training teachers to respond to crisis situations; strengthening the Schools Welfare Department; placing welfare officers at selected schools and providing mentoring to students. The trouble is that none of these fantastic-sounding measures seem to have been implemented at any of the schools that have had violent altercations.

Minister Baksh also took issue with media reports of school violence. He said the violence was not as widespread as the media painted it and pointed to “a recent survey conducted in all schools countrywide over a six-month period” which revealed that there were 62 incidents of violent behaviour recorded in 26 schools involving 117 students. The minister said that these represented less than three per cent of the schools in the country and 0.05 per cent of the total student population. Of course, the minister is right. According to this survey, statistically, it would appear that violence in school is low. But he should try telling that to the parents of eight-year-old Saeed Baksh of Bush Lot, Berbice Primary School who apparently suffered a mild concussion and spent five days in hospital after his head was slammed into a wall several times by an older student. Or the parents of Emmanuel Joseph, who was badly beaten by a group of students, right outside his city school on the day school closed. This child was also hospitalized, but his parents “don’t want any problems.”

There were also several other incidents including the ten-year-old Stella Maris Primary pupil who was hit in the head by another pupil last year October; the 13-year-old Diamond Secondary student who was stabbed in his chest with a pair of scissors by a classmate that same month; the 14-year-old student of Freeburg Secondary who was stabbed in the back by a another student in September last year; and the 13-year old Diamond Secondary student who was stabbed in his abdomen in November last year. Three of those children were hospitalized for varying periods, which meant they would have missed classes. In addition, the incidents would have been disruptive to the teaching atmosphere and would have impacted on their peers who witnessed the violent incidents. There have since been three stabbing incidents at one school – Lodge Community High.

Certainly these incidents don’t happen every day, but acts of violence in the wider society do. It is a well-known fact that children learn what they live; they duplicate what they see around them. Is the Ministry of Education waiting for these random acts to become an epidemic? Minister Baksh would be serving all of us and the children of Guyana much better if he could tell us that there have been interventions at the 26 schools where violence has been known to occur; that welfare officers, guidance counsellors and mediators have been placed at these schools; that these schools are being made child friendly to cater for the hundreds of students attending them who wish to do so in peace and without being bullied.

While the provision for Students Councils in schools being made in the new legislation is also welcome news, these bodies will take some time to get started – the legislation, according to Minister Baksh, is still at the Attorney General’s Chambers. Interventions must be made now, in the interest of inclining the trees while the twigs are still young enough to be bent.