Harsh realities of teaching

The young boy being kicked and beaten by his principal at the Alberton high school will be assaulted many more times on South African television before the media and its salivating public have had their fill of this dramatic recorded attack.

The airing of the clip over and over again does not add new information, but it feeds our basest emotions of anger, disgust, and even the impulse for retaliation.

What the principal did was wrong, and you do not need the South African Schools Act to tell you that assaulting a child is a serious offence.

Before we climb on our high horses of self-righteousness, let us consider some uncomfortable facts.

There are thousands of teachers across this country who beat the children entrusted to their care every single day, and many more parents tell me brazenly at school or community workshops how they beat their children - using the most bizarre biblical references to back up their cruelty.

This is not the problem of one errant principal - this is the problem of a violent society that now teaches yet another generation of future adults that the way to resolve your problems is by beating those who inconvenience you.

A fired columnist wonders what he did wrong when he attacks one of the most senior editors in the country by saying that, in another time, she would have had a tyre placed around her neck for her criticism of a politician.

Day after day our most senior political leaders rant about opponents using the most vicious language conceivable. Our students take the cue, and across university campuses in the past few months we have witnessed violent behaviour. Before we dump on one principal, take a good look in the mirror.

Why would the principal of this school resort to such harsh and desperate measures? I think I have an idea.

Have you ever been in a school where children threaten teachers with the instruments of violence? Have you ever tried to teach and you can see the drug-crazed eyes of a tortured boy? Have you ever seen the anxiety of a woman teacher with one eye on the open door as she fears what might happen if she dares to challenge a juvenile gangster in her classroom?

Have you ever taught in places where you can literally hear the gunshots around and sometimes across the school grounds? Do you know how difficult it is in South Africa for a school principal or the governing body of a school to expel a disruptive student, even when that child is a routine offender who wrecks the lives of other children and the calmness required for classroom learning?

Now imagine you are the principal of a school in a former white, working class area on the southern outskirts of Johannesburg.

The white children had long left as black children dominated enrolments. The black youth coming to this school were those who routinely failed inside the township schools of Soweto and surrounds, or were pushed out because of their violent and disruptive behaviour.

They discover another chance inside a distant white school where the discipline quickly crumbles; the white principal leaves, having been threatened for requiring discipline from children who learnt quickly to use the race card to defend their reckless behaviour. Slowly but surely, both black and white pupils with high ambitions for a better life also leave, even if they can't afford it, and the school drowns in a sea of academic mediocrity and the constant threat of violence.

Desperate and at his wits' end, the principal falls back on the only medicine he knows - corporal punishment. And while beating other people's children is no lasting solution, it at least buys temporary relief for stressed teachers. In the pressure cooker of teaching, the beating offers some twisted relief and, importantly, gives the principal the (false) impression that he is still in control of his school.

Nobody has taught this principal the many other ways in which young people from traumatic environments can be disciplined. Few district officials have the knowledge to assist the principal to reorganise the school and its managerial routines so the critical mix of compassion and constraint are wisely administered.

I feel for the principal.