The school environment and things that go "Boom!"

Time was when children had respect for the environment.  They went to church and expected that God would see their hearts and they reverenced the place.  School was a place of learning and teachers were super-heroes (or close to that).  Those days are gone.  Half of the students at Gasparillo Secondary School go to school and lime in the corridors instead of going to classes, if we are to believe the Trinidad Guardian story that reported the statements of the Security Guard at the school.

http://guardian.co.tt/news/crime/2010/11/05/teachers-save-day-students-set-fire-school
The difference in the attitude of the teachers and the students present when the incident occurred is telling.  The article said that one teacher kicked off her shoes, raised up her Divali ethnic wear and sprinted for water to put out the fire.  She and other colleagues sustained burns and were later congratulated by the Minister of Education for saving the school from burning down.  They limited the damage to approximately $20,000.  A few students created the mischief and the others panicked. 

What would prompt children to set fire to school property, creating panic, while the others try to get out of the one exit? Does this sound familiar?  Here is a clue: remember the mad scramble from Port of Spain when we expected the visit from Tropical Storm Tomas.

But really, what kind of school environment would tolerate half the students liming in the hall instead of going to classes on any given day or, to be precise, on a day before a holiday?  Unsupervised children with dangerous toys, a product of the imported advanced technology, leads to the possibility of damage to school property, to themselves and to other children.

Several children have been maimed over the years.  The bombs shatter the quiet and can upset classes.  They are at least a nuisance and, as the article showed, a fire hazard.  Yet teachers taking a stand against the use of scratch bombs at schools are considered to be too extreme.  Some parents and students consider these scratch bombs as innocent noisemakers.  They say that these scratch bombs provide harmless fun, such as making people "jump".

I wonder, were the children at Gasparillo trying to capture attention and make us focus on the fact that half of them are liming on the corridors on any given day when we think we are spending our limited revenue to support their education?

Has enough been said about scratch bombs?  They are illegal and should not be brought unto the compound but the Minister asked "Can we search every school bag coming into the school compound?" 

If we teach the children to respect both the natural and man-made environment then there would be no need for the searching.