By Johnny Coomansingh
I am angry! I am incensed! I am totally fed up of the political games concerning violence among our students in our high schools in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T)! In the context of the scourge, political pundits appear to be dragging their feet, literally lollygagging to fix the anomaly once and for all, while the lacerated victims suffer in hospitals. There is too much talk, too many excuses, too many ‘psychological assessments,’ too many futile debates, too many seminars, too many conferences where himself and herself speak to themselves without any immediate solution! The passivity concerning this hideous day-to-day occurrence is heart-wrenching. There are too many incidents of hostility in our high schools. Too many! Heaven help us if students could easily acquire guns; many of their “enemies” would surely end up dead!
This question boggles my mind: ‘What could a little frail form four female student do so bad, so terrible, so intolerant as to warrant a horrible beating on the road by five other female students?’ Imagine a gang of five girls from other high schools pounced on a student from Holy Faith Convent, a high school located in Couva. They fell on the hapless student like ants on a cockroach, pounding the daylights out of her. They waylaid the student and beat her to a pulp! To avoid recognition, the assailants went to a nearby Starbucks restaurant, removed their school uniforms and dressed for the violent exercise. The whole plot to damage this one student was pre-meditated. Alexander Bruzual in his article ‘ministry probes violent assault on teen student’ reported in the Trinidad Express (11/06/2025):
“A violent assault where several teenage girls beat a Holy Faith Convent student has triggered public outrage and an official investigation by the ministry of education…The victim, a Form Four student, was attacked around 3:00 pm while waiting at the school’s front gate for her mother to pick her up. A similar incident took place a week ago when a group of students at South East Port of Spain Secondary School beat another student in a school bathroom, causing several injuries…The girl’s mother said she was not involved in any altercation or confrontation prior to the incident. She said her daughter was not a troublemaker and had no prior disputes with the attackers. “She did not do anything to deserve this. She was just by the gate. And right now, she’s in a lot of pain…” “They stamp up on her head, there are marks around her neck. This was a full assault against an innocent child…” From what she had been told, the attackers—who attend another school—had targeted another student from Holy Faith Convent.
However, when they were unable to reach that student, they turned on her daughter, who happened to be standing nearby. The injuries the girl sustained required immediate medical attention. The teen was first taken to the Couva Health Facility and was expected to be transferred to the San Fernando General Hospital for further treatment, including X-rays and an ultrasound. Doctors have placed her neck in a brace and administered antibiotics and sedatives. “This whole thing is shocking to me because my daughter is not a troublemaker. And she doesn’t even be outside the compound. I don’t even let her wait on the road, I let her wait for me by the gate. And yet they still come and grab her…”
Further to this despicable event, it is apparent that the perpetrators in this crime are presently in hiding. Sacha Wilson in her article: ‘Cops still in search of girls who beat Holy Faith student’ published in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian (17/06/2025) reported:
“Police are still trying to locate the five girls who brutally beat a Holy Faith Convent student outside the school gates in Couva last Tuesday. Guardian Media was told that the girls were not at the addresses that the police were given, and they have not returned to their respective schools since the incident. None of the girls attend Holy Faith Convent, but they attend three other secondary schools in the Couva area. In a telephone interview, the mother of the 15-year-old victim said she also received that information from the police, and it appeared that the girls were in hiding. Based on the advice of the guidance officer, she said her daughter would not return to school for the remainder of the term…
Meanwhile, she said her daughter is recovering. She attended the eye clinic yesterday, and while her right eye is injured, the mother said her vision may not be affected. The 45-year-old mother said she was so far pleased with the police response as well as the support her daughter has been receiving from the students and staff at her school and the Children’s Authority. A 30-second viral video showed five girls—students from other schools in casual clothes—beating and kicking the victim while she was on the ground. The incident occurred after school was dismissed. She was standing at the gate when one of the girls grabbed her, dragged her to the ground, and they all began beating her. The victim’s mother told Guardian Media that her daughter was not the intended target, but the student whom the girls had the issue with had already left for the day. Prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said her government had adopted a zero tolerance for school violence, and students who engaged in violent acts would face expulsion and the full brunt of the law.
And here we are in T&T, hoping and praying as in the United States of America with their favourite line, ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ when there is a school shooting massacre. I am 70 years old now, and this horror, this aberration, in almost all our schools has been festering since time immemorial. Moreover, the bullies and bullying in schools are becoming ‘tolerable’ and ‘acceptable’ and ‘normal’ manifestations, like nobody’s business. I must confess that I was bullied in primary school, in church, and of course at Northeastern College (NEC) in Sangre Grande, my high school. If it weren’t for a certain teacher who was the brother of one of my friends, I don’t know what would have become of me. In high school I recalled some episodes in my yet-to-be-published book titled: 50 Years After…Encounters, Experiences, Realities:
“To cope with the bullies at NEC was an“activity” I had to contend with. There was always someone who was bent on making my life miserable. A couple of bigger lads were my literal nemesis at school. One of the boys pushed my head under the faucet in the lavatory and gave me a good soak down. I had formulated some plans how to deal with him, but I refrained from my personal plot and spoke with my general science teacher who gave to him a proper tongue lashing and threatened him. He never looked in my direction again after that episode.”
In primary school even some of the teachers were treacherous. Many times, their leather straps met the backs of frail little students. Why? Some of them, I’m sure, would probably relieve their domestic and ‘teaching’ frustrations on the backs of children, especially those living below the poverty line; I was such a student. I was only ten years old, but I remember one of my teachers beating me one morning. The leather belt stung painfully on my little tender back. It could be that I didn’t have enough to eat that particular morning and I was in no mood to sing.
In the Sangre Grande Seventh Day Adventist Primary School, I was beaten to sing the hymn: Lord in the morning thou shalt hear. As the belt fell on my back, I heard that teacher say: “Sing boy, sing!” What a travesty! The funny thing is that the said teachers on Sabbath mornings at church would oftentimes preach that ‘Jesus loves you…and we are all going to heaven.’ If I ever make it to heaven and I meet some of them walking into the pearly gates I’d surely be returning to Earth. I would ask Saint Peter, “Whe he going? Wuh he doing here?” I guess that religion in general, is about ‘do as I say, not do as I do.’
Later down the journey, where ‘licks and floggings’ were shared like ‘peas’ in school, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, former minister of education, banned corporal punishment in all schools. In 2001, corporal punishment in schools was officially banned in T&T. The prohibition had previously been outlined in the Children’s Amendment Act (2000), but it was formally enacted in 2001. Despite continued calls to reinstate it, subsequent governments have maintained the ban. Dr Hollis Liverpool (sobriquet: Mighty Chalkdust) a critic of the corporal punishment ban in his calypso sang: “…open the gate we want to come in Kamla” with reference to the emergence of criminals due to the lack of corporal punishment, which he quipped would cause people to end up in jail. Nevertheless, we are all aware of the maxim: ‘As the twig is bent so is the tree inclined.’
Regardless of whether the student receives corporal punishment or not, there are factors that cause certain behaviours to emerge. So, corporal punishment is not a panacea to heal bad behaviour. Social development of a human being hinges on four basic elements: the home, the school, the community, and the mass media. If the student is not guided properly in the first case by his or her parents, then the parents must share the responsibility of the student’s behaviour, whether positive or negative. Being a parent is one thing, a biological arrangement, but parenting determines the outcomes. The Holy Bible records in Proverbs 22:6: ‘Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.’
This proverb is all well and good, the ideal scenario. However, when parents themselves do not have such training, what results do we expect? The school administration and teaching staff must then take up the added responsibility of seeing to it that all students receive adequate training and instruction to ensure the safety of all. Are the teachers of today still in ‘loco parentis?’ If students are influenced by their peers, community miscreants, and the mass media, especially social media to create mayhem and chaos, to exhibit illicit behaviour, to cause hurt and injury to others, premeditated or not, then the law must step in to clean up the mess.
Again, such little wannabe criminals should be cognizant of the fact that they must not follow a multitude to do evil. Although I am angry, I am happy and excited to know that T&T now has a brand new Commissioner of Police (CoP). At his inauguration, Allister Guevarro, the CoP, said: “Over the last couple of months, I’ve been seeing several acts of violence engaging media attention — about school violence and bullying. Under my watch, that will never happen,” he said. “I want to make you a promise here today. If you cannot control your children, we will contain them” (Trinidad Express, June 18, 2025).
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