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Oct 28, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
A school boy from the institution at Cornelia Ida, run by Swami Aksharananda, committed suicide after he was expelled for an alleged affair with a teacher. It was a cruel death because of one factor only –expulsion. Even though he said he was humiliated in front of his peers, it was the expulsion that triggered the tragedy.
What goes through the mind of a child when he/she knows that he/she has to find another school maybe far away from home and will lose childhood friendships? It takes me back years ago to a morning outside the Medicare Pharmacy on New Market Street. The wife of chartered accountant Hardat Singh was distraught. And that is putting it mildly.
She asked for my help. Her daughter was expelled from Mae’s because she was found with her cell phone. She said that the child was taking it badly and was not eating. She said that she spoke to two PNC parliamentarian (both lawyers); Deborah Backer and Clarissa Riehl and both couldn’t help. I suggested that she speak with Education Minister, Sheik Baksh, while I discussed legal avenues with her husband whom I know well since we were colleagues at UG.
Minister Baksh opted to stay out. Hardat told me that he would seek an injunction. He never did. The child found entry into School of the Nations and that was the end of the matter. The son of Mr. Johnson, owner of Nigel’s Supermarket met with the same fate at Mae’s. School of the Nations accepted him, and once more Mae’s escaped legal action.
You do not expel a child in the middle of the term for possession of a cell phone. It is harsh and sadistic.
There must be other less bestial forms of punishment. I wrote on this issue that should that happen to any other child at any other school I would like the parents to contact me and I would proceed with immediate court action.
My daughter went to Marian Academy and one of her classmates was peremptorily expelled for kissing a boy. It was a decision by the headmistress without any official inquiry. The grandmother spoke to me but my efforts to get other parents to intervene were unsuccessful. The Parent-Teacher Association was a silly little tool unworthy of its name (at least at that time).
That little, working class girl from Hadfield Street never recovered from that expulsion. Her life just went astray from thereon. The headmistress of Marian Academy is a Catholic nun. The headmaster of the school at Cornelia Ida is a Swami who may be the equivalent to an Archbishop. Where was God when these things were happening?
Let me divert a little from my main topic. Years after I ran into the distraught mother in the Mae’s expulsion case, the weeders at my home broke my back windscreen and in a casual conversation with her at a random meeting, I mentioned my difficulty in getting a replacement. She advised me that a man had ordered one from Beharry’s months ago and was still to pay for it. She got Beharry’s to sell it to me. I thanked her and reminded her of what the PPP Minister Sheik Baksh did to her and implored her not to vote for the PPP in the future.
There was no death from Mae’s two expulsions (but there must have been many more) but there was one from Swami’s school. And that suicide should alert this society to the potential for more deaths if students are expelled for conduct that does not warrant such draconian measures.
It is abysmally stupid to expel a child for possession of cell phone. And to think that Minister Baksh told that emotionally drained mother that there was nothing he could have done. What was Swami Aksharananda thinking? From what I have heard of this religious man he is a nice person. But how much do we know of the people we know to be nice?
From the little I heard of the Swami he appears to be the kind of person who would sit down with the boy and give him a sociological lecture (the Swami’s real name is Oudaipaul Singh who has a doctorate in sociology). Swami was also capable of giving the boy a philosophical talk. Why was that route not taken?
So are we going to take steps to stop another suicide because of expulsion? I doubt it. The Ministry will never issue an edict to private schools to desist from throwing out students found with cell phones. In Guyana who cares about suicides and homicides and any kind of sides? Many do.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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