TTUTA Tobago officer Bradon Roberts has renewed his call for an urgent meeting of all education stakeholders on the island to address the escalating incidence of violence and indiscipline in schools.
He was responding to a stabbing incident at the Signal Hill Secondary School on February 16, which resulted in one student being hospitalised with serious injuries.
In a 32-second video, which went viral on social media, a male student was seen stabbing a classmate with an object while other students shouted in the background.
A female student could also be heard saying repeatedly, “He stabbing him.”
The video drew outrage from several people on social media, one of whom called on the school’s principal and a teacher, who was reportedly in the classroom during the incident, to come out and make a public statement.
Roberts said the existing curriculum must be revamped to cater to the needs of students in contemporary society.
“We need to reform the curriculum because the current one is not working,” he told Newsday.
“We are fighting against technology where the ‘trinibad’ music is so easily accessible, and the influence that these students are getting outweighs what the current curriculum could really offer in terms of captivating the minds of our young ones.
“So, we need to have the stakeholders coming together where we could tweak the curriculum in such a way that it means something.”
Roberts said several of his colleagues often tell him they could apply the topics they did in Mathematics to their daily lives.
“So, how about we make the curriculum applicable to their daily lives. Instead of using this chalk and talk and the whiteboard and the marker, let us use the football, let us use the home garden. Let us use that in Mathematics. Let us use that in the creative writing and not just have creative writing for creative writing time and Mathematics for Maths time, and there is no relation.”
He said bringing about that change is not easy.
“It requires stakeholders to come together so at least the parents know what they need to do at home that would match what the school is doing. The business sector will also know what the schools are actually doing so they can invest. So is not that schools should be left on their own to just come up with these ideas.”
Roberts argued that school violence will persist until sustainable measures are implemented.
“It does not really matter much what is the reasoning behind this one incident in terms of face value. If these students are engaged positively they would not have time for this. These things come to the fore as long as you have cameras to tape it, but there are always going to be these incidents a schools.”
He continued, “We need to treat with the minds of these young people. We have to captivate them first or else we are going to have these sensationalised incidents where some politician would give a very nice statement and nothing happens afterwards. We wait until the next incident to talk about it.
“I feel it for the teachers who have to fac
