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| Sunday, 26 January 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Violence vs discipline : What is the forecast for school year 2003? by Jayanthi Liyanage
"Times have changed says Denis Bond, the famed author of numerous books for children and young adults, here on a visit from the UK. "Why?," You ask "Indiscipline of youth," he replies quietly. "And the reason?" "Broken homes," he says sadly but amends in somewhat relented tones. "But Thank God, in Britain the problem has not aggravated into killings." You wish you could say the same. But you do not enlighten him on the harsh and brutal realities which have lately invaded the local school scene. And now that the schools have commenced a new term after a year which recorded an alarmingly unprecedented degree of mobbing, warring, stabbing, slaughtering and other savage behaviour among students, the predominant question that arises is what kind of preventive mechanisms have been put in operation, to halt further violence in schools.
The argument that it is just a handful of students who are responsible for violence during the past one-and-a-half years and that the rest remains immune from the downfall, comes apart with a simple reasoning. When seen in the light that children (as against young adults) are generally the last to be contaminated with the malignant fumes of a decadent and destabilising adult world, the incidents ring the panic bells that the rot has set in far too deep. And, prevention and eradication will certainly not be as easy as it was to usher the decay in. But what has caused the rot? Why have schools become such hotbeds of violence and why it is so wide spread? These questions need to be answered as much as new plans need to be formulated to makes schools safe places once again. "School violence we experienced is certainly not an isolated happening," says Minister of School Education Suranimala Rajapaksha. "For the last twenty years, we raised our children with a war mentality. The guns, bombs, explosions and pieces of torn flesh they saw on print and on the electronic media could have brought on the cultural change, we see in them today." The Ministry of School Education, faced with the formidable task of reversing a culture of violence in schools, works for an attitudinal change towards non-violence, by counselling programmes for the school prefects and A/L graders. Re-infusing schools with constructive values and ethics as practised in societies of yore, is seen as a major force in bringing back discipline to schools.
"The all-island Samodana programme scheduled to get off ground from February, aims at rekindling constructive moral values in schools," the Minister explains. "The program will also bring together schools in friendship events and help the students to curb the urge to make hasty and violent decisions and to think as democratic citizens." "Broken homes!," Ratnaveera Perera, Deputy Principal (Administration), Nalanda College, repeats the sentiments expressed by Bond. An open clash between the students of Nalanda and D.S. Senanayake Maha Vidyalaya was revealed to have originated when certain O/L repeaters no longer in school, entered the school buses in uniforms and began demanding and forcibly taking money from the younger students. "Some had even handed over their O/L exam fees for fear of the 'Aiyas'," says Perera explaining that the older students largely come from homes where the mother is working overseas, or where the parents are separated and re-married. With hardly any parental love to guide them, they get drawn to rabble and drugs and need increasing amounts of money", he points out. In other instances, parents preoccupied with their own affairs, substitute with money, the love and guidance they are depriving their children. Bolstered with funds, the child becomes a hero in his circle of friends, though heroism, for all it is vaunted on TV and VCD (his only companion at home), means non-compliance, destruction and a dash of brutal sex to make it worse. "A mechanical society denuded of finer feelings, that's what we have become," analyses Perera. "Avenues for disaster are more than avenues for constructive creativity. Though porn literature are not brought into the school, they are often exchanged in school buses." Mrs. R.N. Amarasinghe, Principal, Girls' High School, Kandy which had one of its students brutally slaughtered when she spurned the advances of a deserter soldier, blames it all on the electronic media. "Media has an obligation to set positive standards to children, as everything they see in media is like God to them." Though the students are protected while in school, how can this protection be given when parents send them to tuition classes during school hours, she questions. "Tutories and private school vans are a major source of luring students into unsavoury love affairs," she stresses. "The schools cannot achieve this culture change on their own and parents too must carry out their responsibility in protecting children." Whatever the explanation, violence in school has been widespread frequent enough for both school authorities and government officials to admit the need for a re-thinking of attitude and approach to reintroduce moral values and discipline to schools. The principal of Girls High School who blames tuition classes as she does the media for the breakdown of discipline in schools has designed special discussion sessions and workshops that go beyond the traditional framework to entice students currently opting for tuition to re-enter school. "All my teachers now spend a couple of minutes discussing moral values and ethics with students before a period begins."
Nalanda College has adopted a three-pronged approach to wean its higher graders from violence to a more constructive frame of mind. While "Sil" campaigns and a series of intellectual lectures on mind power ease the burden on the School Disciplinary Committee, "Mav-Piya Guna Sambhavana" program (designed by the National Education Institute) periodically brings students and parents together to impress each party on the worth of the other. "This way we bring together the distanced parents and children, making each party learn one's obligations to the other," explains Perera. "And the parents learn to guide their child's progress and have a close relationship with him, in order to avert him going astray." In 30 Student Counselling camps held from last year by the Ministry of Education, Western Province, school prefects received induction on ethics, moral values and co-existence. Though disciplinary regulations on dress, conduct and outside visits are common to all schools, the difficulty of implementing them looms large in schools beset with so much poverty that even drinking water is a non-entity. In "Panchod Grami", a five-pronged program for schools, developed under Chief Minister Western Province, Reginald Cooray, and to be absorbed into the local education system within a few months, student ethics and morals envelop one prong. "We are bringing back the morals of 25 years ago and are right now training the first group of teachers," says D.M.A.B. Dissanayake, Additional Secretary - Education, Ministry of Education Western Province. "Our ultimate aim is to make courtesy, ethics and morals a part of day-to-day studies and all school events," he emphasises. "We want to change the current prize-awarding system based on ruthless competition for the highest marks and award prizes for the students who demonstrate the best sense of ethics and co-existence", he explains. As Dissanayake points out, what example are we giving our children who must survive in a society of corruption and debauchery? "Even from the point when a child is admitted to a school, there are irregularities in the school system. All these have given birth to more inequalities among students. The result is the dying down of qualities such as affection and respect, leaving only one quality to come prominently to the fore - that is selfishness!" The only raging sense is to overtake the other and push forward. A reason attributed to the recent student clash at a Kohuwela private tutory where they were reported to have fought for seating. "Ineffectual teachers, poorly lit-up classrooms and non-availability of toilets induce students in tutories into wrong-doing. Though, currently, none of the private tutories are registered, we hope to bring in a convention of Supplementary Classes to regularise tutories," saysDissanayake. Malini, a mother of a school going 10-year old son caps all of the above saying, "I treat my son like a friend, for then only he will have confidence to come to me when something goes wrong." Simple, but a step which could go a long way to curb what we now so dramatically term as "school violence". |
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