OUR various leaders are seldom unanimous, but the one thing they may agree upon is that there is generally a serious breakdown of discipline in society.

The breakdown manifests itself in numerous ways: Parents speak to children in the most vulgar ways, and children emulate that vulgarity. Men demonstrate unabashed disrespect for, and abuse, women in homes, offices, on roadways, in establishments, and so on; resulting in an alarming number of domestic violence cases, untold numbers of domestic and social rapes, and in suicides. The “songs” that befoul our airwaves express every anti-woman and racist sentiment that comes to mind. People, drunk as the proverbial fish, think nothing of jumping into cars and driving. Even sober, our drivers have little or no consideration for life and limb.

Our serious lack of a sense of civic duty and our indiscipline have led to disregard for human life itself. In such an atmosphere, crime flourishes and simple decency perishes. This has inevitably filtered into the schools. Almost all of our political leaders have, at one time or another, bemoaned this fact, and all have advanced various remedies: “higher” training for our teachers; counsellors in schools; greater and more meaningful parental involvement in the education of children. This is all well-meaning and makes good sense, but we must move beyond well-meaning words and get to effective ACTION!

We, each in our very ordinary ways, know that the recreation of a civic society must begin in schools; that is hardly genius, although some of us say it with the ring of prophecy. We also say that teachers are the ones primarily in charge of bequeathing the future to our children. We knew this even before Christ was sent to us, or Socrates and Lau Tze, for instance. The question is this: HOW do we give our teachers a chance at “higher” training and education? As it now stands, teachers who want to attend our university battle for time off to attend classes to obtain their degrees. The valid argument is that they cannot be given time off because classrooms would be left without teachers.

To leave the classroom bereft of a teacher is to disenfranchise the very children those teachers are meant to teach. But then, if we do not find a way to give them time off for higher education, the children would again be the losers. It is a Catch 22 situation, and it is not as if teachers go to UG for free anyway. Tuition is expensive, and the cost has recently been doubled.

What if we have a cadre of retired teachers who can be paid a modest stipend to hold the classes during prescribed hours when the regular class teachers have to attend UG for “higher” training? Let’s say this happens twice per week for two hours per day. In other places, they call them supply teachers.
At the same time, we may encourage teachers to read for degrees in Psychology, which the University of Guyana recently introduced. At the launch of the programme last year, President of the Caribbean Alliance of National Psychological Associations (CANPA), Omowale Marshall stressed that the initiation of these programmes will not only be an asset, but in fact is critical.

He observed that Guyana has the greatest epidemiological demand for psychologists and if that was not enough, UNICEF Resident Representative, Sylvie Foulet said that the initiative was “very much aligned” with the Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDGs) and studies in these areas would extend beyond mental health onto sexual health and even the prevention of violence. Since this is (or ought to be) an area of national priority, government could offer partial scholarships for those who enroll in Psychology. While this capacity-building is being done, some of our “experts” could identify teachers who have a natural gift for counselling. Let us give these counsellors–new and current–a small private space where they may speak with our at-risk children.