… we have never really addressed it

I HAVE known Brian O’Toole and his wife for several years before the ‘School of the Nations’ was born. I illustrated several projects for Brian, and found the couple to be decent folks. I am disturbed by what has occurred, with Brian having been shot, possibly, by a student. I do hope he recovers fully and somehow, can come to terms and view this tragic incident as a national wakeup call for a school sub-culture that have been brooding for over a decade.

As a parent we all want the best for our children. With my second child I did not like the Common Entrance results, or the secondary school to which he was sent. There were certain subject teachers that were not in place, since this was a period of a teacher brain-drain, (not only in Guyana) because Guyanese were being recruited by other countries. The teacher that was responsible for my eldest passing Common Entrance at St Pius Primary was gone, and so were many others.
The only alternative were the newly, rising private schools. I decided to send my second child to one such school [not Brian’s school], we had to make serious cuts at home to meet those fees. My son was changing and we attributed it to adolescence, because he never complained about his school life, his Math teacher painted a picture for me, but that was only part of it.

Then came the time when the very teacher told me that the school couldn’t meet the full complement of students for Form Two, but he thought that my son was competent enough to transfer to Form Three. That was ridiculous and I had no intention to pay for an experiment. I took him down to the Ministry of Education where he wrote a test and he was admitted to Saint Stanislaus College, he ended his school life there, where vanishing subject teachers were still an issue. School life during that era of our nation seemed to be enveloped in conflict, conflicts that could not be harnessed by weak administrators.

In many cases with private and public schools strong administrators made a difference, these are not created, they are born that way. I must make reference to Ms. Gail Primo and Ms. Simon at St Joseph High where my last child attended. Those ladies embodied the strength I’m referring to. School life has always had bullies, snitches, tough and weak children, but the system accommodated them in its diversity. There were teacher-guided sports, Arts, Home Economics and Industrial Arts, all hinged to the priority of academic excellence. We, the parents erred in not recognising that our world had disappeared from the reality of our children.

During the school age of most parents, the attire was standard, ‘Bush Clarks, Bull-dogs, the girls wore yachtings’ that required a white cleaning, which upon stamping their feet omitted gushes of clouds. The objective of students was narrowed to passing within the top five, to go over into the next form. School conflicts were solved on Friday with the usual after-school fights. Those who copied from the exercise books of others were looked down upon, and there was always the option to approach some teachers during recess for subject clarifications.

From the 90’s emerged the `nouveau riche’. These were new money citizens who had emerged into wealth through trading in drugs, backtrack, smuggling or where the support recipients of those activities looked the other way. One very vocal lawyer/accountant had helped launder finances from that world, he was actually accused of this by a senior politician. There was never an egalitarian relationship between the have and the have-nots in this country, but a co-existent understanding persisted.

With the `nouveau riche’ of the 90s onward, was accompanied by a violent machismo that defied school excellence and propelled student culture in parallel, with what was transpiring in society, Phantom, Taliban, extra-judicial killings were plastered in graphic pictures on the front page of one newspaper while others carried the events in bold text, with previous photographs. Children from especially Afro- Guyanese were awakened during the night by security forces breaking into their homes, looking for hypothetical suspects, some even witnessed executions. Victor Bourne Jr. was in bed with his infant son when the ‘Black clothes’ entered the home, into the bedroom and shot him in cold blood. They then dragged his body in full view of his neighbours, including children, some distance before throwing his body into the vehicle. Our youth across Guyana were not insulated from these events that spilled over into school culture. No honest teacher, including Brian, can say that the subject of ‘guns’ brought by students in school, whether in their school or not, is unknown to them. For the first time in schools, mind-altering substances had become prevalent, marijuana, pills etc. School children have committed murders against school mates, bullying took on a different atmosphere; children were assaulted because their families were in working class who couldn’t afford them designer clothing, or couldn’t afford them excess monies to bring to school, or lived in two bedroom homes, or their school clothes exhibited obvious wear and tear. Some were even afraid to open their lunch, least it would be deemed inadequate.

Then there was the disrespect for females that require a study on its own. This was a cultural retrogression in many high-end paid schools and some top secondary schools. It was brought to my attention that a student I knew, never recovered his self-esteem, and his school mates were sure that his experiences led to his suicide shortly after school.
I had developed in the 90s a comic book to deal with some of these issues that students experienced. A few teachers supported the venture due to what was happening around that time. I was considering to publicly dramatise an issue that could have make a dialogue difference, the UNICEF representative wanted to do it, but the government liaison, back then, was adamant–NO!