OUR various leaders are seldom unanimous, but the one thing they may agree upon is that there is a serious breakdown of discipline in society generally. 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 the roads, in establishments, and so on. This results in our alarming number of domestic violence cases, untold numbers of domestic and social rape, and in suicides. The “songs” that befoul our airwaves express every anti-woman and racist sentiment that comes to mind. People, drunk as anything, think nothing of jumping into cars and drive to kill. Even when 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 a disregard for human life itself. A life is cheaper than a 200 Guyana Dollar short drop. In such an atmosphere, crime flourishes and simple decency perishes.

This has filtered into the schools, as is inevitable. Almost all of our political leaders have bemoaned this fact at one time or another; and they have all advanced various remedies: “higher” training for our teachers; installing counsellors in schools; having greater and more meaningful parental involvement in the education of children. This is all well-meaning, and it all makes good sense. And yet, we must move beyond well-meaning words and get to effective ACTION!

Every one of us in our very ordinary ways knows that the re-creation of a civic society must begin in schools. This is hardly genius, although some of us say it with the ring of prophecy. We also say that teachers are the ones who are primarily in charge of bequeathing the future through our children. We knew this even before Christ was sent to us; 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 still-pitiful single university battle for time-off to attend classes to obtain their tertiary 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 that they are meant to teach. But then if we do not find a way to give them time off for higher education, then the children will be the losers again. Catch 22. And it is not as if they go to UG for free anyway. Tuition is expensive, recently doubled.

What if we have a cadre of retired teachers (we still throw them away when they are 55 years old) 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 we have them 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, although we have no idea if UG offers any such thing, and we do not know the quality of that degree, even if they have it. There are many people who have degrees in Social Work that happen into schools. A degree in Social Work, as it is now structured at UG, does not amount to a degree in Psychology. Doing one or two courses in Psychology does not a basic psychologist make. And if they had any kind of thought and expertise and imagination at UG, they would find a way to shrink the degree time from this old four-year thing to between two and three years. This is also not new — a great many good universities around the world have been doing it since the 1980s. One entire semester can be cut from the degree programme if we use active case files drawn from work done or research done with actual children. Since this is (or ought to be) an area of NATIONAL priority, we could offer partial scholarships for those who enrol in Psychology. While this capacity-building is being done, some of our “experts” could identify teachers who have a natural gift for counselling. Give these counsellors (new and current) a small private space where they may speak with our at-risk children.