We are today convinced that some of our nation’s schools have become incubators for crime and veritable cesspools of corruption. The authorities would be well advised to find them, clean them up or shut them down.
New information has arrived. It is telling the story about another public school teacher who was beaten and brutalized last week. Reportedly a music teacher at C.I. Gibson Senior High School was victimized by a young man.
To date, the attentive public is yet to get a sensible report as to what did in fact go down in that school.
As we have been made to understand some of what happened: the teacher in question happened to stumble upon what seemed a sex-fest between a number of students; he thought that he should break it up; the young men and women involved thought otherwise and then proceeded to beat him up.
Mercifully, the teacher was eventually rescued.
Today he is at home where he is currently nursing his wounds and his pride.
As for the students in question, we are yet to hear what has become of them and their extracurricular sexual pursuits.
This is yet again more dreadful evidence to substantiate the claim that some of this nation’s schools are failing. This explains -in part at least- why so very many wrath-filled Bahamians are today turning anger on each other, sometimes with murderous results.
Truth is that they learned some of these lessons in brutality at home. Others they picked up in school and on the streets.
At this juncture, all we can say is that we are today not looking forward to anything that might be said concerning this issue whether it comes from the Minister of Education, the Director of Education or the Principal of the C.I. Gibson Senior High School.
We adopt this position because we are today convinced that the matter at hand belongs in the courts and that the teacher in question should go forward in search of justice.
We are absolutely convinced that such a move would prove to be a tonic in that it would force the authorities in question to deal with an issue that is both toxic and explosive.
School is no place for such men and women.
And thus to our today’s suggestion that the teacher in question should be well-advised to understand that his rights have been trampled underfoot. These rights relate to health and safety at the work place.
His rights are the same as those of any other worker in The Bahamas.
But in addition to this question of worker rights that have been abused stands another pernicious habit on the part of some authorities which is their tendency towards cover-up, sweet talk and downright lies.
As we have come to understand the system in place, principals and other administrators have been taught that they should not talk to the media and that all questions should be referred to ‘Headquarters’.
And for sure, when Headquarters is contacted Headquarters knows either little or nothing about what happened. And then the issue in question is soon forgotten.
This habit has any number of consequences: students learn that lies and evasions work; teachers learn that no one cares about them and the unsuspecting public is left in the dark.
This culture of permissive corruption, lies and evasions provides -as it were- the context and background for a major part of the hidden curriculum in our nation’s schools. In that aspect of what children digest are lessons in hypocrisy, sexual promiscuity, theft, disloyalty, child abuse, pedophilia, other corruption and any number of other depravities.
While most teachers know most of what is going on behind the scenes, truth is that few of them will ever speak out. It is this silence in the face of corruption that allows this system to persist.
We believe that the time has come for the Ministry of Education and its Department of Education to level with the Bahamian people by letting the public know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth concerning what is really happening in this nation’s schools.
Editorial from The Bahama Journal
