Cynthia P. Cooke, Contributor

Much is being said today about violence in schools. Firstly, we must accept the fact that many of our students are exposed to violence. It is the culture of their environment that the response to and resolution of all conflicts, disputes, disagreements and whatever makes you angry or merely upset, is violence. Violence is used to maintain discipline; to establish hierarchy and to control. Many of our students are, therefore, predisposed to violence.

Many of those who are engaged in violence in schools are boys in grade 11. The incidents of violence are usually during the second or Easter term. This is when SBAs (school-based assessments) are due. Some schools have mock examinations during that period and the examination pressure is on. Many of these boys are not prepared.

Want to do well

At this time of year, the teachers are stepping up the pressure and talking about examinations constantly; the parents are doing the same and the students realise that the rest of their life now depends on what they do in the next few weeks. They are not prepared for this. They want to do well and realise they have not been doing enough work. Many try to do something and become frustrated when they do not succeed.

Everything that happens now is likely to provide a condition to stimulate the violent behaviour.

What must we then do in our schools? A good way to start is to make surethat the student is at the centre of all our decisions. We must make sure that the students who make the school their home (many do not want to go home in the evenings) are provided with an atmosphere that we feel is homely. We must find a way to expose our children to activities which force behaviour associated with a gentle society - the theatre, museums, trips around the country.

Although the welfare of every student must be the concern of the school, if what is good for the one is not good for the many, then we must separate the one from the many. A facility must be found to put our students, who for whatever the reason, must be removed from the school. That facility must have no resemblance to a prison. It must be a school staffed with experts in psychology with teaching ability. The procedure whereby students are suspended for 10 days and then the board investigates, etc., must be removed from the schools. A special Schools' Court should be designed to hear these cases and make recommendations and dictate sanctions.

School boards are made up of volunteers. Many of our schools now have so many disciplinary cases that it would need a full-time board to deal with them all. It also takes up much of the time of the staff to prepare these cases for the board. Hence, time that should be spent with the vast majority of the students who are well-behaved, is given to these miscreants.

The media also have a role to play. Too often, the students only see their school in the media on the front page or on television, when it is about something bad. This only serves to traumatise the students. This becomes even more of an issue, when they know the same thing is happening at their friend's school and it is not mentioned in the media or it is mentioned as 'a prominent high school'.

Need to pray

Finally, we need to pray for our grade 11 students. We need to pray for the increasing number of girls who feel that suicide is the answer; for the students who do not have a place at home and who need to stay at school in order to study; for the students who are tossed around by their parents from one home to another; for those who lose their parents during this time; for those who have to chose between working and study, between caring for their younger sibling and study, between carrying a gun and study; for those who have to go under the bed at night so that they can shut out the noise of the guns and study, and for those who have parents who really do not understand that their child's dream is far bigger than anything they can imagine, and hence provide little support.

This is my answer to the problem, based on my 32 years of teaching.