Call for more psychologists in schools

A call has been made for more psychologists in local schools, to ensure that the volume of students falling through the cracks can be reduced, as well as the crime wave in Barbados.

The call came recently from Robert “Bobby” Clarke of the Clement Payne Movement and a supporter of the September 3rd Foundation.

Clarke suggested that there cannot simply be one psychologist for the entire school system and he charged that this is an issue that is not being adequately addressed, by the relevant authorities.

“A child learns most of what it has to know by age six, not be age sixteen…we in Barbados have one psychologist or one psychiatrist for a whole school system of Barbados. In a country like Cuba, each school, from primary school right up, has a psychologist or a psychiatrist attached to the school,” he commented.

“When the child at four, five, six starts to have a problem, you deal with the problem at four, five, six, not at sixteen when you can’t solve the problem. And that is our major problem,” he charged, noting that when the children have problems there is nobody for them to talk to, or to look into their issues.

“So that Barbados needs immediately, a psychologist attached to each school. You also need to have that understanding of the family being connected to schools, to see if the children are making a mistake (and to correct it),” he maintained.
“You cannot correct a child at sixteen. We talk about you can’t deal with the gangs now because the gangs are permanent until they kill themselves out. So we have to go back to civics in society, we have to teach principles,” he stressed.

He meanwhile stressed that an immediate priority for government, should be ensuring that more psychologists are attached to the schools, so greater interventions can be made
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“As from tomorrow, each school must therefore have a trained psychologist, especially in children’s behaviour, so they can stop this problem,” he commented. (RSM)