Dear Editor,

Now that school is about to reopen, I think it is a good time to address some emerging and frightening situations that have been plaguing some institutions of learning for quite some time now.

These troubling situations range from simple disobedience in class to outright defiance and disrespect, physical confrontations, and death threats to both teachers and students, in some instances. The emerging reality is that some of these individuals who currently attend school are no longer children, but rather men and women in uniform. Just observe their attitude, response, mode of dress, level of disrespect, and overall body language, among other repulsive reactions on their part.

It is said that when boys are idle they become destructive and when girls are idle they become reproductive. From how things are going it seems as if some of these girls no longer need “dolly babies” to play with, they want the real ones, while boys no longer fancy water guns because they definitely prefer to own the “real McCoy”. They proudly carry them in their school bags as they prepare for the impending intra- and inter-gang wars that seem to be the common denominator on and off the school compound.

These “young warriors” give a negative meaning to VS Reid’s popular novel of the same name — The Young Warriors — by virtue of them waging protracted and spontaneous wars against each other for the wrong reasons.

The following incidents are evidence enough to highlight what is being argued here:

• Grade 8 student of BB Coke High School hospitalised after he was beaten for allegedly stepping on a grade 11 student’s Clarks shoes

• Male student charged after fight with teacher at Tivoli Gardens High School.

• Seventeen-year-old female student of Kingston Technical High School stabbed to death on school compound by another student

Reports are that more than 50 violence-related incidents in schools were reported to the education ministry in 2024.

In addition, whenever these teenage terrors take the public transport they usually drive the bus and taxi drivers and conductors as well as the adult passengers crazy in various terrible and horrible ways which need no elaboration here. Just take any form of public transport and you will see what is being highlighted.

Sadly, for the old boys and old girls who are always waxing warm, positively proud, and are as pleased as punch about their alma mater, they all have a rude awakening. Regardless of highlighting their schools’ great achievements in several areas — from academics to sport — things are not what they use to be.

The insistent issue here is that these raving ragamuffins who want to run roughshod over everything and everybody have effectively changed the optics of what was and what is to be. Consequently, and unfortunately, that once pristine, very productive, and almost perfect place where pleasant memories flourish is almost unreachable and unattainable due to the horrible handiwork of some of these present crabbit crop of students.

Peter Price

Educator

sonumbonum360@yahoo.com