Cases like the recent East End Primary assault trial could easily be avoided if teachers were better trained in dealing with behavioural problems, a prominent US educator said last week.

"Teachers need to have the skills to deal with the ramifications of everything that is brought to the classroom,'' Dr. Judy Cooper, an adjunct professor at several US colleges, said at Marriott's Castle Harbour Resort, where she is holding a two-day seminar on behavioural techniques for some 100 of the Island's teachers.

"We are not in the Beaver Cleaver days anymore. We're dealing with the 21st Century child. This is a child who doesn't respond to the old disciplinary techniques.'' Last year, East End Primary School teacher Ms Carolann Foley was charged with assault after she admitted in a Police statement to taping a six-year-old student's mouth shut and binding his hands with skipping rope.

Foley said she did so because the boy, who suffers from Attention Deficiency Disorder, was disrupting a science lesson by hitting and kicking his classmates.

Charges against Foley were dropped after Senior Magistrate the Wor. Will Francis decided that she had used "reasonable force'' on the child.

Last week, Dr. Cooper suggested that such incidents could be prevented if "front-line'' educators were trained in both the prevention of behavioural outbursts and the correction of them once they occurred.

"I want to stress that there is no single formula to deal with these issues,'' she said. "Everyone, from the parents to the churches to the schools, must be involved.

"At the same time, teachers themselves can do a lot to create the environment that is required for learning. Many of them just don't have the skills.'' On the subject of violent behaviour, for example, Dr. Cooper told the assembled teachers that it was they who determined how a potentially dangerous situation played itself out.

"The teacher's behaviour has a tremendous impact on a potentially violent student,'' she said. "You can diffuse or you can escalate. In the violence literature, we figure prominently. The student's behaviour depends entirely on the teacher's behaviour.'' In the instance when teachers are faced with a problem student, Dr. Cooper counselled them to keep a level head.

"Avoid overreacting,'' she said. "It's like putting gas on a fire.''