Help the hopeless

In a desperate call to stakeholders in the education sector, and other interest groups, immediate past president of the Guidance Counsellors Association of Jamaica Angelica Dalrymple says urgent and radical interventions are needed to curb the wave of violence impacting both students and teachers.

Citing much of students’ bad behaviour as a cry for help, Dalrymple said the mental health trauma faced by the country during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns is on full display, and schools have become the bad guys when disciplinary measures are taken.

“COVID has turned some of our children into hopeless cases, and these cases have gone into schools. It’s those problems the teachers are facing. The country has not put out any effort to help. I am not talking with any water in my mouth when I say that the psychosocial intervention from the ministry has not reached a quarter of those who need it,” she told The Gleaner.

READ: Teachers stuck in ‘living hell’

Not much consideration, she believes, has been given to the mental health of students and “little social programmes alone will not work”.

According to her, “a reset is needed as schools are only left with punishment as the solution and children see all representations of schools as enemies”.

In an interview last week, she said “the system is continuously pushing academic requirements, while children are at breaking point, and seeing no hope. Guidance counsellors are also at breaking point. Many other teachers can’t even be bothered. They are just working for their hard earned salary”.

Lack of understanding

Explaining further, she said there is a huge lack of understanding as to the intervention measures required.

“There is a lack of understanding on where the intervention should be and what the prevention measures should be. The behaviours are there and they come from somewhere. It is a societal situation and bigger than the little pictures that people want to show,” she said.

“When anybody call me to speak I am not mincing words, and I am not using a Band-Aid. I am not saying things for people to like me. I am saying to us there is a problem, and where it’s at now, it has built up over a period of time. It’s only getting worse. If you have a situation and you try something and you see it’s not working, why can’t we try something else,” she asked.

Continuing, she said, “Children are filled with anger and hate and a myriad of negative emotions. We need to take the taboo off mental health and help the children. We have taught them violence, and they know no other way to resolve what they feel. They bring it to school and the school prescribe punishment. They hate schools and everyone associated with schools.”

Referencing late psychiatrist Professor Fredrick Hickling, she said it was he who first suggested that a high number of Jamaicans were suffering from varying degree of mental illness and the issue was not given the proper intervention needed in schools.

“Children are bringing hate from homes and the society in which they live to their teachers and to schools. The society is going to pay heavily, and what we are seeing now will get worse before it gets better, unless we act now,” she said.

The radical social intervention, she argued, must be psychological and psychiatric help, plus a proper assessment of children; training of the special education professionals, and mandatory compliance with children must be part of the solution.

At least one minister of religion has promised to put pastors in every school. However, teachers say many of these pastors are untrained, having only certificates of attendance to church bible schools. They are warning against the proposal, stating that unless these individuals are trained teachers and with guidance counselling as a speciality or are trained and recognised counselling psychologists, the idea is a bad one.

“The students will proposition them. They are already propositioning the trained teachers much more and some are falling victim,” a former guidance counsellor expressed. In a school observed by The Gleaner for discussion on the issues, school officials provided various examples of the traumatising impact of student behaviour.

For example, in its glory days the school, which The Gleaner has opted not to identify, performed in the league of traditional high schools. It received children from a feeder school after which it is named and which produced government scholars. In the last quarter century, the quality of the cohorts plummeted and behaviour joined the ranks of under-performing, indisciplined, anti-social and violent adolescents.

Former Education Minister Ronald Thwaites told The Gleaner that student indiscipline had been a major concern during his time, and the school primarily focused on by The Gleaner was one on the ministry’s radar.

“The situation has exploded exponentially, and one has to wonder what has been happening. In my time, nothing as extreme as what is happening now, both in quality and quantity, happened. But there were some schools where children who were illiterate were habitually sent,” Thwaites said.

He questioned the cause of the current storm and said it was almost impossible for schools to act to curb bad behaviour.

“The Education Code gives no meaningful sanction for bad behaviour until it becomes the worst of the worst, which unfortunately is sometimes fatal and a criminal act. Suspending a child is a virtual holiday. He doesn’t want to come to school anyway. Now you tell him he doesn’t have to,” Thwaites said.

He could not recall specific problems facing teachers, but said strong leadership was needed in the schools.

“We need to all agree that much more needs to be done and on a sustained basis, because the current measures do not seem to be working,” he argued.

In 2022, the Ministry of Health and Wellness, in collaboration with the education ministry, launched the School Mental Health Literacy Programme. Under the programme, more than 500 school professionals were expected to be trained over three months. They will in turn train others who would impart learning to more than 21,000 grade-nine students across 177 schools islandwide. The goal of the programme was to see those trained, including the students, provided with competencies in mental health literacy, notably: understanding how to optimise and maintain good mental health; understanding mental disorders and their treatments; decreasing stigma; and enhancing help-seeking efficacy, which is knowing when and where to get help and having the skills necessary to promote self-care and to obtain good care.

In 2020, the Ministry of Education announced a series of psychosocial sessions with students, that September, to help them cope with their fears and anxieties brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Information was not immediately available with regard to how the programme was measured and the outcomes.

erica.virtue@gleanerjm.com

Among the student behaviours of concern to school officials were:

1. Students throwing bottles at teachers while they are writing on the board. Teachers have to use students (who can write) to write on the board while they face the class.

2. They ‘drape up’ male teachers who attempt to discipline them.

3. Students bite teachers, point fingers in their faces when they are spoken to. One teacher who was bitten by a female student spent thousands of dollars on medical expenses with no compensation from the parents.

4. Non-stop expletive symphonies from students in and outside of classes. Students don’t hold casual conversations without punctuating them with expletives. Both teachers and peers are victims.

5. Students damage teachers’ property, including motor vehicles, and other staffers’ property when they seek to execute punishment.

6. Students threaten physical violence against teachers. Threats include who the students will get to to shoot the teacher, including gunmen, if they dare take action against them for punishable behaviour.

7. Female students walking around in socks and bonnets. Unkempt hair, pungent body odour.

8. Students walk into senior teachers’ offices and without permission retrieve confiscated items.

9. Extorting, stealing money from other students.

10. Severe bullying of students and teachers, including physical and emotional violence.