The way we raise our children

2007-04-10 08:41

Jon Qwelane

Violence at our schools has reached very alarming proportions and, after the cold-blooded murder of a schoolboy by another during a game of dice late last year, it was just a matter of time before teachers themselves became casualties of the rampant lawlessness.

A young, newly-graduated teacher in KwaZulu-Natal has been stabbed to death as her back was turned to her class of young children while writing on the blackboard.

A senior pupil walked into her class and, without a word, began stabbing her in the back. When she turned to face him he plunged his dagger into her chest; when he was done the hapless teacher had 14 knife wounds, and she died on the scene.

She had no chance to defend herself, and the class was horrified and traumatised by the whole episode.

The pupil walked leisurely out of the classroom and then ran towards the school fence and scaled it, to escape from his pursuers.

Elsewhere in the same province two other teachers were abducted and murdered, and their bodies were buried in shallow graves near the scene of their butchery.

Various sources place the murder of the educators squarely at the door of two dominant teachers' unions, who have been feuding over their ideological differences for some time.

The way we raise our children

It is cold comfort, I suppose, that in both cases of murder the police have arrested some suspects; the lives of three budding professionals have been snuffed out forever, at a time when the country is crying out for teachers.

But why are our communities so violent? Why do we believe in solving our problems violently, seemingly unaware or uncaring that such violence exacerbates the problems?

I believe a great part of the solution will be in the way we raise our children at home.

There will never be a substitute for early grooming during the formative years: learning it all at mom's knee, where a child learns the difference between what is right and what is wrong; what to do and what not to do, and what to say and what not to say.

Such training, assuming the broader neighbourhood subscribes to such norms - it should, if its members were themselves so groomed - will translate into a flourishing of teenagers imbued with respect for themselves, which ought to extend to respect for other members of the community.

If we as adults have no respect for the rules and codes of normal human behaviour, and if we have no respect for the laws of the land, then we can hardly be surprised if our offspring turn out to be the sort of people they are.

Now let me bell the cat, and risk being roundly condemned as a "brainwashed" lackey.

Why is it that such unholy things as the schoolboy's murder in a Johannesburg school's playground, the assault on a teacher by a schoolboy in Mpumalanga, the public sex session by a schoolgirl and her male colleague on a desk during school hours in Krugersdorp, and the murders of teachers in KwaZulu-Natal happen only at black schools and are committed by blacks?

I am not holding up white society as a paragon of virtue, but we never hear of such grisly happenings in their schools. Never!

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