Dear Editor,
There are more stories of violence among children – teenagers – this week. One case involves students from a Georgetown secondary school, and the case it seems is that the ‘individual students would be disciplined/counselled’. Another case apparently involves gangs.
There are no stories though of any community interventions to address the violence. Teachers alone cannot deal with the problems of violence which their students experience. Some Headteachers over the years have involved community resources to work with parents, students, teachers and others to disrupt the legacies of violence. The Government though does not sustain these initiatives maybe because Guyana’s governance is founded on the legacy of violence and the current governance structures require different kinds of violence to survive.
There were no reports that the teachers who met the President or the Guyana Teachers’ Union are concerned about the violence around their students, though recent attacks of teachers have been condemned. So if we don’t have a problem there is no need to fix it. Things normal it seems and we will probably get more stories of children attacking each other, outside of school, with others cheering, filming or lamenting depending on how we feel about the violence.
There is no sense that the oil money will be used to transform and heal us, beyond ‘displining’ and punishing those of us who are found guilty.
Yours sincerely,
Vidyaratha Kissoon
