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Senator concerned by fight shown on facebook

Sen. Faumuina Tagisiaali’i, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, has recommended that the teacher, who posted a video on Facebook showing two Tafuna High School girls fighting, should resign. He said the teacher’s action in posting the video on social media for the world to see clearly shows this teacher is not carrying out his duties as a teacher to try and put a stop to any school violence.

 

Faumuina told Samoa News that for any type of incident that occur in any school — not only locally but off island — it's the teacher who steps in to help keep the peace and harmony among students, not “put a video on Facebook making the problem worse”.

 

In the nearly minute-long video, which was tagged to the Samoa News facebook page by several of our local and off-island readers, girls are seen fighting as a crowd of students stand by and watch. Not one person was seen trying to step in to stop the fight, and students can be heard cheering and asking the girls to start the fight over. (See yesterday’s front-page story for more information)

 

Faumuina said that during the 12 years he was chairman of the board of South Pacific Academy, any time an incident surfaced at school involving students, his first action was to find a solution, as well as call a meeting of the Parents and Teachers Association of the school to discuss the incident, with the goal to find a long term solution.

 

He said a teacher is the student’s guardian or parent in the classroom; and the students should respect the teacher at all times while in school. He said teachers are educators of students, but also must keep them safe.

 

Meanwhile, Faumuina said he attended a meeting yesterday between the Education Department Director and her staff along with other lawmakers, but the fight at Tafuna High School didn’t come up during the discussion.

 

He did say that he would raise this video issue during another meeting next week.