As a High School student i somehow feel obligated to address such an issue. This seems to be an island wide problem with High Schools at this point in time; Andrew Holeness surely has his hands full, Maxine Henry Wilson must feel good to be relieved of the position or feel good to know she isn’t the one handling the problem.
If it’s not Indiscipline, Sex in schools or violence then it’s the matter of the lack of furniture or some other complicated matter that apparently has no solution, but what seems to be the biggest problem right now is the matter of violence towards teachers and weapons in schools. Education Minister Andrew Holness said yesterday, during a post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House, that “students are too often merely given a slap on the wrist when they are found with offensive weapons seized by school authorities.”
He went on to say that he wants all such incidents reported to the police and the students charged under the Offensive Weapons Act.
Such a law did not or does not prevent Gun Men from carrying guns, so why do they think it’s going to stop a student from carrying an offensive weapon to school…when a student, male/female decides to put that knife, gun or whatever other offensive weapon into his/her pocket, they are aware of the consequences and they have made up there mind that whatever happens, happens.
I think the government is approaching the situation with pure aggression, instead of actually looking into the matter and hearing both sides of the story the just automatically switch into offensive mode., not all teachers are saints, we’re all human beings and we’re all flawed, but because they have title of teacher they get all the privileges. There are cases where teachers hit students and the students react by hitting the teacher back. And if i heard right, “Hitting a student is a Big No No”. I have to mention once again that threating the students with charges will not change anything, the ones who fight are usually the troubled ones, the ones without guidance or proper parenting. They don’t care what happens to them.
I also have a problem with the fact that the Gleaner was not hesitant in mentioning Christiana High School in one of it’s recent articles because of an alleged confrontation of the Vice Principal by two female students at the institution. They happily named the school in the article, but the other schools were not mentioned, what the Gleaner is insinuating is that CHS has no integrity to uphold, but the other “Prominent” High Schools do?, bullshit if i say so myself, they should have said a school in Manchester and not blurt out the school’s name in the paper like that, if your not going to name one school don’t name the other, prominent or not, regardless of if the school was mentioned on television or not.
Originally published on gordonswaby.com on 2008-02-23 (recovered from the Internet Archive).