The problem of violence in our schools is a problem of identity and the difficulty faced by our young people to interpret the world in a way that makes sense. Living on the “street corner,” in other words, on the margins, economically, socially, and physically, many of our young people are challenged to construct an identity or a “world” that is coherent, to respect the self that they have created, and to acknowledge the “self” of others. In fact, the uncertainty we face as a people in valuing self was raised at a recent public forum by noted Caribbean writer Earl Lovelace, who not only raised that matter but also pointed to the role of literature in changing it.