Wright wants more resources to tackle social crisis in schools
Published:Tuesday | March 22, 2022 | 12:13 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
William Knibb Memorial High School Principal Linvern Wright is calling for more resources to be made available to tackle the problem of violence and other delinquent behaviour in schools following the deadly dispute between two students at his Trelawny-based institution yesterday.
According to reports, shortly after 11 a.m., Khamal Hall got into an altercation with another male student, who stabbed him in the back with a knife.
Hall was rushed to the Falmouth Public Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, while the other student was taken into police custody.
While refraining from speaking on Monday’s incident, Wright asserted that school administrators were not adequately equipped to handle a powder keg of social issues affecting students, which have been exacerbated by a two-year closure of schools due to the pandemic.
“It is a two-year accumulation of these social issues, and the children are now let loose and coming back into a situation where you are trying to keep them in line. It is going to take some time both for teachers and schools to cope with it,” Wright told The Gleaner. “What really matters is that schools should be alert and vigilant to these things, and all persons must participate in executing this the best they can.”
Wright, who is also president of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools, said more counselling and other support are needed for students.
“... Resources have to be in place to deal with people who are really highly delinquent to the extent that the schools cannot handle many of these things. Schools are not prepared to deal with instances of violence and such things, so what you have to do is work through prevention, and attempt to refer them to organisations that will deal with them,” he said.
“What we really need to do is to look at more social structures and institutions, and better-manned social institutions, to assist schools with the increased incidents of violence that are showing up now,” the headmaster told The Gleaner, adding that while many such organisations exist, they were not sufficiently staffed.
“There are competent people there [at those institutions], but the numbers they get are so many that the kind of therapy and time needed to help them is problematic.”
Family Therapist Dr Beverly Scott agreed, lamenting the lack of engagement of more social workers at a time when their skills are greatly needed.
“The children have come back with a lot of pent-up emotions, not being in school for a long time and having to resocialise themselves in school, and they are not so emotionally stable and settled, yet and they are on edge. You also have a lot of social workers out there who do not have jobs, and these are the people that we need to put into families,” she contended, adding that such persons could help the children sort out emotional, psychological and economic problems.
“Our society is traumatised and we need post-traumatic intervention wholesale,” Scott added.
Last month, images of at least two bloody school fights made their way to social media. In once case, a male student of Maggotty High School in St Elizabeth was stabbed with a pen. In the other, a 15-year-old schoolgirl of Muschett High School in Trelawny was stabbed repeatedly by a schoolmate armed with a knife.
Several other brawls have also been captured in video footage since schools resumed face-to-face instruction weeks ago.