Blz: RC school principal forces student to stand in sun for not selling soft drinks

[A]nother Roman Catholic school has entered the spotlight of public scrutiny.

   This time, the disciplinary action of the Catholic School management is directed against one of its young pupils in Belize City, at the Holy Redeemer Primary School.  Principal Molly Hewlett has, for twelve consecutive school days, denied a thirteen-year-old Standard Five pupil access to her classroom, because the pupil had stopped selling soft drinks for the school.
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When asked how she feels about the school’s punishment that she has been enduring for two weeks now, Ash-Lynn told Amandala that, “I think it is wrong, because if I don’t sell the soft drinks, it is not a major rule of the school.”

   Flowers told Amandala that her daughter “was put in the school yard in the boiling sun. She does not deserve this!”

   While Amandala was speaking with Flowers, she asked one of Ash-Lynn’s school friends if she (Ash-Lynn) gave any trouble in school.

   “She is an angel,” replied the child.

   Though she may be an angel to her friends at school, the principal’s punishment is already having its effect on Ash-Lynn.

   “I don’t want to go to school, because I don’t do anything. I feel uncomfortable,” Ash-Lynn said.

   The soft drinks, in cups with ice, are sold in the school’s woodwork building located in front of the playing field on the school’s compound. The operation requires that pupils prepare the area for the selling, and they must clean up after the selling. Between the preparation for sales and the cleanup after the sales, at least a half-hour is spent.

   Amandala was unable to learn how many students are required to sell the soft drinks, or in what rotation order, if any, the students are required to work. 

   Sharon Flowers, a single mother of three girls and a resident of Fresh Pond, Burrell Boom, who works in Belize City as the assistant to the director of creative arts at the Bliss Center for the Performing Arts, told the newspaper that it was not communicated to her that her child at Holy Redeemer was required to sell soft drinks for the school. Flowers said that she only learned about her daughter’s selling of soft drinks after she turned up late on three different occasions at the bus stop for the return trip home.

   Flowers recalled that when she found out that her daughter was turning up late because she had to stay back to get notes from classmates after selling soft drinks on the school compound, she decided to call Principal Molly Hewlett.

   Hewlett, Flowers said, assured her that selling the soft drinks was not compulsory. But one week after telling Flowers that, Hewlett called her, saying that she had thought that it was not compulsory, but it was.

   Flowers went on to say that Hewlett mentioned that if her child did not participate in the selling of the school’s soft drinks, then she would have to get a transfer to another school.

So an RC school principal in Belize thinks that parents send their children to school to become sweet drink vendors? It is possible that racial discrimination could be at play here. Hey, that's how the Roman Church works in some parts of the Caribbean; in other parts, it has grown beyond this. Perhaps Rome needs its Belizean adherents to adjust their attitude.