by SUMMIE HAZELWOOD

THE LITTLE "MONSTERS" disrupting classes and creating havoc in the schools did not spring up from thin air, but are the fruits of seeds sown in the homes and, to some extent, the schools.

Retired High Court judge LeRoy Inniss said some people were referring to indisciplined schoolchildren as "monsters" and were asking 'but where these monsters come from though?'.

Speaking at a Combermere School Parent-Teacher Association meeting on Saturday, Inniss said these "monsters" were being created in Barbadian homes.

"The monsters did not come from Mars, did not come from Tokyo or from Swaziland; the monsters came from your home and my home, that's where the monsters came from. The homes of average Barbadians.

"The monster is the little girl or little boy that the mother referred to me as 'boy he does curse real sweet, he could curse real sweet' . . . . Imagine a parent describing a four-year-old child as one who could curse 'real sweet' . . . . it is also the five-year-old child who no longer wears shoes but he wears Timberland.

"The mother dare not go to buy a pair of anything to put on his foot unless it is Timberlands and that mother tells you with glee, 'he don't wear nothing but Timberlands boy'," Inniss said.

He said when parents did these things they were "sowing seeds" of indiscipline in children, which was then manifested in their unruly behaviour at school and then later in life at work as well.

The retired judge said he did not support the view that "deviants" came from only poor, single parent homes because during his years as a judge people from all walks of life were brought before him for committing crimes.

"I have never been convinced that there was necessarily a direct connection between poverty and rebelliousness . . . between being a single parent child and rebelliousness," Inniss said.

He added while it was helpful to have money or two parents in the home, it did not mean rich two-family homes didn't have indisciplined children. He added the real determinant was the actions of the parents in raising their child.

Inniss said the school and the Ministry of Education also had to shoulder some responsibility for what was happening in schools.

He said in some schools students were exposed to feuding principals and teachers and students who witnessed this decided if the principal could not get a teacher in his school to follow orders, then why should they?