As schools across the island honour the contribution of the nation’s teachers today, three educators have highlighted the growing dilemma of indiscipline among students and have called on parents to regain control of their homes as one way of curbing the problem.

Gloria Johnson, a 37-year veteran in the profession and now retired principal of Moneague Teachers’ College in St Ann, said the classroom today is a far cry from what it was when she started.

“Things have really changed and they have changed because of indiscipline in society, moral decline and technological changes which have affected children negatively,” Johnson said.

“When I started in the classroom, children were more willing to learn, they were not exposed to some of the things they are exposed to now, we could get more out of them; they have too much happening around them and some of them are exposed too early to things they should not be exposed to,” she lamented.

According to Johnson, the indiscipline which now has school administrators at all levels in a stranglehold has its roots in the home.

“I think most of the things happening in the classrooms now are as a result of the breakdown in homes; the foundation of homes have broken down and I don’t care who wants to beat on teachers, we have to do something where homes are concerned because the home is the foundation and the background of society and if you don’t have good homes and disciplined homes it is going to impact negatively on children,” Johnson said.

The educator also called on fathers to play their roles in developing their children, while urging parents to be more aware of what is happening in the lives of their offspring.

“The homes can make a difference and if they want a change in society let us go back to building the home life. If we correct what is wrong in the homes we can change the situation,” Johnson said.

From a similar platform but worlds apart in one of Kingston’s inner-city primary schools, teacher Brinetta Lewis has seen enough in her five-year stint to make a similar conclusion to her colleagues.

“The home, and by extension the community, is challenging their learning, most of them don’t read at the grade level, they don’t get proper nutrition, they are affected by the absence of fathers, every day they are exposed to violence and explicit sex and it really affects their learning in the class,” she pointed out.

Lewis said the harsh realities faced by these students have hardened them beyond their years.

“They are very aggressive towards each other. The interest towards their school work is not really there, you have to pump them. Even if you try motivating them by using stars or ‘boy of the week’ or ‘girl of the week’ (designations) it only works for a while,” Lewis said.

For the young teacher, school as she knew it and discipline seem to have retreated with the years.

“When I was going to school, if you were going down the stairs and you saw a teacher coming you had to stop. these students, they will push you down; they curse bad words in front of you and it’s no problem. You try parting a fight and you literally have to step out of it otherwise you end up getting the punch or the stab,” she said.

For Lewis, the absence of male role models makes the going even tougher.

“One of the things that makes it hard for us in our school is we have only two males. So students come to school, they see females; they go home, they see females; so there is no male figure in their life,” she added.

Furthermore, she said education was being treated like an inconvenience by most.

“Children will stop from school because they don’t have lunch money, which is strange because we have a lunch programme, or because their uniform is dirty; some reasons they give for stopping is ridiculous,” she said.

According to Lewis, there was hope if a level of discipline and priority setting can be achieved.

But first, “they have to get rid of the quick success mentality. Nobody wants to think or try for themselves, but if they get out of that mode there can definitely be change”.

Teacher turned communications officer Karen Taylor said she left the classroom after several run-ins with students, whose indiscipline knew no bounds.

According to Taylor, both students and teachers have been given a raw deal. Speaking from her experience with students from multiple backgrounds, Taylor said one main weakness of the current system was the small number of special needs educators in an environment where a number of children are in need of that brand of tutoring.

“Many of these children are mildly to moderately retarded and they are in the system,” she said.

“It’s really an uphill battle, it’s really hard, we need special needs educators because we have a lot of special needs children, but a lot of us did not specialise in this area, so many of our teachers are not equipped in these areas. They are not dunce; they just have learning disabilities,” Taylor added.

At the same time, she said the behaviour of young female students had reached new levels of indecency.

“One time girls were the tamer ones and our boys were the raucous ones,” Taylor said. “Now our girls have little respect for anyone and are worse than the boys; you have girls holding up boys and girls are no longer modest. They have lost all sense of modesty.”

Across the sexes, she said, respect has also fallen.

“There is no respect again for age and authority. As a child, when you had a senior teacher you barely wanted to talk loudly in their presence, and you couldn’t walk past the teachers’ office. Nowadays, students will fight in there. The other day one student dragged off a senior teacher’s wig,” Taylor said.

“They carry knives, they hold up teachers and make lewd comments and sometimes as teachers we feel there is nobody in our corner; the parents have just let them go on us and we are supposed to feed them, and be there for them and curb them and it’s really hard,” she added.