Schools and colleges have become the embodiment of township-style violence

Bullying, intimidation, sexual harassment or such other forms of violence in schools creates a hostile learning environment. These vices singularly and collectively often cause victims to bunk classes or develop hatred for school and ultimately drop out. This is a fact that school managers at all educational levels are familiar with, but often chicken out of confronting it head-on by tackling the problem of serial bullies in their schools perhaps fearing for their own lives. In the end, many public schools are the embodiment of township-style terrorism to the extent that many learners have come to believe that bullying is an acceptable culture in schools and that being bullied is the price of growing up and scholarship where the meek should naturally fall by the wayside.
Recently, I was contacted by a parent who sought to enquire about procedures to follow to file a charge against a male student who is terrorizing her daughter. The parent informed me that her daughter who is a learner at Oodi College of Applied Arts and Technology has on numerous occasions begged her to help report a case of threat to kill. The learner had told her mother that a fellow male student had at one point attempted to gain entry by force into her hostel room. The female learner had then reported the incident to the College security personnel.
It would appear that the security personnel summoned the young man and procedurally reprimanded him for his misconduct. Perhaps pissed off by the girl’s decision to report him to the security employees, the male student had afterward charged on the tame girl and told her point blank that he will stab her to death with a knife.
After the parent had narrated her tragic story to me, I immediately concluded that this was a criminal case of misconduct that falls within the remit of the operational responsibilities of the Botswana Police Service and accordingly so advised the shaken parent. I nevertheless promised her that I would check with the College authorities on how they could help her. After failing to get hold of the College management telephonically, I reckoned there was a teaching member of staff who I was familiar with and I proceeded to contact her so that she could advise me on who I could, on behalf of the traumatized mother, speak to about this tragically horrifying narrative.
At the end of my narration, the staff member concurred that this was a criminal case that should be handled by the police, further pointing out that if reported to the College management, it risk being dismissed as the ranting and rumbling of over-protective parents who have taken to complaining to school authorities as a pastime. The lecturer revealed that to the best of her knowledge, formal structures for lodging and handling complaints from learners and staff seem not to exist or that if ever they exist, they are not operational and or effective.
This is so because many female teaching staff members have been subjected to crass insults as well as what would naturally constitutes sexual harassment and have procedurally registered their complaints with the College management on many occasions but their queries were never formally investigated or addressed nor was any action taken against the abusive learners. The lecturer further confided in me that cases of male students making sexual comments and such other unwanted gestures of a sexual nature that are demeaning and humiliating to female employees are a common occurrence and that those who report such cases are often ignored by the College management as if to tell them to appreciate positive compliments from their young admirers or alternatively to ‘man up’ and deal with their ordeals on their own.
Certainly, vices such as bullying, intimidation and sexual harassment would forever remain an integral part of human life because they are difficult to banish. However, school or college management must act swiftly to work out measures to reduce incidences of bullying and such other gross misconduct with a view to making schools and colleges conducive for teaching and learning. At the moment, it cannot be said that there is a favourable environment for teaching and learning in schools, especially in high schools and technical colleges where a sizeable number of learners have become law unto themselves. As a result, many female teachers and lecturers are stressed, hyper anxious and emotionally troubled to the extent that they dislike their work and hate learners. Ultimately, most female teachers and lecturers dump the teaching profession to work in sweatshops in Europe culminating in the loss of skilled and highly experienced teachers. The end result of this tragic occurrence is poor educational output in schools.
In order to address this monumental challenge, the Ministry of Education and Skills Development must take the initiative to develop and produce a Student Handbook that provides information to learners on services available in schools, general school regulations and the rights and responsibilities of learners. Significantly, the Handbook should incorporate a standardized Disciplinary Code and Procedure for public schools and colleges ÔÇô that is if such a document is not already in place ÔÇô with a view to promoting the spirit of tolerance and respect for others and public property. The student code of conduct should spell out behaviour that is not acceptable and constitutes misconduct and how such misconduct shall be dealt with.
Whereas school managers as accounting officers are procedurally mandated to manage their staff and students in the interest of good order, schools must be guided by a central authority in constituting disciplinary structures whose purpose would be to regulate learners’ behaviour in order to secure the proper and orderly working of these learning institutions. The Student Handbook should then be availed to learners and parents or guardians so that all role players are equipped with the information that will make them strategic partners of the schools and colleges.
Head teachers and principals would then be mandated to ensure that designated disciplinary structures are functioning at all times and this shall constitute part of their annual performance contracts. School managers who score poorly on this performance area would be required to answer a charge of dereliction of duty. This initiative is intended to promote procedures that focus on increasing desirable behaviours rather than the present arrangement which seems to emphasize punishment wherein school heads seem to delight in the philosophy of management by screaming, shouting, swearing, kicking and threatening learners with expulsion.
Failure to move swiftly to introduce this critical reform will continue to render public schools hostile learning facilities where many a small Hitler are groomed and weaker learners are prepared into becoming low-esteemed, vulnerable citizens willing to be screwed willy-nilly.