Dear Editor,
I taught at the Sophia Special School for about a year during the 1990s, and can attest to the fact that students aggressively confronting and threatening teachers were regular occurrences.
One must remember that students attending the Sophia Special School were/are mainly students who the regular school system was found inadequate to deal with. So there was/is no shortage of unruly, angry and aggressive students there. Students who are prepared and sometimes anxious to confront teachers and even threaten them with harm.
The similarity between the prisoners and my experiences at the Sophia Special School is this willingness, nay seeming desire to take on representatives of authority. It is this shared tendency that is worthy attention.
Dr. Samenow – a psychologist and criminologist in his book “Inside the criminal Mind,” posits that there is such a thing as a criminal personality. He argues that this personality tends to reveal itself in displays of resentment of authority, uncontrolled anger and the need to be in control. He/she (criminal) expects others to behave as he/she wants them to and is often uncompromising and harbour an enormous fear of being put down.
Samenow says, criminals insist on being respected and for him (the criminal) respect is shown by others submitting to him. The good doctor concludes, that when the criminal feels disrespected “he will do whatever he considers necessary to demonstrate that no one can push him around.”
Using Dr. Samenow’s perspective, herein lies the conditions for tension and confrontation between prisoners and prison officer. Between some children (that the ‘normal schools’ find difficult to supervise, children, like those sent to Sophia Special School) and teachers.
By the very nature of their work prison officers must establish and make clear their authority over inmates. The prison officers tells them when to wake, have a bath, eat and sleep. He says come and they must, go and they have to. The officer’s role is tailor- made for confrontation with the criminal mind. So, that an anger management programme would know success in terms of reducing prisoner on prisoner violence is understandable, since, they are all subjected to an authority. And, in the main, it is at this authority they direct most of their anger, their resentment.
For, difficult to supervise children, who might also have a delinquent record, the story is similar. For the better part of five days per week, these difficult to supervise children are under the authority of teachers. Teachers tell them when to sit, when to stand where to go, where they cannot go, when to be silent, when to eat etc. This level of control and submission to authority they find unacceptable and their tendency for display of “uncontrolled anger” is in full display.
If, Samenow is correct about there being a criminal mind, and if a tendency to uncontrolled anger, and disdain for authority are some of its characteristics, then more attention needs to be placed on the children attending the Sophia Special School. In many ways these children have been neglected by the Ministry of Education for generations now, and their sense of being disrespected can be seen as justified.
Recently there have been calls for welfare officers to be employed throughout our schools. I am not sure whether this has been done. But, if this is being done I will bet that there is no such officer at the Sophia Special School. I will also bet same is true for Guidance teachers. Unless things have changed since my time there, the children of Sophia Special School do not have a playground. The buildings are the equivalent of shacks. In short, how this school is treated makes it plain to students that they are seen as different from their counterparts attending ‘normal schools.’ Thus, students’ sense of being seen as unworthy and ‘disrespected’ is heightened.
Deprived of all the ingredients we identify as essential for fostering a good self image these ‘at risk’ children’s display of anger and violence directed at authority figures should not surprise.
Since so many students at this school share with prisoners resentment at authority it would be interesting for a study to be done to ascertain what has become of students who attended the Sophia Special School over the last 15 years. Let us find out how many past students have had run-ins with the law? How many have been found guilty for crimes such as abuse of spouse, threatening or injuring supervisors etc.
Further, this contempt for authority might also help us to better understand some cases of suicide and attempted suicide. For example, the youth who commits or attempts suicide because he/she resents parents placing restrictions on their goings and comings.
Yours faithfully,
Claudius Prince
