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SA schools 'breed violence'
19/07/2006 16:18 - (SA)
Durban - South Africa's education system has been blamed for school violence that has left one pupil dead and another with multiple skull fractures.
A sense of spirituality and humanity was lacking in South Africa's educational system, said a Durban-based anti-drug forum on Wednesday.
Teachers lacked empathy. The educational system needed to stop churning out workers, said forum chairperson Sam Pillay.
A 16-year-old boy died when he was taken off life-support machines after being injured in a fist-fight on the South Coast on Saturday.
In North West, a Rustenburg matric pupil had to undergo surgery on Wednesday after being assaulted by a fellow pupil on Monday, Beeld reported.
Need to develop personalities
Despite life-orientation programmes in schools, there were still pregnancies, suicides and violence, "and at alarming proportions too", said Pillay.
"Western countries are educating kids for careers and are forgetting that these are just children.
"They (Western society) are not engaging their hearts and minds. What about developing their personalities?"
Children loved attending school in India where pupils were taught basic yoga, about themselves, given guidance counselling and taught how to live at peace with other cultures, religions, and mindsets.
Use of these principles had encouraged 3 300 pupils to voluntarily attend classes at his drug rehabilitation centre in Chatsworth in the past year, he said.
The KwaZulu-Natal school attack was "a sad indictment of the values of society and the discipline in schools", added National Professional Teachers' Association of SA (Naptosa) president Dave Balt.
Decline in values
"Clearly, this is not a problem that can be solved by parents or teachers on their own.
"The problem clearly runs far deeper than that which happens in schools. It is a symptom of a decline in the values entrenched in society at large."
He blamed escalating violence in schools on, among other things, the influence of violence on television, easy accessibility to drugs in schools, an increase in the number of Aids orphans and child headed households, poverty and overcrowded classrooms.
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