BASSETERRE St. Kitts, April 14th, 2014 -- For some time now the atmosphere at the Basseterre High School has been fraught with concern. Parents, children and teachers are all deeply concerned that illnesses occurring among teachers and students alike are due to unhealthy conditions at the school.
When the alarm was first raised it was found that derelict laboratories may have been releasing fumes and this was corrected. In the search for answers workmen discovered faulty sewerage systems that were not only unhealthy but dangerous. Attempts were made to correct this situation also.
Earlier this year another cry went out from the Basseterre High School...from students, from teachers and from parents...that respiratory and skin ailments could be again coming from sources within the school compound and that the experts should again be called in to re-assess the situation in order to ascertain whether this was indeed so...to find out whether previous searchers had failed to detect something hitherto uncovered.
It is the initial treatment given to these fearful cries of concern by the Ministry of Education that has prompted this article... for the deep and anxious concerns raised were treated not with compassion but with seeming contempt.
The messengers bringing these concerns were described in disparaging terms – it was claimed that their fears were ‘psychological’; those who raised the alarm were seen as ‘provocateurs’ and as reported in the local press “most recently (when) the Minister suggested that local dermatologist and the President of the Teachers Union were instigating a teachers’ strike, and he accused the doctor of having a political agenda in calling for the return of a team from CARIRI -Caribbean Industrial Research Institute.”
So irate was one teacher suffering from skin ailments that it led her to post photographs of her skin on Facebook declaring that “Enough is enough!”.
“What really caused me to post my pictures on Facebook, is the fact that after we had a meeting on Tuesday, the Minister came on the air on the Wednesday, and without even coming to the school, making a phone call to the management of the school or even Mr. Collins, the President of the SKTU, laid claims that teachers were being pressured by the management of the school to write letters claiming that they’re ill,”
The Minister of Education was even more dismissive when he said that he did not expect to meet with the teachers anytime soon and that they ought to address their concerns to the Chief Education Officer.
The assertion of famous psychologist, Abraham Maslow -“If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail” –is particularly applicable in this case.
So drowned are we in St. Kitts and Nevis in political polarisation or tribalism that any statement made by anyone is accepted or dismissed depending only on the political affiliation one is suspected of having.
For example, when the Democrat newspaper drew attention to the deplorable state of the cemetery, one person’s rejoinder was that this was only a concern of the Democrat because ‘more people buried there were PAM’ and that even if they were to come alive, PAM still could not win the election’.
What depresses many, many nationals is the stranglehold that politics puts on the development of a country with great potential ensuring its failure to emerge as a beacon in the region and the world when it has all that is necessary for it to do so were it not for the narrow, emotional and immature thinking of its leaders.
But this health debacle at the Basseterre High Schools not only reveals how suffocated we are by politics but it also draws attention to the poor attitude of the present administration towards the role of education and the extremely important role schools and teachers play in realising the potential of each individual and by extension the potential of the nation. (More will be said of this in a follow-up article.)
In addition, it draws attention to the fact that the value of compassion is disappearing from our society at every level. This word is often used as a synonym for love and its absence is seen in the number of murders especially among the youth, the victimisation in politics and the failure to bring relief to those less fortunate among us. It is noteworthy that the SIDF funds are hardly directed to schools and hospitals as a priority.
Suffice it to say at this time... “A nation must treat its teachers in much the same way as it expects the teachers to treat the nation’s children.”
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