PM Roosevelt Skerrit has revealed that the maxim that it takes a village to raise a child is no longer true. He made this assertion against the fact that rather than for communities to raise children in the most traditional way, they leave the task to the Ministry of Education. Skerrit said parents, guardians, clergies, and business organizations have abdicated their roles in child-raising – leaving the government to bear the brunt.
The prime minister made this declaration in Trinidad and Tobago during a symposium tagged “Violence as a Public Health Issue: The Crime Challenge”. Attended by regional heads of government in the Caribbean at the instance of the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Keith Rowley, Skerrit said educational reform is an important tool for eradicating violence in the society.
I think we need to have, in my respectful view, a comprehensive review of our education system in the Caribbean. The whole concept of it takes a village to raise a child…now it is solely up to the ministry of education to educate our children.
Hon. Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister of Dominica
He said that governments in the Caribbean Island must overhaul their educational system to not only celebrate students that pass examinations – but to also bolster the confidence of students that fail. He stated that students who fail major examinations are often recruited into bad gangs who terrorize communities across the countries.
I think we are focusing on those who do well academically but we fail to pay attention to the mental and emotional state of our children [who fail]. Because we are talking about guns but we must also focus on anti-social behavior which sometimes leads to the extreme ends of using guns and other weapons to advance violent behaviors.
Hon. Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister of Dominica
The prime minister revealed that when parents and communities cater to the needs of students who fail examinations, they cannot be instruments for social menace. He stated that educational reform can be applied to solving social challenges and preventing recruitment of youths into harmful gangs.
In his own reaction, Trinidadian PM Keith Rowley said “violence in the Caribbean is a public health emergency which threatens our lives, our economies, our national security, and by extension, every aspect of our well-being.” He gave statistical figures of crime in Trinidad and Tobago since 2011 and warned that except urgent actions are taken to rein in the problem, violence in 2023 will be more worrisome.
“In Trinidad and Tobago in the years 2011 to 2022, we have lost, and we had to grieve for, 5,439 lives lost to violent murders largely through the use of imported firearms and ammunition,” Rowley said. “In 2011, we lost 352 lives and by 2022, the annual count was over 600, a new record already being challenged by the murder rate for 2023.”
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