Meetings at lycée professionel : headmaster Betting on Parenting

Parents and students came in large numbers to attend this Monday morning’s meetings at 8:30, 9:30 or 10:30 in the courtyard of yhe "lycée professionnel".

"Proviseure" Janine Hamlet spoke from the podium in French and English, urging parents to get involved in their children’s education:  “Physical violence occurred on campus last Wednesday. But this violence also starts with clothing.  We should not have to ask your children to pull their pants up because we see the color of their underwear, or even to remove their earphones or headphones when they are in class. As for your daughters, I no longer want to see thirty-year-old men whistling to them in the street because they are not wearing clothing appropriate for their age.”

The "proviseure", also a mother of two, regrets that some teenage girls "give and sell" themselves on social networks. For her, smartphones and Facebook are similar to "poison”. She also raised her voice to remind the audience that it is forbidden to take pictures or videos on school premises and publish them on the Internet without the consent of those featured.

Janine Hamlet said she was shocked by last week’s violent incidents. Faculty, administrative staff, parents and students who witnessed the events are in shock.

Clans do identify each other with a color system. The uniform, already compulsory in many schools on the island, could prevent these gang wars on the school premises.

As for individuals bearing knives, machetes and similar arms “we should prevent them from entering the school when armed,” says a “seconde”'s teenager. In 2014, during his mission to Guadeloupe and Saint-Martin on the fight against violence and crime, the "préfet" Gilles Leclair - former number 2 of the french criminal police - submitted the idea of installing metal detectors at the "cité scolaire" to the Collectivité.