The other day I was shocked to read that a schoolboy pulled out a knife at a teacher for asking him to take off his baseball cap in an examination hall. Now, I don’t know whether that cap held all the magic to his !nondos or whether it was so bleddie cold that his bold knucklehead was freezing so much even though we hardly had any winter. But be it as it may, this whole gemors took me right back to the early 80’s when school and home were still places of discipline.
I am sure I have told you before that in our time teachers had quite a huge appetite for beating the crap out of us. Sometimes the anger came from some place else where the male teacher might have quarrelled with Madam Boss at home, or his favourite soccer team lost the cup. Or there was always that jeffie who disliked you for nothing – only to find out later that she was your zallie’s bloodthirsty /gamares.
Now, imagine throwing that tsotsi wanna-be in a wheel back to the ‘80s. That snotneus would have landed right in the hands of one no-nonsense science teacher who knew just how to take care of such laaities. That kamashona would have wished he never brought that okapi knife to school because he wouldn’t have been able to sit on his behind for a while and worse, he would have to sleep on his tummy for a good week.
That knife-wielding mampara would have shivered to think what could be waiting for him at home. His parents would have dragged his stubborn behind back to that school, bleksemed him in front of the whole school and demanded that he apologise for his onbeskofde behaviour.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying we should answer violence with violence but everyone is sitting in bewilderment now wondering why such an incident happened on school grounds. It’s very simple; there is a lack of discipline in our school system caused by all these mumbo-jumbo about children rights that these kids have no clue about.
I know some human rights activist is outraged that I am insinuating that these youngsters should be moered. Please hold your horses; I know what our Constitution’s Chapter 3 says about respect for human dignity. I don’t support bringing back the sjambok – all I am saying is that something needs to be done drastically to bring a balance between our rights and taking responsibility for own actions.
As with anything else, nothing is for mahala. Pointing a weapon at a teacher and still having the audacity to call your parents to the school to come kak out the headmaster for refusing to let you write exams is just not ayoba.
This is abuse of the justice system. Let’s sit and think very carefully about the type of society we are molding. We live in a democracy and I am not saying that the teacher was right because I know teachers can be vindictive, but for parents to defend a child that brings a weapon to school is beyond me.
We already have a lack of good teachers and if we do not quash incidents of this nature from the onset, we will find ourselves in a situation where teachers will leave the profession in droves out of fear. Let’s not become another example of some schools in the Western world where the classroom has become a place of terror.
Sorry Ngo!
magreth@newera.com.na
By Magreth Nunuhe