by Leela Ramdeen, Chair, CCSJ and Director, CREDI
Schools are a microcosm of the society in which they exist. The violence that is prevalent in our society pervades many of our schools.
In an article in the T&T Guardian of June 7, 2013 on “Student Violence and the Bystander Effect: What You Should Know”, Keagan Welch states: “An unwelcome internet phenomenon is trending in Trinidad and Tobago: videos of secondary school students fighting, recorded on mobile phones and uploaded to online social media networks….
“Why are these youth behaving so violently? How can we change the violent culture that seems to be taking over? As important as these questions are, we must also ask a simpler if less obvious one: why does no one step in and take action?…Asked about the possible link between violence in homes and violence in schools, psychologist Daryl Joseph said, ‘It’s wider than just the home. Violence is being seen as an acceptable means of resolving a dispute in Trinidad’s society today’.”
The Attorney General, Hon Anand Ramlogan, recently said that he is compiling “a DVD with all the videos of school violence that people have been sending” him “for submission to the relevant authorities”. I watched one of these videos. While two female students were brutally attacking each other, other students were laughing and recording the event. At one stage, another female student is seen kicking one of the girls away from the space where she was sitting to watch the fight. A school should be a community where people care for each other.
Christina Patterson’s January 22 article in the UK Guardian highlights the fact that “in a cruel world, empathy is on the wane…Empathy levels, according to extensive American research, and something called the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, seem in recent years to have dropped. About 30% of people, according to a new report from the think tank Civil Exchange, feel no sense of community in their neighbourhood at all.”
Today many countries are grappling with violence in schools. Professor Deon Rossouw, CEO of the Ethics Institute of South Africa (EthicsSA), argues that “schools hold a mirror up to society and can thus become enablers of a dysfunctional society by producing individuals who conform to its norms…The good news is that schools can also act as catalysts for a new type of society. A school that is built on strong ethical foundations will create an environment that is safe for pupils and teachers – and academic performance will improve as a result… Ethics and academic performance, in fact, are quite strongly linked…The solution, however, is not simply to add ethics to school curricula. Ethics need to be lived rather than taught…Everyone in the school community has to identify and buy into its ethical values” (SowetanLive, September 26, 2013).
Read also the US Bishops’ 1994 Pastoral Letter: “Confronting a Culture of Violence: A Catholic Framework For Action” in which they say: “Our families are torn by violence. Our communities are destroyed by violence. Our faith is tested by violence. We have an obligation to respond…We have to address simultaneously declining family life and the increasing availability of deadly weapons, the lure of gangs and the slavery of addiction, the absence of real opportunity, budget cuts adversely affecting the poor, and the loss of moral values…Young people are particularly threatened by violence…We are losing our respect for human life…This cycle of violence diminishes all of us…We must confront this growing culture of violence with a commitment to life, a vision of hope and a call to action…Let us embrace the challenge of John Paul II…to be ‘communicators of hope and peace’.”
Each of us has a duty to strengthen our own families and to reach out to families at risk and assist where we can. I recall giving a lift to a young woman and her two-year-old son one day. The traffic was heavy and I noticed that she was constantly slapping the little boy. It turned out that she was late for work and had had a quarrel with her common-law husband that morning.
The little boy could not make large strides and he was slowing her down. He was paying the price for his mother’s inability to address certain issues. And the more he cried, the more slaps rained down on his little body. She responded positively to my offer of advice and support and together, over a period of time, we devised strategies to encourage her to build a culture of life in her home.
Now is the time for us to be peacemakers.
