Professor Maureen Samms-Vaughan, executive chairman of the Early Childhood Commission, says the most important intervention a teacher can make in encouraging individual potential in children, is addressing children's behavioural and emotional health.

"Too many of our schools focus on IQ and learning school subjects without thinking about students' emotional health," Professor Samms-Vaughan said yesterday while addressing a Gleaner teachers' appreciation luncheon at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel, New Kingston.

"To me this doesn't make logical sense because when we look at what teachers have reported as their main problems in the classroom over the years, we find that things have changed dramatically," she said.

Problems in the classroom

According to Professor Samms-Vaughan, in the 1960s, teachers reported chewing gum and talking in class as some of the main problems in the classroom.

However, she noted that these have been replaced with child-on-child-violence, sexual abuse, attacks on teachers by students and parents, guns in school, gangs and young dons in training.

The executive chairman said society has come to depend on teachers to sort out its ills.

She noted that, while teachers may seem overwhelmed by this responsibility, one can understand, based on the time that teachers spend with children, why society feels the way it does.

"When our children arrive at school in the mornings many of them leave situations where their emotional health has been affected," she said, noting that, in the Jamaican family, by the time children are six years old, four out of 10 parents report no relationship with each other.