Teachers attacked, pupils fighting, and schools under siege. South Africa must enforce laws and reclaim schools as safe learning environments for children.
The South African school system is under siege.
Teachers are under attack, students are attacking each other, parents are physically fighting teachers and robbers are attacking schools with no concern for the safety of the pupils on those premises.
The idea that the school yard is a place of safety is long gone. South African school children literally have nowhere to run to.
As a nation, the notion that when we see a teacher and pupil disagreeing we must immediately rush to assert uninformed opinions that it is a racial matter, fuels a very dangerous fire.
I was a very difficult pupil because my opinion had no boundaries. I believed that every comment that did not sit well with my emotions came from a place of racial intolerance.
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That was until a teacher, who would ultimately change the course of my academic journey, explained that not everything is about race, not everything is meant to be fought and that there is no sense in winning minute battles, only to lose the overall war.
From then on, I realised that learning opportunities were being obstructed by an unnecessary defence mechanism.
The violence that has become so familiar in our daily lives has now taken root on school premises.
That pupils in school uniform, at age 15, can partake in the beating and ultimately the killing of a man then brag about it – are these the sort of children who will learn side-by-side with our children?
This makes me cold to the core.
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South Africa needs its laws to be implemented. We cannot have laws reserved only for Joe Soap.
There should be no special treatment for the affluent or sympathy for those of disadvantaged backgrounds. The law should remain consistent. It should not be gender- or race-biased, nor should there be white privilege.
Once we realise this and conduct ourselves in an orderly fashion, we will be able to uphold the law, regardless of who the perpetrator may be. We need to go back to the time when schools were safe zones, when acts of malice were few and far apart.
We need to take back our classrooms as an environment of learning, development and interaction.
Government cannot do this alone. Yes, it must protect our children, along with the communities where schools are.
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But, as parents, we must be held fully accountable for our children’s behaviour, because who they are at school is a reflection of our sphere of control as caregivers.
