Not a few observers hold firmly to the opinion that violence in schools ranks high on the list of challenges to the stability of the country’s education system. The reason? Violence in schools confronts the foundations of control and authority that are the very essence of the school system. Perhaps, more to the point, the gatekeepers of the system, Heads of schools and teachers are manifestly not winning the battle to effectively implement the control mechanisms that are necessary to keep the system stable. There are times when the ‘gatekeepers’ appear embarrassingly intimidated, impotent. Those mechanisms are continually being pushed back by the increasing ferocity of the onslaught that it now has to fend off.
Recent evidence reflected in media reports suggests that in-school, schoolyard and off-premises violence may well be on the rise. We know too that what used to be schoolyard confrontations, the outcomes of which used to be bumps, bruises, damaged uniforms, in-school reprimands and at-home thrashings, have metamorphosed into confrontations sufficiently violent to result in serious injury. These, not infrequently, extend themselves onto the streets where ‘connections’ (relatives and friends) assume their positions on the opposing sides.
There are those who would argue that the magnitude of the challenge associated with the fending off of what is now, arguably, the most formidable challenge to the stability of the country’s education system is, for the most part, the fault of those who ‘run things’. They would argue that the system has failed to recognize (or, perhaps, to properly understand) the ‘connect’ between the education system and the wider society and to recognize that the best way to fend off the menace of violence in schools is to establish closer, more practical linkages with the wider society, more particularly with parents and other critical societal connections. Put differently, the negative/harmful influences have ‘jumped in’ and, in many instances, sometimes have clearly seized the upper hand.
In truth, violence involving schoolchildren is, in a host of instances, no longer simply in-school, schoolyard scuffles. They are all too frequently pitched brawls that extend themselves beyond the jurisdiction of the schools, themselves, involving outside reinforcements and, increasingly frequently, these days, becoming matters for the police. There exists no persuasive evidence that, up to this time, the Ministry of Education has made a decisive/effective intervention to remedy the scourge of violence involving schoolchildren. Its responses, all too frequently, are wide off the mark… assertive-sounding reprimands and promises to implement measures that never materialize. There can hardly be more effective ways of ‘connecting’ the education system to the community than through effective Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA). These, in much of the state school system, exist largely in name only.
Truth be told, the Ministry of Education never really seemed to treat the PTA as though it recognizes the importance of its role. It appears not to recognize (or perhaps to acknowledge) that functioning PTAs are, in effect, by far the strongest link between the school and the home. The PTA represents an indispensable mechanism for the creation of a robust in-school management regime.
At a time when in-school violence poses a serious threat to the very stability of the education system, it is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education to work with parents to strengthen a system that is worryingly fragile, and in some instances, altogether non-existent. Here it has to be said there has existed, up to this time, a disposition of foot-dragging (indifference?) on the Ministry’s part on what now appears to be a full-blown crisis. The move to begin the testing of the Ministry’s violence-in-schools policy only after yet another surge of incidents, one of which resulted in what we are told was a serious injury, is not the kind of underperformance that is pleasing at this juncture.
