Unrest: Allow students to release pent up pressure
Mwangi Macharia
Schools have now settled in for yet another action-packed year. With four terms to be covered within a calendar year, two seasons of national exams and a General Election, the amount of mental and physical demand on pupils, students and teachers will be unprecedented.
The new term comes soon after a previous one that was marked by rampant cases of strikes by learners and wanton destruction of school property.
The list of schools that went on the rampage in 2021 stretched from the lake to the sea.
Burning a dormitory is an act of communication. Cases of students leaving school and walking home are an act of communication.
The students are communicating something. We need to listen to them. Bottled up emotions, pent up anger and frustration from heavy workload seem to be taking their toll on the students. Our boarding secondary schools have been a damsel in distress.
Corporal punishment
Owing to the aforementioned demands, 2022 is likely to witness more cases of student indiscipline and unrest.
It is important for decision makers in the education sector in this country to have this in mind as they plan the calendar for the new year.
To stem the increasing cases of indiscipline in schools, leaders such as the Cabinet Secretaries of Education and Interior have times without number alluded to the reintroduction of corporal punishment.
While such archaic and retrogressive measures can only make the bad situation worse since violence begets violence, no one seems to have a solution to the worrying trend of indiscipline in schools.
Although there is no single solution to this challenge, unpacking the school year with a focus to reducing the mental and physical torture on learners may help alleviate cases of indiscipline this year.
Schools need to be intentional about running activities outside the classroom that will help students release the pent up stress resulting from unprecedented four terms covered in one calendar year.
It is the year where schools should be intentional about allowing students to watch football and other games more often than before.
It is the year students should be allowed to have an optional mid-term break after every five weeks.
Where circumstances allow, schools should borrow a leaf from Alliance High School where students were allowed to leave the school compound on Sundays and report back at a given time.
Based on the circumstances of each boarding school, enough out-of-class activities to allow students blow off some steam will go a long way in maintaining sanity. — The writer teaches at Strathmore University
