Cases of students attacking teachers and school workers in recent days are disturbing Kenyans.
The first cases were reported from Kisii School and Mokwerero Secondary school in Nyamira County. In Kisii School, a student injured two teachers using a kitchen knife while in Mokwerero, a student armed with a panga was contained before he could attack the school deputy principal.
In another incident in Vihiga County, Nyang’ori Boys High School student hit a school watchman with a rod and killed him.
There could be other unreported attacks perpetuated by the young members of the society but this is a clear indication that there is a lot to be done by the society in nurturing the minors.
It should not be forgotten that a group of students were arrested in Eldoret Town with alcoholic drinks. These cases may continue to be witnessed should we continue instilling discipline the same old way.
That society’s morals have depreciated too low so that children are turning wild and taking immoral routes shows that schools, families and other institutions of socialization and upbringing have much to do for the young generation as it transits to adulthood.
These young citizens have shown that society is disintegrating fast, with each child left to fight for his or her space in the open as parents struggle to put food on the table.
Busy parents, bully teachers
Sometime parents have become too busy in search of a living and trying to better the lives of these young ones but never get to spare time to listen and hear whether they really appreciate the parents’ efforts. Sometimes they want more resources making the parents spend more time out there and have little time left to spend with their children.
These have drawn clear gaps between giving life to these young ones and preparing them to live for these lives now and in the future.
How a child plans to terminate his entire family should not be a bell to ring today and make it go silent, the bell should ring often in the minds of each parent that the current generation has more desires which they want to meet even before their time to earn and enjoy life comes. Fact remains that it is the parents who have introduced these children to these high lives at an early age which they get used to and want to live now.
Men take a huge share of these blames. Many of the fathers are totally absent. Since that time the mother conceived, the man’s duties ended there. They left for work and other engagements, leaving the women take the full burden of carrying the baby to term and start a second journey to nurture them to adulthood. An interaction between the father and child is minimal. Mothers, many of them as tender-loving as they are, never discipline to correct, and the child grows knowing mother is the best.
In school, some teachers are bullies, to say the worst. A friend shared to this editor how a certain teacher in high school was such a bully that one afternoon, as the students were going to class after lunch, it happened that this student’s shirt was hanging out from the back unnoticed-and the law was clear that tacking in the shirts was mandatory. So this teacher was on duty and it happened he spotted this student and he called him only to start reminding him that his shirt should be tacked in by beating him with his (student’s) belt in the presence of other teachers.
That was in 1999 and the student was in form two. He received several ‘belts’ until the leather belt was shattered. That afternoon was the last day in school for this student. Worse, it was a local day school and both the teacher and the student were from the locality. The enmity did not end in school but was transferred to the village.
There are many such examples where teachers have mercilessly beaten logic into students only for these students to turn against teachers and their lives ruined as such. This creates enmity between teachers and students leading to lifelong hatred.
Some teachers want to instill thorough discipline to students which end up tragic while others carry their problems to schools and dispel it to their students.
It is high time parents, teachers and the larger society take charge of what is happening in these children.
For schools, there is need to change approach and tact on how they are tackling these young adults as they put sense into them.
Covid-19 break with hard lessons
Learners have been away from school for quite a long time and they have faced life outside there with its brutality. Some have had to endure hard economic times sometimes going without food because they would only find it in school.
Others were forced to get into some employment to supplement what their parents brought and now they have been forced to return to school and are nursing the period of transition. Now here comes a teacher, a disciplinarian, who has missed the chance to punish pupils for months and wants his presence to be felt in school. It is this change of environment that is causing chaos.
Long gone are the days when the cane was a way to pushing stupidity out of learners. The learner today is persuaded to complete a school session. If there is no change of tact, schools may have to contend with these rebellion.
As teachers must embrace change, the learners should also be humbled to learn. Times when the teacher was all-knowing are gone and with the new curriculum where every learner is skilled differently, the teacher must be all round accommodative to this change.
Some of these learners have gone through hell at home with parents, something they are not used to. The stay at home may have been brutal where the children witnessed parents quarreling and fighting openly, parents never tolerated these children because discipline is only instilled in schools and would not punish but beat them. Such experiences and others end up being repeated in schools with teachers being on the receiving end.
There is need for health for the curriculum to encompass social skills, life skills, accommodate religious teachings in these young learners. A healthy mind is accommodative to changing times but rigidity in the minds of both the learner and the educator can have adverse negative effects on both, which may include harm.
