Teachers to be trained to tackle gang violence in schools – Pres Ali

The growing presence of gang-related violence across the hemisphere is becoming a serious problem, and President Dr Irfaan Ali has underscored the need to tackle this phenomenon at an early stage in schools.
He made these remarks while speaking at a presentation ceremony on Wednesday when the University of Guyana (UG) received the 2023 William J Perry Award for Excellence in Security and Defence Education – a recognition of the tertiary institution’s significant contributions in the field of security and defence education in the Americas.
During his feature address, President Ali said the increase in gang violence in the region is causing him sleepless nights. The seriousness of this issue, he noted, is evident in the fact that gangs are being formed in schools.

“In our secondary schools in the region, you have the development of gangs. What that speaks to is this issue of gangs becoming institutionalised and becoming a part of norm, part of normative action and normative behaviour and that is where the serious threat is,” he stated.
According to the Guyanese Leader, this threat can grow into a much serious problem for Governments.
“They may start with fighting each other with sticks [then] to knives, to guns, to grenades. That is how it goes because in any system in that world, you graduate upwards, not downwards. Everybody aspires to be in the leadership of the gangs. And that is a reality that we have to confront,” the President posited.
To this end, President Ali outlined that tackling this serious challenge required confronting it at the early stages in the school system. He spoke about designing specialised programmes that speak to changing the child development ecosystem.
The Head of State pointed out that as young as four years, children today are being exposed to video games – 90 per cent of which are of a violent nature.
“So, the problem here is that the exposure to crime and fighting and guns is becoming a normative exposure and you can’t change that, that is part of the business world, but you have to deal with it. So, how do you develop a child-friendly ecosystem…?”
“How do we now develop a training programme for our teachers from the time you enter the secondary level to deal with this? So, that now we have a specific training that would address the building of the capacity and capability of our teachers to address this issue and to build an ecosystem to fight back what is already in the society,” the Guyanese Leader noted.
To produce this solution, President Ali challenged the University of Guyana and the Guyana Defence Force to work with the William J Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies on this regional issue, as well as a host of other matters that he outlined including port and cyber security training, Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping and incorporating other key US courses locally.
The Perry Center, affiliated with the National Defense University in Washington, DC, is a leading institution dedicated to fostering security cooperation throughout the Western Hemisphere.
In Guyana, there had been an increase in gang violence in schools in recent years. Only in March 2023, two students and a teacher were hospitalised following an incident at the Harmony Secondary School, located in Wismar, Linden, Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice).
A group had apparently come to the school seeking retaliation for an earlier altercation between a student and a gang member. As the gang members rampaged through the school, they kicked open doors and assaulted a teacher, leaving her bleeding – a situation that left both teachers and students afraid for their safety.
A year prior to this, teachers had staged a protest over the operations of gangs at the Lodge Secondary School in Georgetown in June 2022. They complained of being targeted and nothing being done when reports are made about the situation. In one instance, a gang member attempted to rob a teacher in a classroom.
Then in October last year, two male students – aged 15 and 16 – were attacked on the Diamond Access Road, East Bank Demerara (EBD), allegedly by five juveniles. The Guyana Police Force had said the incident was gang-related. (G8)