TT: Student protest for Bacchus as bullying

When the American education establishment farts, it seems the entire Caribbean relishes the aroma. What else may one conclude from the faddish outcry on bullying that has bled from the U.S. down to TT? Apparently, the aroma is so heady that some are carried by it to unforeseen heights of idiocy. Take this comment for instance.

The National Parent Teachers’ Association disapproved of the students' actions.

NPTA president Zena Ramatali said yesterday the incident was tantamount to bullying.

“We cannot allow that kind of protest among students,” she said in a telephone interview.

“That is a form of bullying, and we are trying to stamp out that kind of activity in schools.

“The association is in favour of teaching children to dialogue, and we also respect the right of the child to quality education. But we cannot allow that kind of thing to continue.”

Student protest as "tantamount to bullying"? Does Zena Ramatali have a lexicon? Does she know how to use it?

If TT is to continue to raise citizens who are full participants in a democracy, they must be allowed to protest, for dissent is part of democracy. It is patently absurd to call student protest bullying -- even though some of them went over the top and threw desks, chairs, and such.

There is a power relation in bullying that is reversed in protest. The bully perceives of himself as strong, and so he preys on the weak. He has the upper hand in the power relationship. Protest is, in many ways, the recourse of those who are outside the system or weak in relation to those who control the system. The powerful do not protest because they have other and more direct means of creating change in their interests. Therefore, when Zena Ramatali describes the protesting students as bullies, she is effectively reversing the power relationship and creating a false sense that students are in control.

While the fifty-five teachers at SFSCS might have been frightened by the outpouring of student anger over the loss of their beloved Sir, and while police were called in to quell the protest, that does not mean that the students were bullying either the school's staff, its principal, or the Ministry of Education. Indeed, as testimony to the powerlessness of the students, Gene Bacchus assumes duties at Couva Junior Secondary shortly. Had the students had enough power to bully anyone, they surely would have bullied the Ministry into allowing Bacchus to remain principal -- which is the point of the protest.

Ramatali does redeem herself slightly when she

... called on the Ministry of Education and the Teaching Service Commission to review their policies on the way principals are appointed.

“We are very, very strong on that. The ministry and the commission need to take cognisance of the way they select principals. They have too many people in acting positions.

“Some of these people perform well, and then suddenly they are just uprooted and sent to other schools,” she complained.

In this, Zena Ramatali is quite right. Instead of sending a man to act at a school, just cut out an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy, speed up the process and assign him to the school. That will prevent a lot of discontinuity in school administration.