Violence has no place in education. It is with sadness that I read about the recent killing of a very young pupil at one of our schools in South Africa. My thoughts and sympathies go out to the school community that has experienced this tragic event. My sympathies also go out to the family of the pupil who lost his life.
Life is precious and no teacher, parent or pupil wants to experience loss of life in a school environment.
I realised in my 39 years of teaching that conflict between pupils should be avoided at all costs. For what it is worth, my experience has taught me that in a school situation certain precautions must be taken to secure sanctity of life.
When conflict occurs between pupils the school must act immediately. The conflict must immediately be brought to the attention of teachers and especially the principal so that the parties involved can be spoken to.
Pupils must report incidents of conflict in the class, on the playground and also in the community. Very often conflict among pupils happens outside the school. If not attended to immediately it can be brought into the school.
Teachers have a very important role to play besides their academic work. They have to teach pupils how to handle everyday conflict. Conflict will happen but we have to teach pupils to handle differences of opinion in a non-violent way.
We are preparing pupils for the outside world and in today’s SA we see lots of conflict.
Schools are especially aware of how violence can influence the manner in which pupils solve conflict among themselves. Teachers, parents and pupils must be in constant discussion as to how to solve conflict at schools.
The Education Department also plays an important role in seeing that the schools are provided with the necessary physical infrastructure, decent student-teacher ratio (I recommend 1:30) and sports infrastructure.
Most of our schools lack the above and this creates a situation where violence can so easily happen.
The discussion of how to stop violence in our schools must be taking place, in and outside schools – in our religious organisations, in extra-mural activities and on the sports fields.
We all have to roll up our sleeves to see that our schools are places where preach non-violence in solving our problems. Again we see the importance of teachers in nurturing citizens who can have a positive effect on the future life of South Africans.
* Brian Isaacs.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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