Arson cases in secondary schools have been on the rise this term.
In what seems like a well-orchestrated plot and is reminiscent of past horrific school fires, the agitated students are destroying anything in sight, piling financial burden on parents who are already weighed down by tough economic times.
These rampages have been blamed on a myriad of grievances that the students feel the administration has stubbornly turned a blind eye to.
Students have complained about the congested academic timetable occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic, poor diet and notorious teachers persistently picking quarrels with them.
The solutions of yesteryears cannot be a panacea to today's problems.
We cannot cane students when they have genuine reservations with the manner in which the country's Education ministry is being run, reservations which parents have refused to raise because they are too busy to listen to their children.
Parents have failed their children.
They have relegated their roles to paying school fees and not getting time to listen to their children.
During parents meetings, they approve every agenda put forward by the Boards of Management working in cahoots with a few parents, irrespective of whether they are exploitative or not.
If it's not about fee increment, it's about strategies to pass exams.
Parents are more concerned about their children joining university, no matter the method, than their health and psychological well being.
To them the end justifies the means.
Issues pertinent to the students are cast to the periphery.
We are setting the country's education sector up to terrible failure if we reintroduce corporal punishment to a generation that has not believed in it.
It will open room for a never-ending war that's going to pit teachers against the students.
No one wants teachers to be enemies of students.
It's detrimental to the core objective of education which is, to impart and develop knowledge.
Proponents of corporal punishment must be alive to the fact that schools can never be turned into concentration camps.
Freelance journalist and writer
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
