OCTOBER 16 — A schoolgirl was killed in a Petaling Jaya school two days ago. Two weeks ago, four schoolboys were involved in the rape of a 15-year-old junior in Alor Gajah.
Up the highway in Senawang, around the same time a 10-year-old died due to pressure on his neck, according to the autopsy.
Three months ago, Zara Qairina Mahathir succumbed to her injuries after being found hurt near her religious school’s hostel.
There are many grieving families in Malaysia today.
Yes, (education) minister
When it rains, it pours.
Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek is in the hotseat, a virtual human piñata for an angry nation.
Politics posits perception above reason. Just like how there are more than 30 ministers, each with portfolios affecting the economy but when there is a dip in the…ah, economy, the economy minister is blamed.
It’s in the word. Economy.
And now, violence in schools, over to the education minister.
Even if that is true, our schools’ malaise kicked off long before Fadhlina.
In 1989, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was education minister. In 2009, leader of Perikatan Nasional Muhyiddin Yassin held the job.
Any charge sheet against Fadhlina’s predecessors will be a page long, including Najib Razak and his father and his cousin Hishammuddin Hussein.
Though, Fadhlina does do herself in.
The minister this week orders online classes for city schools weeks before the SPM examinations to accommodate international leaders here for the Asean Summit. Schools sacrificed at the altar of politics, and examination preparations disrupted. The headmasters have no say because today as in the past, decisions are top down in Malaysia.
If the minister is high-handed with her power then do not be surprised if she’s a magnet for criticism.
Safe schools in safe hands
School management is suspect in Malaysia.
A school is a community, a society for its occupants, for a period of those students’ lives. Without proper autonomy, it is disingenuous to pin blame on headmasters for adverse social outcomes in their campuses.
There are no schools easy to run because they are overrun by adolescents. Students walk through the corridors, crack bad classroom jokes, share recess with their besties and experience anxiety without their smartphones.
Every child requires attention.
I am amazed that politicians and law enforcements are quick to summarise the PJ death, what it was and wasn’t. In a loud way, announcing they are clueless or too far removed from things to know.
There is literally nothing straightforward in school life.
School years are joyful and disorienting. Mixed feelings are certain. Mistakes are even more certain.
My best friend punched a boy in the face when he was 14, in our classroom. Would him being expelled or transferred made life better?
Was he at fault that the victim was proud he messed with his stationery and antagonised him for half an hour asking for a reaction, which he replied with his fist?
Or that the victim was expelled two years later allegedly for cutting up our English master’s tyres — all four of them?
Or that both of them met up 30 years later, mature, successful and hugged it out, meant all was well?
Schools, their administrators and the students in them, need consistent structure and process to navigate through daily developments.
It is not an exact science.
Which is why headmasters and teachers need a wide berth to get the job done. It is a thankless job.
A teacher needs the training, authority and encouragement to spot things out of place and to intervene with the necessary tact.
But above all, they need our trust. Accountability and transparency, certainly, but when it is just about fault-finding, and oversimplification of situations, do not be surprised that everybody worries more about how to not be involved, therefore ultimately never blamed for the whatever rather than try to do the right thing.
…enter parents on stage
But before all of the buck is passed to schools, understand that parents are ultimately responsible for their children. There is no comparison.
One manages general orderly learning through classroom sessions, oversees sports and co-curricular activities and exercises codified disciplinary sanctions, inside the confines of a compound.
The other brought these individuals out of the womb and into society, deciding what they eat, where they sleep and their life choices until they turn 18.
Teachers are assigned a limited responsibility for their students. They are often parents themselves. Children primarily rely on their parents to grow up.
Bad teachers have horrible memories which are turned into jokes at reunions. Bad parents give therapists a lifetime of clients.
To compare is insane.
There is also the other associated predicament, children dictate terms to parents, and get used to the idea they are the centre of the universe. Cliché, yet true.
When parents acquiesce to children to reduce tantrums or ensure their own peace of mind, whether with money or liberties, they create an environment where children feel entitled and bereft of personal responsibility over their own actions or inactions.
In denial is a follow up behaviour in parents. When they go along with their children regardless of moral property in the action, they then cover it up by denying the problem. Whatever it may be about, their own child can never be at fault.
The myth of overnight solutions
CCTVs for all boarding schools are on the way, along with retired soldiers and cops as wardens. Committees are being formed.
Parliamentary debates to ensue. Laws being reviewed. Time to teach more morals, they repeat. And the one that never ages, corporal punishment.
I am unsure what’s the correct phrase, is it to beat discipline into them or smash out evil thoughts from their not so little heads. Perhaps a bona fide institutionally verified exorcism to rid the demon out of the children.
If violence is the problem, I wonder if the answer might be to denounce violence rather than court it to provide us salvation.
There are no short fixes. If a child can be fixed by an adult screaming at him for an hour on weekdays, and two hours on the weekends, then them serial killers were only one irrational adult scolding away from a normal childhood and later the Nobel Peace Prize, I suppose.
The normal instructions from Putrajaya over decades have not really dealt with core issues which are localised.
What if the right voices inside the system do not get a chance to shape the system because it is overly institutionalised?
There are many headmistresses getting the balance right, along with their teachers, how about learning from them? I am very wary of experts who are not practitioners to tell them what — yes, myself included.
Empower the right people inside the system, based on qualifications and experience, and if necessary, bypass normal power structures. Give the headmasters the leeway to succeed, and allow independence.
But that is not even half the job. The parents have to take over and own the situation in their children’s lives. Even if they fail and then fail again.
Often, the failing is what gets across to the young people. That even when it is impossible to reason with them, those who love them the most keep trying despite setbacks.
Because when parents send their kids off to school, they have to ask themselves, have they done enough to make sure their kids are safe and unlikely to be victims.
They also have to ask themselves a split second before their child scampers off in the morning, have they done enough to make sure their kids are the type not to victimise others.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
