ABSOLUTE HOOLIGANISM

The storming of Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) Headquarters on Wednesday by daily paid workers, the declaration of war by a workers’ representative and the televised picture of a WASA worker jumping up on a desk in clear defiance of authority were dangerous signals to young people of the country that this was the way to show who was boss and/or how to get what you wanted. It was an outrageous display by adults, who must have known only too well that their disgusting behaviour before television cameras would have been witnessed and possibly negatively received by the nation’s schoolchildren and other young people. It was a clear dismissal of and challenge to authority.

Even worse, it represented a growing pattern of behaviour over the years by some groups of workers, who are prepared to defy security guards posted at their work places, storm compounds and offices, snake dance, and in some instances use threatening language, particularly when television cameras are trained upon them. That all of this would later be viewed in homes across the country, by the impressionable young, appears to count for nothing. Children mimic what they see adults do. This week, scores of students of the Belmont Junior Secondary School for example, in a frightening outburst, went on a rampage as teachers cowered either on the sidelines or in their classrooms. And despite efforts to play down the incident, many of the students were reportedly armed with cutlasses, knives and an assortment of lengths of iron snatched from the school’s metal working class.

It was an exhibition of absolute hoolganism, and the wonder is that the violent behaviour was not taken another step. In turn, several of those who were suspended from school, as a result of their actions, have implicitly refused to obey the suspension orders and defied school authorities by returning to classes. Admittedly, in a school with as large a student population as the Belmont Junior Secondary School it may be difficult for the Security Guards posted at the entry point to remember the faces of all of the students, and the errant children have slipped back into their classrooms, some perhaps through the breaching of the school’s fence. The purpose of discipline is defeated when the children who were punished, reportedly for their alleged roles in violent outburst are allowed to ignore the school’s implementing of its rules of conduct. Is there not a system in place, where in the event of children being suspended from school because, for example, of what transpired this week, that the security guards would be required to make spot checks of student ID cards? Or would the form teachers of the classes to which the children belong not be required to have roll call? And would not the roll call indicate the presence of students who had been suspended? Are the teachers afraid of the children?

In addition, is there not a morning and afternoon check made by the authorities at the centre to which the children were temporarily assigned to determine whether they were there? Would the parents of the affected students not think it their moral responsibility to monitor their children’s progress at the centre? The hooliganism which took place this week at the Belmont Junior Secondary School, and which has happened in varying degrees at all too many schools, must not be condoned. Despite the possibility of its being a reflection of years of mind conditioning through negative examples set by adults and others they held as role models, the incident should nonetheless be handled firmly. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education must involve itself, not simply in the approval of otherwise of the suspensions, but in putting forward strong action to be applied to parents of violently wayward children, who further allow their children to defy even suspension orders.