0f child rights and strikes

Freedom Mutanda
ONE philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, famously wrote that a man is born free but everywhere he goes, he is in chains.
Today, the rights movement is a billion-dollar industry that spawns thousands of non-governmental organizations. As a lobby group, the rights movement has tentacles all over the world; when it speaks, many people and their governments listen.

Some time back when I was at high school, my Religious and Moral Education teacher, Mrs Juliet Simango, defined the word “Freedom” to our class. She said it means responsibility. Almost three decades later, that definition still reverberates in my mind.

Now, students go on a rampage, all in the name of child rights, destroying property and muddying other people’s names. Recently, a well-known high school, Mutambara High School, a UMC-run institution, found itself in a war zone after some students took the law into their own hands and destroyed property worth thousands of dollars at a time schools are in a financial squeeze.

Their grievances: they wanted to watch a World Cup soccer match well after 10pm and that their cellular phones were confiscated by the deputy head; they said the latter demanded bribes to get their cellular phones back.

Rights and their consequences may spell disaster for our vibrant educational system if all stakeholders do not work as a team.

In June 1976, the world awoke after the Soweto children demanded their rights to be taught in a language of their choice, English rather than the Afrikaans language, which was deemed to be a language of the hated oppressor.

At that time, it was justifiable that the students had to go eyeball to eyeball with the authorities in defying government and school policy.

Ironically, English is not an indigenous language in South Africa and not by any stretch of the imagination.

That strike is indelible in the minds of every right-thinking purveyor of rights the world over. Some strikes that occur today where students openly defy authorities’ exhortations on keeping a strict moral code do not qualify to be compared with the Soweto march for justice.

Our constitution respects child rights and that should be commended for aligning our nation into the human rights respecting group of nations. Are we giving children freedom without responsibility if we allow them to gripe over issues affecting their well-being?

Spare the rod and spoil the brat appears to be too archaic? When reading the Bible, we take those verses that tally with our world view.

Anything else that says the opposite of the reality built in our world view has to be discarded. Human rights are there to serve many purposes, one of which is to empower mankind.

Are we empowering our children when we quake in our boots the moment a child passes by and does not greet us, yet he is our neighbour’s child? We must not. In the olden days, a child was born for the community and with that in mind any adult could give positive remonstrations to the child on behalf of the community.

We can’t allow our community to be defiled by ruinous children who take the right debate to another level, a level that may sound the death knell of us as a people of substance. I don’t think history will judge us justly if we do not mix rights with African ubuntu.

As parents, we send our children to school for them to work and deliver a better quality of life than the one we experienced. To hear that a child has crossed the line due to despicable deeds bordering on foolishness is like a sword piercing the parents’ hearts.

If a father went to school barefooted, he likes to clothe his child in warm clothes in these wintry conditions. He was a day scholar and he desperately wants his child to enjoy the comforts of a boarding facility. Then, the child claims human rights violations and in the process violates other people’s rights.

One wonders whether these students that demand the immediate removal of a head or his deputy have any morals. At law, an allegation has to be proved before one is said to be guilty.

Authorities have to send an unequivocal message to the students that freedom without responsibility is a phantom that leads to destruction.

We can’t allow foreign busybodies to kill our culture as we stand arms akimbo.

It is laudable to ban the caning of children as that practice truly belongs to the ice age. Of paramount importance is the need to look at the alternative to corporal punishment. What do we do to rein in an errant student, is the million-dollar question that cries for an answer at this juncture.

Granted, western psychologists and educationists have come up with voluminous data on the wherefores corporal punishment has to be discarded.

They claim aggressive behaviour is a net result of beating a child whether at home or at school. I hold no brief for such an analysis as it is based on empirical evidence. As Africans in general and Zimbabweans in particular, what research have we carried out on the best form of regulating behaviour in our students given that there is an old Shona adage, “Mugoni wepwere ndeasinayo.”

Those who followed an old TV series, 21 Jump Street, would testify that in the western world, teachers do not enjoy their profession largely as a result of the naughty students who take their rights to new heights or must we say new lows.

As a teacher teaches in front of the class, students are busy comparing notes and leering at the teacher as if she does not exist. Occasionally, students come with guns and spray bullets at fellow pupils as well as teachers.

Not surprisingly, hardly a year passes without the world hearing about a deranged student gunning down school mates in the so-called rich nations that have child rights in abundance.

The question is: Are we so much of copy cats to follow every right that the global rights campaigners ask us to implement?

There is a line we must draw and say enough is enough. We have made our stand and we can’t be pushed.

Some children have gone into overdrive inasfar as violating teachers’ rights is concerned. They don’t write work and openly show the teacher that they can’t care less on what she says.

Given the nature of some parents who feel that their children cannot be censured in any way, teachers are left with no room to manoeuvre.

They ignore the child yet dire consequences for the child would affect the national development.

It is abundantly clear that a child must be involved in his teaching/learning system. To that end, the government with its development partners availed textbooks and continue to monitor the development of education in Zimbabwe notwithstanding teachers’ complaints on inadequate remuneration.

These days thanks to the rights movement children use buses to go for sports. That is commendable. Long ago, lorry owners made a fortune transporting students to attend sports activities. Pupils were exposed to the elements, not to mention the very real chance of plunging into a fatal accident.

The core business of school is learning, NOT strikes.

Our forebears were unequivocal in their quest to have a morally upright child. Every adult in the community could chastise a child and that included administering corporal punishment on the child if it fails to toe the line. Teachers are in loco parentis when they are at school. They can’t use that infliction of pain on a kid unless it is supposed to be so.

This new generation of anarchists who masquerade as right-waving activists have to be told in no uncertain terms that freedom comes with responsibility. If we are not careful, we will see the growing dominance of student activism which will militantly try to make schools ungovernable.

For what purpose? One may venture to ask. For the simple reason that we are living in the last days and children are wont to disobey and defy authority.

Concerted efforts from all stakeholders in form of parents, teachers, the government, traditional leadership and school may benefit the disciplinary problems that ravage the education system.

Ultimately, it is the child who benefits when everyone wants the rights of the child to be respected. I am not saying corporal punishment is the panacea to child delinquency, far from it. However, it must not be completely erased from our statutes. Someone once said, tongue in cheek, prevention is better than cure.

Strikes by students disrupt the smooth flow of lesson delivery at any given school. Dialogue is the way forward if the student body feels someone feels that an issue is of major importance.

I have always maintained that fighting precedes truces yet these antagonists wasted their resources only to end at the negotiation table.

Therefore, why do students expend their efforts in striking without exhausting the negotiating stage?

Put into the right perspective, child rights are perfect platforms to announce to the world that we are on the same page with them inasfar as human rights are concerned.