Caning

Corporal punishment is purely pragmatic.  It is intended to make the cost of law-breaking exceed the benefits.  Modern punishments for children and for adults reinforce the notion that there is no punishment that will deter a determined offender.  In today’s Anguilla following the rules is a matter of choice, and is the norm only for very well brought up persons.  Hooligans have the option to ignore the rules.  There are no consequences of any significance.

When I was a school boy, caning day involved the entire school body assembling to witness the canings that were to be delivered in public.  Our school children were mischievous as ever.  But, we were safer than today.  Violent boys met a violent punishment.  Violent adults were the exception, not the norm.

By contrast today, when the sissifyication of education is almost complete, disorder in school has become the norm.  There are no consequences for the use by children of obscene or disrespectful language.  Teaching is often impossible.  Teachers hide in the common room, afraid to confront violent and uncontrollable kids.  Some even side with a disorderly child, particularly if he has a belligerent parent.  A teacher using force to stop an assault is likely to be interviewed by the police, and punished for having employed unauthorized corporal punishment. 

Singapore does not have a problem with indiscipline in school.  What follows is a video of a school boy being punished for breaking the rules.

I don’t think either he or any of the other students were likely to treat breaking rules lightly.  For a few weeks at least, until the memory wore off.

Singapore does not have a problem with drunk driving.  What follows is the punishment that was awarded to one first offender.  Not everyone will have the stomach to see it through to the end.

I shudder to think what the punishment could be for a second offence.  I suppose that is the point.  There is never any second offence.  And, the cost to the tax payer of such a penal system is little or nothing.

The pros and cons of corporal punishment for adults have been debated for years. 

All in all, I think the pros win.  Imprisonment is the barbaric, dehumanising and counterproductive punishment.

I advocate corporal punishment in school and in the court system as an alternative.

High School

The Anguilla Comprehensive Education Report is Published.  Perhaps it has been on the news.  Perhaps it has not.  I have not heard anything about it.  It was purely by chance that I opened the government website.  There it was, a link to the long-awaited Report on Comprehensive Education in Anguilla.

Read it for yourself:

http://www.gov.ai/documents/FINAL%20REPORT_MAIN%20SECTIONS_Anguilla_Comp%20Ed%20Review_Aug%202009.pdf

Or, you can read a summary of the Report and its recommendations published separately at:

http://www.gov.ai/documents/FINAL%20REPORT_FRONT%20SECTION_Anguilla_%20Comp%20Ed%20Review_%20AUGUST2009.pdf  

I liked the bit at page 109 which reads:

8. The Review Team has been advised that there is a weekly press conference where the Chief Minister and other Ministers address issues and respond to questions.  There is rarely any talk about education. It is recommended that ‘education’ should be a weekly part of this press conference.  Either the Minister of Education or a “Guest Speaker” (e.g. the Permanent Secretary) can make some comments and answer questions from the Press.  This would enhance Public Relations. It will keep education in people’s minds.

It would certainly make the Chief Minister’s weekly press conference have a bit of substance, instead of the nonsense about “arranged marriages” that we have had to put up with the past few weeks.

Then, at page 69 I found this interesting bit of data:

Table 6.1: Investment in Education as a % of GDP 1996-2008

1996    1997    1998    1999    2000    2001    2002    2003    2004    2005    2006    2007    2008

5.5       5.2       6.0       6.3       7.6       5.8       5.5       5.4       4.2       4.2       4.0       4.2       3.5

Table 6.2: Budgetary Expenditure on Education as a % of Total Budget 1996-2008

1996    1997    1998    1999    2000    2001    2002    2003    2004    2005    2006    2007    2008

15        14        16        17        18        12        10        11        11        11        11        11        11

I confess to inadequacies in maths.  Do those figures not say that we are spending a smaller and smaller percentage of GDP, and of the total budget, on education?  Does that fact not suggest that the education of Anguilla’s children is considered to be of decreasing importance?

On balance, I consider the Report to be a bland and boring piece of bureaucratese.  What few recommendations for improvement of the education system it contains are well hidden among a mass of detail and trivia, quotations and observations.  I forecast that few will read them, and none of the recommendations will be implemented.  

I was particularly disappointed by the inadequacies and incompleteness of Section 3, “Observations on the Comprehensive Education System in Anguilla.”  Reading the Report one gathers that all-in-all the system is working quite well! 

Either that, or the team agreed to cut out a lot of recommendations that someone considered objectionable.  I am speculating, but that could be the cause of such a noticeable hole in the middle of the Report.

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.

Miseducated

Comprehensive Education Review Team preparing report for Government. I learned quite by accident that there is a Comprehensive Education Review Team. They are examining the state of comprehensive education in Anguilla. They are interviewing people, and examining the facilities at the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School. They will prepare a report for government. I was grateful to the Team for giving me an opportunity recently to address them. I offered them my views on Anguilla’s secondary school education system. I told them exactly what I think. This, in summary, is what I said:

Based on my exposure to Anguilla’s sole high school, in my estimation fewer that 20% of this year’s Form VI graduates will enter the work force, or go on to an institution of tertiary education, able to either write, or to express themselves verbally, anywhere near a Form VI standard. The exceptions are all the children of professionals. I assume their parents put pressure on them to achieve and to excel in school. Those children who do not come from equally ambitious backgrounds are not being helped by the present school system. I had not realised that the Comprehensive Education System, as it works in Anguilla, is designed to ensure that only the children who are the beneficiaries of additional home schooling would reach an acceptable standard of basic education on graduation from the High School.

I am conscious that the secondary school system is not the only, or even the main, culprit in this failure shown towards the students of Anguilla. I understand that the children’s education problems start long before they reach the High School. It is unfair to expect the High School staff to overcome by themselves, and without resources, the obstacles placed in the way of the education of our young people. They are the result of wider social problems.

Parents, who were too busy to read to them when they were very young, are partly to blame.

The primary schools are graduating students who cannot read or write.

Most Anguillian school children are latch-key children. There is frequently no adult present when the students come home after class to encourage them to study and prepare. Too often, the only real family is the neighbourhood gang.

Drugs, alcohol and pornography on the internet are pervasive. These adversely impact young persons in Anguilla when they are left to their own devices.

The paucity of the facilities at the High School is noticeable. The school library serves as the Form VI students’ lounge. The books are in the mess you would expect. I have not asked, but it is unlikely that any student, other than a sixth former, would dare to enter the school library.

The public library is no substitute. It is a place for students to go to gossip and to play computer games. The different reading rooms in the library are not invigilated when there are students in them, as they ought to be. The public library of Anguilla is distinguished mainly by the absence of worthwhile literature and reference works. There has been no attempt to build up a permanent collection of regional and international classics. There has for years been a culture among the public library staff that if a book is old then it must be deemed soiled and fit only to be disposed of. Anguillian children are too precious to be made to handle a used book. Several of my students have told me that they have not borrowed a book from the public library to read for either pleasure or instruction in over ten years. Their explanation is that there are no books worth reading in the public library.

There is no invigilated study room in the school, as there ought to be, for students who have no class to sit quietly and study. The result is that there are groups of boys and girls hiding in corners of the schoolyard laughing and chatting at all hours of the day.

There is no supervision of the students in the school yard during breaks or at lunch time. I understand the Teachers’ Union is opposed to it. I have not asked Emma if it is true. This abandonment of the students encourages them to engage in bad behaviour. It reinforces their perception that there are no consequences for bad behaviour. Foul language on the school grounds is commonly overheard, among boys and girls. There is no one to report their misconduct.

Even if anyone did report unacceptable behaviour, there is in practice no penalty of any consequence. There is, eg, no invigilated room for misbehaving children to be made to stay back after school in punishment. Class control is not managed by rules or procedures, but by the force of the individual teacher’s character. Teachers do their work in terror of some abusive parent storming into the school and assaulting them.

Many of the teachers I meet are disillusioned and disgruntled. The teacher’s common room is a dump. I have never seen more than five or six teachers in it at lunch time or at any other time, except when the Principal holds briefing meetings. The explanation I have been given for its present dilapidated state is that it is old, about to be replaced, and not worth repainting.

In my humble opinion, there is no necessity for the education authorities to compound all the wider social faults and defects in Anguilla by providing an education system that seems designed to ensure that the present generation of Anguillian students will not be able to hold their own when they grow up and go out into the real world.

In my humble opinion, the comprehensive education system of Anguilla, as I have found it, is a major disappointment. Anguilla’s children are being cheated out of a decent secondary education. A majority of Anguillian students leave the ALHCS essentially uneducated. Radical reform is needed. I am not qualified to make recommendations on how to reform the system. I will leave that for others who are more qualified than I am.

I was pressed by the team at the end of the interview to find something positive to say about the system. I got the impression they wanted a balanced opinion from me. Sorry, I don’t do balanced opinions. I am only capable of delivering frank opinions. Let the mealy-mouthed equivocators produce the balanced opinions. Anguilla has more than its fair share of those types. There will be plenty of apologists to pick and choose from. In my mind, the situation is stark, and crystal clear.

Parents, schools, and students of the 1960s and 1970s had fewer resources than those of today. Yet, the students left the education system highly educated. They left both disciplined and highly motivated. Those were the Anguillians who built the Anguilla of today that we know. The principal of the school and her team face an impossible task in producing replacements who will be equally highly educated and motivated. The existing secondary school system has totally failed the majority of the present-day graduates. Most modern-day Anguillian High School graduates are not qualified to go on to college. They are not even fit to fill the position of junior clerk in any office. They are essentially illiterate and unemployable. Except for my students, of course.

Sorry if it sounds too harsh a judgment. I tried hard, but I could not find anything more positive to say.

Monitoring

School Violence Monitor. The Report of the Task Force on School Violence is now some two weeks old. We in Anguilla are concerned to learn what the Ministry's response is.

Has every manager in the Ministry of Education read it?

Have they given their advice to the Minister?

Have they urged him to accept the Report, or has it been rejected?

Has the Minister tasked anyone to put together the Ministry's response?

Or, will the Report just be allowed to die from neglect. That, after all, is what happened to the School Violence Committee Report of 2005.

No doubt, it was in an effort to prevent this outcome that the Task Force made its first recommendation. This reads:

“Immediate Action:

1. Form a committee, or identify an individual, that is responsible for monitoring and reporting on the progress of implementing these recommendations.”

Anyone who is exposed to our High School knows that in recent years we have lost a lot of students due to the present neglectful system. Without the implementation of a new policy of prevention, education and treatment in the areas of drug and alcohol use, conflict resolution and sex education, continuing generations of our students will be lost.

I would suggest that what the Minister has to do is to twist arms, berate his staff, until results appear. They must find the right person for the job. They must provide the appropriate resources. There is no need for any more committees. The period for hand-wringing and hair-pulling over the state of our secondary education system must be declared ended. This is the time for firm action.

The Report provides a plan of action.

Now, we need a School Violence Tsar to monitor and report on how well the Department is implementing it.

School Violence

Minister Evans MacNeil Rogers is to be congratulated. This Blog is not in the business of publishing “feel-good” articles about anyone. Especially not about a Minister of Government noted mainly for his overweening vanity and his noticeable lack of competence. That, at any rate, is how our Minister of Education usually appears to me in relation to his departments of health and education.

But, the publication of the 2009 Report from the Task Force on School Violence in last week's 27 March 2009 issue of The Anguillian Newspaper was different from what I have come to expect from him. Seldom before has a Government Minister, far less the Minister of Education, released or authorised the release of such a sensitive Report to the public. And, to have done it a mere matter of days after the Report was presented to his Government! I am stunned. Is there any hope that this radically new venture into openness, transparency and good governance can continue into the future? Dare we even hope that the recommendations will be accepted and put into effect without undue delay? We shall ignore the rhetoric and look at the actions that will be taken in the coming months before we answer that question.

The Report is to be found in full spread over three pages in the issue of The Anguillian Newspaper of 27 March 2009. It makes for fascinating reading. You have to hope that all Anguillian parents and adults will read it. It is very sobering in both its findings and its recommendations.

Unfortunately, I cannot give you a link to the copy of the Report in the newspaper. I have searched the various sections, but cannot find it. It is not in the Front Page, News, or Local News sections. I did find a short article by Task Force chairperson, Peter Wolinsky. A short article is not as good as the actual Report, which is to be found in full in the paper version of the Anguillian.

I had hopes that I would find and link you to a copy of the Report on the government website. Hopes dashed! Not even a mention of it, though I gave the IT Department a full week to put a copy up on the site.

We can only hope that this ground-breaking Report will not receive the same treatment that the Minister gave to the 2005 Report of the School Violence Committee: relegation to the bottom drawer of the Ministry's collective filing cabinet.

If I get the chance, I would like to discuss some of the recommendations with you in future issues of this blog.

Fort School

Do we need increased security at the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School? I have just finished reading an article on education by Rowenna Davis. She writes in the The Independent newspaper. Her 5 March article is about whether the British need more security in their public schools. Now, I am just a part-time teacher in Anguilla’s one comprehensive school. I am not a professional educator. The article left me with more questions than answers. Still, I took away from it the idea that it is somehow relevant to the ways we might improve conditions in our school.

We know the reputation of our students. The boys are supposedly all knife-carrying, foul mouthed, truants. The girls spend all their time fighting and pulling each other’s hair out. The boys dress like prisoners on day pass, knifing each other for no reason at all. I must be very lucky. Mine are different. They are all well-behaved, bright and intelligent young people, full of promise. Some of them appear to have missed out on a good basic education, but that would be the fault of the system rather than anything inherently wrong with them.

So, the question becomes, will they learn better if we introduce increased security measures? Do we need more police presence in the school yard? Do we need CCTV cameras, electronic gated fences, more screening wands and arches, and new powers to stop and search students without consent? The question is not whether we all need security. The real question is how to achieve it. Will draconian measures actually increase security and comfort, or will they destroy our sense of community and undermine security? What happens when we destroy the trust that is necessary to build community? The risk is that too much security may send the wrong signal. It may suggest that the place is more dangerous than it really is.

Supervision, dialogue, and counseling are not synonymous with security, but they are essential adjuncts to a child’s education. I do not know about the other teachers, but I find it odd that during break periods there are no adults whose job it is to walk around the grounds, corridors and supposedly empty classrooms observing, and where necessary, correcting the behaviour of the children. I do not consider it normal or acceptable that hundreds of children are left to mill around the school yard unsupervised for hours at a time. Yet, that is what actually happens at school, day after day, week after week. When I enquired about the defect, as I saw it, I was assured that a secondary school is different from a primary school. In a secondary school, the children do not have to be monitored continuously. Really?

When fourteen and fifteen year olds engage in unprotected sexual activity in an unused class room, that does not mean they are depraved. It suggests to me that there is inadequate supervision and poor sex education. Would the children have participated if there was the slightest chance that an adult was likely at any moment to enter the room? Probably not. Would they have participated if they knew that if one of them had herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis or HIV the other was likely to get infected? Probably not.

Bad behaviour is a learned activity. Good behaviour is equally learned. When children are taught the facts, they have little difficulty changing their behaviour. The statistics show that carrying a knife increases your chance of getting stabbed. Arresting children who bring weapons into the school is not a long-term solution. Education about the dangers of carrying weapons is. So, is our Ministry of Education even considering a Be Safe programme? Is any thought being given to recruiting willing members of the PTA for training as volunteer assistants in the supervision of large numbers of children?

As Ms Davis points out, pupils do not just learn from what they are taught in the classroom. They also learn from how their school functions as an institution. Fitting out the school with more security guards, wands, and handcuffs may only succeed in teaching them that criminal behaviour is something normal that we just have to live with. Instead, we ought to be teaching them that it is something unacceptable that is to be challenged. Improving security through community dialogue and action to address the root causes of crime won’t just make us safer, it will be a better lesson for the kids to learn.

Does it have to take an aggrieved parent suing the authorities for negligence, and proving that inadequate supervision was one of the immediate causes of injury to her child, to make everyone wake up?

Are we going to make an effort to talk our children out of bad behaviour?

Parental Responsibility

Legislating for Parental Responsibility. I read with interest this story from Bermuda. The government is considering introducing legislation to make parents and guardians liable for the criminality of their children. Is that legal? Every Anguillian law student knows that criminal liability usually depends on two factors coming together. First, you need a prohibited act. Second, you need a guilty mind. Without a guilty mind and a criminal act, you are not normally guilty of a crime. Unless, it is a crime of strict liability.

I remember Fitzroy Bryant of St Kitts. He was the Minister of Education in 1975 when I was a young lawyer practising in Basseterre. There was a serious problem of truancy at the time. He convinced his Cabinet colleagues to introduce a new offence into law. It was called “persistently permitting your child to be absent from school.” Many people said it was wrong to make a parent liable when his or her child stayed away from school. The cry was that most parents send their children off to school. They have no knowledge that the child does not attend but, instead, limes under the tree smoking marijuana and pretending to be a wannabe Los Angeles gansta. But, it did work. So far as I recall, the offence was never challenged in court. It may still be on the statute books in St Kitts, for all I know.

The way Fitzroy explained it would work was like this. Anyone seeing a child of school age on the street during school hours was encouraged to report the incident. The police would drive to the spot and pick up the child. They would find out if the child had written permission from the school principal to be out of school. If the child did not, he or she was taken to the police station and made to sit on the bench. The parent or guardian would be called to the station. He or she would be warned. The second time, there would be a more severe warning. The third time there would be a final warning. The fourth time was evidence of persistence. Now, the parent or guardian had some explaining to do. They cannot say they did not know their child was a persistent truant. They had received enough notice. They had plenty of time to work on finding out what was the child’s problem, and taking ameliorative action. It is this failure that was to be the offence. They would receive a summons to appear before the Magistrate. The Magistrate could fine or send to prison. Needless to say, no one expected a parent to be fined or imprisoned. Fitzroy’s hope was that the shock and shame would be sufficient. The parents would put that child under such heavy manners that future truancy would be out of the question. Did it work? I never heard that it did not.

So, there is nothing in principle wrong about making a parent liable for an offence when the child is persistently committing criminal acts. Presumably, it would not apply to the first instance of criminal conduct. Perhaps, not even to the second. But, a child doing criminal damage or criminal injury or engaging in any criminal conduct for a third time?

If the parent was liable for jail time, I guarantee you the third time would never happen. It would help if there was provision for counseling in life skills and civic responsibility before the third occasion. But, there can be no denying that it is what happens or does not happen in the home that decides whether or not a child grows up to be a pillar of society or a cancer on the body civic.

Is it time for us in Anguilla to contact the Bermuda government and learn from their legislation?

Carnival Riot

Stabbed to Death. I am too old for Carnival. So, I missed “Last Lap”. That was yesterday, Saturday. Seems like a good thing I did, too. One young man was stabbed to death. Orlando Johnson, a 21-year old Jamaican national and Anguillian gang member, died this morning from injuries received in an exchange of stabs.

Penny Legg has the most perceptive observations on the incident. You can read what she says for yourself at her blog. It is astonishing to read that we had to bring police officers over from St Martin to help quell the riot.

She wrote those words before we learned that the young man has since died.

His mother is said to have received stab wounds while putting him in a car to take him to the hospital. There is no word on her condition at this time. God knows how many others received injuries in the riot.

As one Anguillian said, things will not improve until we give the children what they need: love, attention, and encouragement. Our failure as a society over the past twenty years to bring up our children with values and standards is a national tragedy that is only now beginning to bear its evil fruit.

When the news of this killing hits the tourist circulars, what is the betting that tourism this coming season will take an even bigger hit than we were expecting? What a mess we are in.

Parental Responsibility

Youth Violence. You probably read the story in the St Maarten Herald like me. Two boys severely chopped up by several other boys. They were fighting over drugs' turf. Just like in Anguilla. The boys were arrested and charged.

What interested me in the story was the bit about making the parents pay. We can’t do that in Anguilla. My boys can chop up your boys all they want. You can’t sue them for compensation because they are too young. You can’t sue me because I have not done you anything. Law can always be changed. If the law said I was responsible in certain circumstances, would you approve? What if I knew that my boys kept guns and knives at home, and I did not take them away? What if my boys hung out with a gang, and I did not forbid them? What if you had reported to me that my boys had threatened to chop up your boys, and I said that it would serve your boys right? Should society not justifiably feel that I was as much to blame as the boys once the promised chopping took place? Should I not be made to pay for the loss and damage that my negligent upbringing of my children has caused? Would I not take more care of my responsibilities if there was a strong risk that I would be made to pay? Should I not be considered to have committed an offence of my own in those circumstances? It would be the easiest law for a trained draughtsperson to prepare. She would not even have to break out in a sweat. She just has to follow the precedents that exist elsewhere.

What do you think?

War Zone

The War Zone

We break for a moment from looking at the physical environment to take a glance at the social environment. I received the following description of a confrontation between the Valley Boys Gang (colour red, Valley, South Valley, North side, mainly; more weapons than weed) and the West Side Connection Gang (colour light blue, South Hill, Sandy Ground, West End, (some) Blowing Point, a lot of weed dealings). It was written on Wednesday 6 June, shortly after the events described:

I was in what they call the vicinity of the school from 3:00 to 3.20 pm and saw a dance, Flamenco, Ballet. I am still figuring out how to describe it properly. In words, maybe I'd be able to draw it first.

West Side Connection in front of the clinic, less than 20, close together. Valley Boys across the road in the roundabout corner, over 40, spread out almost in a line. Spectators’ positions in food van area, small groups making up the biggest group, reminding me of people watching tennis, left, right, oei, left, right. Spectators are mostly girls. WSC and Valley Boys, mostly boys.

Valley is expected to move in for revenge for the stabbing yesterday. For quite a while absolutely nothing is happening, they are hardly moving. No talking, a whisper. Valley are staring WSC down. WSC is daring them by moving their chin upward, slightly. None of the WSC core is going on the bus. They'd have to cross the road. A few Valley have sticks, loosely, playing with some bottles, standing still, waiting. WSC all just watching them, nodding. After about 10 minutes of this still part of the dance, a good twenty Valley walk across the roundabout and stall under the sign. Triangle set-up. With spectators moving closer to the road to have a view. All heads right, all heads left. WSC get up, move towards the roundabout on the Environmental Health side, stall too. Spectators move in so as not to miss any action. I don't hear anybody talk, it's eerie. WSC moves again, around the corner, I get in the car and go to the roundabout. All of Valley start to move towards in the direction of the tourist office. WSC moves along toward the market.

'Nothing happend.'

You think?

The crowd had a show. The WSC and Valley core had the victory of admiration or at least attention by the spectators, peers in puberty, girls.

'It was just like the videoclip'. (I gave a girl a ride just to hear). WSC showed they ain't scared. The Valley came out in numbers to show they are intent on revenge.

War! It frightened me, but I could see that for the girls there was beauty in it, the orchestrated-ness of it, the duende of Flamenco, bullfighting. Even the anti-climax, 'for now, for now'.

If the authorities do not immediately do something pretty drastic, I would say there is going to be a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth in the bedrooms of a lot of parents in the coming days. What do I mean by drastic? How about the usual? Bring in the participants in gang fights for questioning. Hold them without bail until Monday morning. Let them sleep in the prison. Call their parents in to the station. Let a couple of big, burly policemen give them a lecture about the need to discipline their boys.

After the parents have well and truly disciplined them, let them be grounded for at least a month.

Call the girls in. Have Linda lecture them on their role in helping the boys to improve their self-esteem in positive ways.

Make it an offence for school children to be on the street unaccompanied by an adult between 9:00 pm and 6:00 am.

Make it an offence for a parent or guardian to permit a school child to break curfew, and impose a minimum $500.00 fine, with a maximum of $2,500.00 for repeat offenders. It won’t solve all the problems, but it will empower the parents and guardians to once again take control of their young charges.

I don’t know. I may have it wrong. I am no pedagogue. Ask the experts!

Crime 5

Youth Violence. We have been looking at some of the highlights of the recently published World Bank report “Crime, Violence and Development: Trends, Costs and Policy Options in the Caribbean”. We have been considering how relevant some of the recommendations are to Anguilla. But, now I want to wrap up this short series.

I want to conclude by looking at some of the most important recommendations relating to youth. We can install all the electronic burglar alarms we want. We can ensure our bedrooms have double locking doors and burglar bars on all windows. We can keep a firearm tucked under the pillow. It will not be sufficient to protect us all. The fact is that we have to do something about tackling youth violence. I am not so concerned about the present generation of young men. Some consider them lost. Some say that we should leave them to shoot each other into extinction. The present problem should take care of itself by a process of attrition. There is little we can do for the bad boys of today. You probably turn your head aside as you drive past the crowds of young men in North Valley openly smoking joints as they pick up tips from the deportees giving them peer guidance. Our youth homicide rate is already significantly above the world average. There is no point protesting at my making this assertion. Nor is there any point beating our breasts in guilt. Nor will it help if we indulge in the familiar platitudes and moralizing. Let us be realists. The truth is that we are not going to invest the vast sums that are required to remedy the damage our neglect of our young men has already caused.

It is different with the next generation. We can do something for them. It will not be so expensive. The report indicates solutions. We have to invest in programmes that have been shown to be successful elsewhere. We need more professional early childhood development and mentoring programmes. We must have no more high-school graduates acting as untrained infant and primary school teachers. We need improved interventions to keep high risk young men in secondary schools. We need to open our schools after hours and on week-ends to offer additional activities and training. We can afford that. We have to, if we are to continue to prosper and to thrive as a society.