Kids breaking boundaries of civility and acting in clear, criminal manner must worry all of us as citizens, government, parents and teachers.
Some years ago, we, in the name of democracy and human rights, decided to take the cane away from the classroom, and corporal punishment from our classroom statutes. We thought that we could then create a free environment in which kids could learn better, without looking over their shoulders at a teacher or head teacher who preferred the use of the case to discipline pupils.
Drawing the line
Though we had some cases of teachers who were excessively happy wielding the cane, we realized over time that discipline was breaking down in schools, particularly the public schools, where controlling kids had been challenging since colonial days because they entered the classrooms late in life, unlike the private schools which began with kindergartens.
Whatever the situation is, we have learnt some vital lessons that should guide us to generate relevant deterrents or ridding criminality from the classroom from the elementary to tertiary levels.
As we would admit, the relapse into a period of unbridled freedom for kids in public schools was an imposition by a segment of our society who belongs to the political class and middleclass.
Truth
Of course, canning per se created problems, including kids sustaining bruises and wounds, while kneeling down or carrying chairs or tables, or even gardening, carried with it other dangers, including collapsing.
Probably out of panic, we froze for too long in making children aware that the classroom is not a playground or a clown theatre. Additionally, we failed by policy to restrain kids even in some of our mission schools.
The result was smoking, ‘suppie’ or ‘lesbo’, stealing, among others, with the worst case scenario being kids fighting teachers and committing arson as witnessed recently at Accra Academy.
Teachers
Unfortunately, we have also had incidents in which teachers failed in their roles as guardians of kids during the six or eight hours that they acted in loco parentis. And the horrid tales about teachers making kids pregnant or a father publicly kissing girls in his care has stunned us as a nation.
But that confirms our argument that we cannot just rely on our human rights activists automatically to have that healthy balanced education that a school community generates without laws.
Kasoa, Konongo murder
We were also shocked several months ago to hear that two teenagers had killed a younger playmate and friend for alleged ritual purposes. According to them, they had been told by other friends that money could be made by killing a person and sending part of his mortal remains to Mallams to turn into hard, solid cash that would in turn them into sheikhs.
They learnt too late that they had been misled and that they may rather be on their way to jail.
And yet, that couldn’t even stop some kids of Konogo-Odumase SHS from allegedly murdering a first-year student last week.
According to the story, the kid killer stabbed the colleague with a kitchen knife at midnight over a misunderstanding. These are kids who came from homes, not zoos or the jungle; and they have parents that we need to see to understand how they brought up such beasts to mingle with humans.
Deterrents
So that we don’t keep wringing our hands in agony, it is time, in the opinion of the Daily Statesman, to initiate policies that keep such ‘animals’ perpetually away from society regardless of their age and who brought them into the world.
As far as the law is concerned, the human rights angle may appear useless as long the lives of others are at stake.
That is why we deem it imperative to draw the attention of the Ghana Education Service to the need for the sector to draw clear codes of conduct or guidelines for regulating the behavior of pupils and students in both our public and private schools.
The last environment where we expect such crimes to take place is the home, church and mosque, as well as the school, where we have parents, pastors and imams as well as teachers.