Growing up: crime and violence

By Bukka Rennie
December 03, 2003

Growing up can be a very painful engagement for individuals as well as nations. One distinctive feature of societies of yore that is sadly lacking in modern existence is the convention of a rites of passage. How and when is it to be socially acceptable that one has become a man? And when is woman, a woman?

In the old societies children at a certain age were taken away from their parents and there were institutions in place that fashioned a process of moulding and testing and assessing that served to create adults, transform people from childhood to adulthood, at the end of some critical period of time.

Such institutions could possibly be described as the first "schools", if we understand "schools" to be institutions, away from home, that prepare people for life, accreditation only being a very miniscule part of all that.

There are two aspects of modern existence that generate grave danger. First, the lines of passage and the stages of human growth have been blurred, causing intense bewilderment and psychological confusion.

Today this will be laughable but long ago boys wore short pants and men wore long pants, girls wore ribbons and braids, while women had "hair-do's". It was clear to all and sundry where a person stood. Everyone knew their place.

However, such simple physical distinctions no longer apply. No wonder we are forced today to come to terms with "force-ripe" people which in the past was an exception rather than the rule. "Force-ripe" people, lacking self-confidence and self-esteem, usually tend to react violently in most circumstances and situations that present a discomfort to them.

Secondly, if you come to see "schooling" as mere academic accreditation and not as "education for life", then your approach to education will always be about opening someone's head and pouring "knowledge" into it, rather than the scientific approach of engaging and challenging individuals to reveal and expose and develop all their potential possibilities.

And what further complicates the situation is the speed and rush that modern existence demands that we apply to this incorrect approach of pouring education into people's heads. It is not a coincidence that suddenly today more and more children are turning up with reading disabilities that stem from a difficulty to process language.

Long ago there was sufficient allowance of time for the young ones to inculcate and digest and absorb and fully interact with the learning environment. Today it is nothing short of brutal bombardment.

Those children who prove best able to adapt to the system and the speed of it all are deemed "bright" because they were able to focus on the narrow confines of subject matter and regurgitate it.

Girls are more readily able to perform in this regard as required. Boys, however, largely because they are more easily distracted and tend to lack single-minded tenacity, fall by the wayside and are the more likely victims of this modern madness.

Now the point that was being made about Afro-Trinidadian male youths is that they have been the most affected. All males have been but they have been the most affected.

And this is quite understandable when you add to their maleness the further universal complexities of being of black and African stock, the people whose sense of self and personal esteem have been most under attack and spat on relentlessly for the past five centuries, the very said people who have been foremost in the posing of relevant issues and in the questioning of society since 1970.

Of course my brown-skin partner from town does not, or pretends not, to understand and in his usual naïve silliness sees only the threat to social order.

Yet even well known educators have espied the problem, and one in particular, Valerie Taylor, past principal of Bishop Anstey Girls, shocked many when she described the education system as "outdated, unscientific, antiquated, irrelevant and overloaded."

The point is that it has been the Afro-Trinidadian youths who, more than any other social grouping, have sought to confront the system in various ways, by far not the least of which is to "drop out of Babylon". In so doing this very grouping has obviously become the ideal fodder for the big criminal elements who use them to do their dirty work and defend "turf". The drugs bring the guns.

Every shipment of drugs has with it a component of arms and ammunition for defence, and once the transaction takes place with hitches, the guns are left here to be sold cheaply on the streets. What then are the moral choices?

Society says that one must go to school and university, study hard for some years to earn a Master's degree or a PhD so as to be able to earn big money to purchase a mansion, drive a Mercedes Benz, buy expensive jewelry and take vacations abroad.

What does the drug pusher say that's different? He offers the same final goals but in quicker time. Speed and rush again, the hallmark of modern existence.

I can recall even hearing one of our leading, successful businessmen intone that he as a youth was motivated to do well in business because he was motivated by the single desire to own a Mercedes Benz.

The violence in schools, the increase in the levels of various crimes, most stemming from the desire to earn quick dollars, can be traced back to a dysfunctional education system and a social breakdown across the board.

There was always violence in schools. Back in the '50s, I remember pupils of Richmond Street AC primary terrorising the pupils and teachers of Western Boys RC. Richmond Street was led by a fellah they called "Monkey" Barrington.

Even in Tunapuna, Tunapuna AC and Tunapuna Government clashed regularly until it was decided that the best fighter of either school would settle the matter.

"OJ" from Tunapuna EC and "Teagh" from Government locked horns on Freeling Street and fought for hours. They even fought inside the Good Shepherd Church for those were the days when churches were kept opened.

What is different today is the availability of deadly weapons and the influence of drug pushers using children to do their dirty work.

What kept the balance long ago was the constant activity that was generated by CYO (Catholic Youth Organisation), AYF (Anglican Youth Fellowship), PNM youth groups in every single community, scout troops, cricket and football community teams, and the numerous sports days on the annual calendar - Southern Games, Northern Games, Police Sports, QRC Sports, CIC Sports, St George's Sports, etc, with each sports day being an occasion.

Are we all suffering from collective amnesia? Yes, money is needed to finance nationwide social programmes but even more important is well-meaning, well-directed sport and cultural activity at the community level on an ongoing basis.