Caning

 Corporal punishment in school:  I find it regrettable that concern for very deserving human rights has now gone so far as to make it dangerous for the principals of our High Schools in the West Indies to order canings of delinquent students.  A caning from time to time of the worst offenders in school has always had a very salutary effect on maintaining discipline.  A couple of raps across the knuckles, or a belting across the bottom is just as salutary.  I do not know about you, but I never suffered any harm to my body or soul from all the canings I got as a school child.  So far as I can remember, I got six strokes from the pesi cane on my backside most Monday mornings for five years for refusing to play boring sports on weekends.  The caning is meant less to modify behaviour than to teach a lesson.  The caning did not make me want to play sports.  It was not intended to convert me to be a sports lover.  What I learned from my regular weekly canings was that there are consequences for breaking the rules.  The caning merely said that if you disobey a direct order from the Sports Master, there are going to be painful consequences.  If a child puts his hand in the fire on the stove he gets burned and never does it again.  A valuable lesson for life is learned.  Caning is a cheap, effective and instantaneous form of teaching.  Today it is banned, and there is no effective suitable alternative available in school. 

Nowadays, school children are taught, by the absence of pain and suffering for wrongdoing, that there are no consequences for breaking the rules.  The result is chaos in schools and in society.  We have to have police security at all our school gates to confiscate the knives and guns, and we have to send students to the hospital suffering from wounds and injuries.  The child psychologists who have corrupted our education system in this way have a great deal to answer for.  It is due to their teaching that so many of our students can hardly read and write and have no self-discipline. 

I do not consider a caning in school of a delinquent schoolboy to be in breach of the child's human rights.  Nor do I believe such a caning to be inhuman treatment.  There are many worse things that happen to school children that they survive and move on from.  This includes sexual abuse and drunken maltreatment by their fathers, uncles and brothers.  Such home conditions affect a significant percentage of our school children, yet no one does anything about it.  The perpetrators continue to attend church every Sunday and are accepted as prominent and distinguished members of our society.

I include, as an equally unacceptable form of child abuse, the fact that most of our Primary School children in Anguilla arrive in the High School unable to read or write. 

This aversion to a healthy, harmless and effective form of corporal punishment is the most degenerate of the modern norms of European culture that we are being told we must emulate, or be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Parents

Why parents must be held more accountable and responsible. I was talking to the unmarried father of an 8 year old boy recently. He has a problem with the mother of his child. Every time he brings the child back to the mother after he has spent the weekend with him, the mother locks the child out of the house. She refuses to let him back in the house until he cries and begs to her satisfaction. She screams abuse at the child constantly. He has tried to get the Department of Social Development to help him, but there is nothing they can do under our present legal system. There is nothing the police or the court can do. There is no legal remedy. The mother has all the ‘rights’ and the father only has ‘obligations’. His concern is that the lack of love and affection is going to turn his child into a criminal one of these days. He is so right.

The present serious juvenile crime situation in Anguilla is a social phenomenon, not entirely susceptible to legal solutions. Only the parents can solve the nub or nut of the problem. The sad thing is that so many of our parents are themselves the product of broken and abusive homes. All they can do is to repeat the cycle of domestic abuse and neglect. It is human nature to do so. It is also an aspect of culture and education. When so many mothers and fathers have been educated to bring up anti-social children, why are we surprised when they so often succeed?

That is why some social reformers advocate holding parents responsible. We need to put more pressure on parents to perform their parenting role. It should be backed up with educational programmes on how to be a good father and good mother. It always amazes me how many parents do not begin to understand how destructive their example and behaviour is. Then, when we point the finger at them, they respond by saying it is unfair. No, it is not unfair.

If a mother or father persistently permits their child to be a truant from school, that ought to be a crime on the part of the parent.

If a mother or father persistently permits their child to mix with gangsters, that ought to be a crime on the part of the parent.

If a mother or father persistently permits their child to bear arms and offensive weapons in the home, that ought to be a crime on the part of the parent.

The object is not to punish the parent. The object is to convince the parent that he or she needs to do more to monitor and supervise the behaviour and acquaintances of their child.

The result will not be a flooding of our jail with delinquent parents. The Magistrate will make an example of one or two, and suddenly attitudes will change.

It is not the fine or the jail that is the wake up call. It is being brought before the court and named and shamed that is the effective part of prosecuting a social crime. We have to face reality as a society and take active steps to break the cycle of child abuse and negligent parenting.

Of course, if we were rich like the Americans or the British, we could try doing like them and throwing lots of money at the problem. I don't see that working for them, and we certainly can’t make that a solution here.

Just my thoughts, while I thank God every day that I am not a parent myself.

Child Abuse

When a senior Civil Servant stands up for right, we should all stand up for her. The UK has produced a Report that contains critical information on a wide range of children’s issues, including child abuse. The Report is titled The Risk and Vulnerability Facing Children. It was designed for all the Overseas Territories as part of the UK’s commitment to comply with its Rights of the Child Convention obligations across its territories. The Report included a strategic plan for dealing with the issues. It was submitted to all the Overseas Territories in March 2007.

As usual with all important social reform initiatives that were not thought up by a politician, the Report appears to have fallen into the black holes that exist at all our Ministries of Health.

Last September, the British Overseas Territories were asked to provide a status report on the implementation of their strategic plans to carry out the recommendations of the Report. Anguilla is one of those territories. Child abuse and neglect is no less a serious and widespread problem in Anguilla than it is in the Cayman Islands.

I wonder whether Anguilla was honest enough to admit that no action has taken place since the Report was submitted. But, we shall never know. That information is, as usual, confidential.

Deanna Look Loy of the Cayman Islands is one brave woman. She is their Child and Family Services Director. She had been calling in vain on her Ministry of Health to implement the Report. To date she has not received a reply. Then she began demanding that immediate action be taken by the Child and Family Services Department to implement the Report. Still no response. Now, she has gone public.

Deanna Look Loy

You might say that she has ratted on her Permanent Secretary.

If she was a senior public servant in Anguilla, she would have been transferred to our equivalent of the Gulag by now.

The cynical would say that Ms Look Loy must be very close to retirement age for her to dare do such a thing. Her photograph shows that nothing could be further from the truth. She is just one brave woman.

Teachers Matter

Teachers Matter. On Friday of last week the annual general meeting of the Anguilla Teachers Union took place. I was asked to speak on the theme for this year's World Teachers' Day. A bit of research soon revealed that a lot of thinking and publishing has gone into the subject. I had no difficulty finding things to say.

While I was on the topic, it occurred to me that my experience with my arithmetic teacher might be relevant. So, I told the gathered teachers about Mr Rais. This was what I said:

1. “I want to tell you about Mr Rais. He was my arithmetic teacher when I went to boarding school in Trinidad at 9 years of age. This was a long time ago. The main teaching tool then was the chalk board and a wood-backed duster to wipe it clean from time to time. Mr Rais made me learn my tables. He taught additions, subtractions and multiplications. It must have been very boring for him. He used to pace up and down the spaces between the desks as we did our class assignments. He would peer over my shoulder at my exercise book. Every time he noticed an error, he would rap me on the top of my head with the wooden back of the duster.

2. To this day, I cannot multiply beyond 5. The 10 times table was easy. You just had to add a zero to the figure. If I have to work out 8 times 8, I can only do it by adding 3 times 8 to 5 times 8. Or, for variety, I might subtract 2 times 8 from 10 times 8. I failed mathematics at O-Level twice.

3. I loved physics and chemistry from Form 1. I asked for a chemistry set as a Christmas gift every year. I did well in those subjects right up to Form 5. Then, mathematics entered the picture. I failed both physics and chemistry at O-Level. When I think of that teacher, a special loathing rises in me.”

So, yes, teachers do matter. In more ways than one. And, yes, I joined the Union. I am now a fully paid up member.

If you would like to read the speech, it is available here.

Child Support

Child Support Reforms Coming Soon to Anguilla? I have not had much time for the blog the past few days. On Thursday, I participated in a workshop on child support. It was the Staff Development Day for the officers of the Department of Social Development. That is the department of government in The Valley that houses my legal aid clinic. Some of the clinic’s clients are referred by these officers. It was, therefore, an honour and a pleasure to have been asked to research the topic of the proposed reforms for child support and to make a presentation on the reforms to the workshop.

The OECS family law reform project is now several years old. The result has been the production of several draft Bills that have been circulated to all the nine island states and territories of the OECS for consideration. The draft Bills in question are:

1. The Child Justice Bill;
2. Children (Care and Adoption) Bill;
3. The Domestic Violence Bill;
4. The Family Law (Guardianship, Custody and Access to Children) Bill;
5. The Maintenance of Children Bill;
6. The Status of Children Bill.

I am not sure to what extent this exercise has resulted in any practical legal reform in any of our states and territories. Certainly, none of the draft model laws have been debated in this island, far less enacted. All of the draft Bills contain excellent provisions that we in Anguilla, particularly the mothers of children, could well benefit from.

As I told the officers to whom I was speaking, none of these reforms will come to the front of people’s attention unless someone lobbies and agitates for them. There is no department of government more involved with these issues than they are. Unless the staff of the Department take steps to lobby with the Mothers’ Union, the Churches, the community groups, the politicians, and the public, it is not likely that these draft Bills will be looked at by anyone. It will be a hard task to get any reforms done.

If you would like to have an idea what I spoke about, you can read my notes for the speech by clicking here.

Recent Interesting Issues

Previous Issues on Which Correspondence Has Been Received:

The following issues have arisen in earlier posts. Material is being collected on each of them. We want to hear from you on each issue.

(a) “Airport Project” – See post No 3, published on 11 December 2006.

(b) “Altamar” – See post No 3.

(c) “Callaloo Resort” – See post No 3.

(d) “Cocaine Imports” – See post No 4 , published on 12 December 2006; and post No 5, published on 13 December 2006.

(e) “Cocaine Distribution” – See post No 4.

(f) “Corruption” – See post No 5.

(g) “Dog-fighting” – See post No 4.

(h) “Human Trafficking” – See post No 4.

(i) “International Anti-corruption Day 2006” – See post No 1 , published on 10 December 2006.

(j) “Ministerial Conflicts of Interest” – See post No 5.

(k) “Postage Paid stamps” – See post No 3.

(l) “Prostitution” – See post No 4.

(m) “Public Involvement” – See post No 5.

(n) “Road-paving Contracts” – See post No 3.

(o) “Security Issues” – See post No 5.

(p) “Trans-shipment Project” – See post No 3.

(q) “Whistle-blowing” – See post No 2, published on 10 December 2006.

Each discussion issue is in alphabetical order. The purpose of this is threefold:

First, to remind you of them.

Second, to invite you to access them and add your anonymous comment.

Third, to encourage you to email me with comments or material on other “good governance” issues in Anguilla that we have not yet mentioned.

Recent Interesting Issues on Which Correspondence Has Been Received:

1. “Drag Car Racing”. Racing cars on the public roads of Anguilla is of course illegal. The activity is apparently carried out late at night on the George Hill and Jeremiah Gumbs roads. Young men block off the side roads with their vehicles. Trucks stand by to sweep up any wreckage before the tardy police can arrive. Large sums pass hands. We are not interested in the young men. Young men’s hormones drive them to do crazy things. We know. We were there. The real interest is in the answer to the question, how have they been able to carry on this activity uninterrupted for so long? My correspondent tells me that the only official reaction to date has been a promise by the Chief Minister during the last general election campaign to build them a racetrack. Do we have to wait until someone dies? Our special interest is who gets paid off to allow this illegal activity to continue? How much money passes hands?

2. “Abuse of Immigrants”. We often hear of the fear that increased numbers of immigrants will damage our society. They will be a burden on our education and health system. Less openly discussed is the extensive network of mechanisms being put in place by Anguillians to exploit the immigrants among us. This includes giving work for sexual favours, renting out unhygienic accommodation to desparate people, and paying slave wages. Feel free to send me your horror stories, either for publication or not, as you choose. You may name names without any fear that I will publish your identity unless you authorize it.

3. “Smugglers’ Cove”. Like most other Anguillians, I had believed the wharf at the Cove was for use by fishermen. I was interested to hear Alan Gumbs’ description of its principal use on a recent edition of “To the Point”. For the benefit of those who do not listen to Anguilla radio, this is a call-in programme. It is conducted by Elkin Richardson, who is to be commended for his energy and vision. He interviews persons on topical issues and encourages members of the public to call in with hard-hitting comments and questions. It is what my old friend John Benjamin used to do with his radio call-in programme “Talk your Mind” before he became one of the establishment. I am reminded of the old Anguillian explanation why the island is shaped like a slice of cake lying on its side. To the north there are cliffs, to the south the island sinks below the surface of the sea that stretches to St Martin just 10 miles away. It is said that the south coast has been pounded below the sea by the weight of the cargo landing on its beaches late at night. I have seen a truck being landed by boat in this manner. Heaven knows what else is landed.

4. “Sandy Hill Bay”. One correspondent has reminded me about this Bay, also on our south coast. It is an enclosed harbour, with no wharf or jetty of any kind. Every month, for the past many years, on a moonless night, a fast speedboat approaches two or three cars, parked on the beach and on the road leading down to it, and with their headlights flashing on and off. After a swift exchange of packages, off goes the boat back to St Martin or wherever. I am assured that on no occasion has any police officer responded to a telephone call alerting them of this activity.

5. “Solicitation of Minors in School”. Another correspondent reminds me that problems of corruption in Anguilla are not limited to those on high. It is not just those in public office that fail us. Pockets of corruption fester in our society. He urges that we air the ills of corruption as it affects society as a whole, and our social and economic development in particular. It is axiomatic that corruption robs us all, and more and more over time. One area that I had not considered, until it was brought to my attention, is the failure of the authorities to confront sexual solicitation of minors in school, particularly by teachers. Does this really go on uncorrected in such a public forum as a school filled with alert students and experienced staff as I am being told? Please let me have your thoughts and suggestions.

6. “Corruption”. For a change of pace, you might like to read this comment from the Guardian Newspaper about the state of corruption in Britain.