In re­spect of last week’s at­tempt (suc­cess­ful to a de­gree) to cause a shut­down of schools to gen­er­ate fric­tion and anger in the so­ci­ety, Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion, ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials, teach­ers, par­ents, et al, must now fo­cus on es­tab­lish­ing an an­ti-crime school en­vi­ron­ment.

The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for such an ef­fort cen­ters on the con­tin­u­ing dis­play of un­ac­cept­able be­hav­iours in schools by stu­dents. The fear must be that hav­ing es­tab­lished such pat­terns of be­hav­iours in schools, the stu­dents will then car­ry them in­to adult life.

Such a plan must al­so equip teach­ers with the train­ing re­quired to cope; since many of them have been threat­ened, beat­en, ig­nored and in sev­er­al cir­cum­stances, have no pow­er to con­trol un­ruly stu­dents. A suf­fi­cient core of pro­fes­sion­al coun­sel­lors has to be re­cruit­ed to deal with the fall­out from in­ci­dents.

All of us know that dan­ger­ous drugs are ped­alled in schools by stu­dents work­ing for drug deal­ers.

The ten­den­cy to bul­ly­ing must be con­front­ed to move the young away from neg­a­tive be­hav­iours which hard­en in­to crim­i­nal­i­ty when they leave school. An ab­solute­ly cen­tral part of any school re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme will be to en­hance the phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment for the se­cu­ri­ty of those with­in the walls and to keep the un­want­ed out.

Dif­fer­ing views have been ex­pressed on whether or not armed guards should be placed at schools to keep crim­i­nals away, even to pre­vent stu­dents from en­gag­ing in vi­o­lent be­hav­iours against each oth­er and teach­ers. That is a sub­ject mat­ter for dis­cus­sion and de­ci­sions.

The oth­er el­e­ment of the pro­gramme must place fo­cus on the pos­i­tive: that be­ing to cre­ate pos­i­tive en­vi­ron­ments for learn­ing and suc­cess­ful en­try in­to adult­hood. Young peo­ple are cap­tive in the school com­pound and ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. Freed from crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, stu­dents in school can be and should be pos­i­tive­ly nur­tured.

Such a pro­gramme can be a means to pre­vent neg­a­tive be­hav­iours and for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the young, cre­ation of in­sti­tu­tions of pos­i­tive so­cial­i­sa­tion and ed­u­ca­tion, and one in which hu­man and so­cial val­ues are in­cul­cat­ed in the na­tion’s youth.

Vi­tal­ly im­por­tant al­so is the re­shap­ing, even the mak­ing of dras­tic changes and ad­just­ments to the cur­ricu­lum as part of the pro­gramme of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. It’s worth re­peat­ing that large groups of stu­dents find lit­tle in­ter­est and val­ue in tra­di­tion­al gram­mar school-type sub­jects; they must be catered for.

It can­not be that young peo­ple spend the bet­ter part of their first 14 years of school life and emerge with­out pos­i­tive guid­ance, in­clud­ing aca­d­e­m­ic and tech­ni­cal learn­ing. Even worse would be to con­tin­ue to have large num­bers of youth dropout with­out the means to earn a liv­ing. Such young peo­ple of­ten nour­ish a grudge against the sys­tem and so­ci­ety, and so can­not fit in­to tra­di­tion­al work-life pat­terns.

Every group in so­ci­ety has a stake in en­sur­ing that all schools are pro­duc­tive and crime-free to serve the pur­pose of ed­u­cat­ing and so­cial­is­ing our young peo­ple.

The coun­try and all its peo­ples are los­ing the race to­wards a pro­duc­tive and peace­ful so­ci­ety in which young peo­ple can grow with­out neg­a­tive dis­trac­tions and so con­tribute to the watch­words of the na­tion: Dis­ci­pline, Pro­duc­tion and Tol­er­ance.

The pro­gramme that is ad­vo­cat­ed here is geared to­wards nur­tur­ing the present and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to pos­i­tive lives.