Much of the reason why the recent St. Joseph High School ‘toilet’ episode has not, relatively speaking, been made much of in the public domain, has to do with the fact that, these days, worse things happen at sea (so to speak) as far as irregularities in the education sector are concerned, so much so, that the reported (St. Joseph) incident goes down as yet another unappealing mark on the state education sector’s chalk board; after all, the school toilet incident has been preceded in the education sector by fights in school resulting in serious injuries, an out-of-control culture of in-school bullying, assaults by parents on teachers and a swathe of other ‘shockers’ that are now commonplace. Some of these match and perhaps even surpass the recent St. Joseph reported toilet incident.
There are considerations that place restrictions on media coverage regarding just how much gets said about the matter at this stage. That said, there is no evading the fact that the necessity for the media to report on such matters underlines the extent of what is happening in the school system.
The Ministry of Education, in its current condition of leaden-footedness has to carry the can here. It is high time that it uses the tools at its disposal to make a far more diligent effort to rid the (education) system of the ‘warts and boils’ that afflict it. If the task may not be theirs alone, it is for the Ministry to mobilize and organize the resources to do so and to lead the way. The media ought not to afford the Ministry a ‘get out’ here.
What the Education Ministry manifestly does not appear to understand is that salvaging the country’s education system demands much more than what now appears to be a posture of indifference.
In the instance of the St. Joseph toilet incident, there may well be a case to be made for addressing existing weak protocols associated with aspects of out-of-class, on premises behaviour in schools and if this is so it is a matter of putting measures in place to overcome that hurdle. This, of course, ought to be a shared responsibility involving, as partners, the Ministry and the Heads and Teachers at the various schools. That said the setting (and more importantly) enforcement of rules is much more easily said than done and here one does not get the impression that the Ministry of Education is particularly adept at ensuring the stringent application of some of the rules which it sets but which it appears to be less than diligent in ensuring enforcement. To gather evidence of this one only has to observe the out-of-class regime at some schools which, all too frequently, manifests itself in forms of behaviour that sometimes comes across as a kind of completely overseen bedlam.
One would think that issues like the supervision of ‘break periods’ and the use of school toilets ought to fall under a certain minimum level of oversight for obvious reasons. The available evidence does not suggest that this applies. Where such strictures are not part of the wider regimen of in-school discipline in state schools then it goes without saying that such measures should be realized forthwith. Say what you like about manpower deficiencies, un- monitored rest rooms – as distinct from full-time policing of those facilities – in the state school system is not only unsatisfactory, it is, as we say in Guyana, asking for trouble.
The country’s education delivery system can only be said to be working efficiently when those out-of-classroom requisites that speak directly to a physically and emotionally convivial out-of-classroom environment are in place, functioning and being appropriately overseen. Where, as is the case, such mechanisms are not in place, we should anticipate instances of anomalous behaviour by the users of those facilities.
The actions of the Ministry of Education often suggest that it subscribes to the position that if a problem is ignored for long enough it will eventually go away. This is exactly the kind of approach that might cause the Minister/Ministry to treat the St. Joseph occurrence as a kind of aberration that we will, in the fullness of time, put behind us. Such a posture of, in effect, trivializing what could turn out, in the longer term to be a big problem in our school system, is nothing short of sheer recklessness. The responsible thing to do here is to use the St. Joseph ‘experience’ and apply it to making across-the-board adjustments to the protocols associated with the use of toilets/rest rooms in the state school system.