JONATHAN JANSEN | What we got wrong with Milnerton High

I am sick and tired of political performance in South Africa. We dance, sing and protest before we think. The routines are now familiar. Something bad happens. Protesters show up with threatening behaviour. They shout and shame perceived wrongdoers long before the facts are in.

Rumour adds to the fog: the beaten boy was a cancer sufferer or he was a bully himself. To hell with due process, mob justice is in the house. Even if you saw the assault, says a dim-witted activist, you are guilty if you do not report it.

Party political clowns in red, green or blue dutifully show up, giving opportunism a bad name. The police respond with tear gas and/or rubber bullets. The crowds disperse. Eventually we all go home to wait for the next ‘crisis’ and the requisite performance.

And so it was at Milnerton High School last week. A grade 10 learner was brutally beaten by older boys, some of them members of the first team rugby squad, with sticks, hosepipes and belts. Eight boys were suspended pending a disciplinary hearing. Two appeared in juvenile court and were released to their parents, while the rest were freed on R2,000 bail to face criminal charges: ‘assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm’ is the legal language. Bullying is a misnomer here; this is criminal assault.

All of the intention was centred on the school and its leadership. I felt for the poor principal. He must have gone through hell as he heard the performers outside the gate baying for his blood. Nobody asked the question: whose children are they? What kind of parents reared such monsters? Where was the discipline in the home that would have taught these youngsters values like tolerance and respect, the dignity of fellow human beings and how violence degrades one’s humanity.

Still, for an effective resolution of such violent incidents all institutions must play their part, including police and counselling services. But for heaven’s sake, stop swooping down on schools as the problem.

We have a unit of analysis problem here, as we teach our education policy students. If you narrow your focus only to what the school did or did not do to deal with bullying, then the problem is insoluble. You have to widen the lens of observation to understand such brutality and that view must include the home.

Did these children witness the violent behaviour of parents or other family members? Does the father beat the mother? Are they victims of corporal punishment behind the high security walls of their homes? Keep widening that lens.

Since many of them are first-team rugby players, let’s ask this question of a third institution: sport. What values are they taught when facing 15 other men with bulging muscles. Right now one of our national players has been heavily fined for allegedly grabbing a competitor by his more delicate parts.

Not a day goes by in the province of Milnerton High where a child on the way to school is not exposed to threats or beatings and sometimes deadly gun violence. When pupils from one high school recently visited a university morphology lab they were shown different crania (skulls): they could all identify how one of these people died, the bullet hole in the skull.

So what were you expecting? That young people show up at school as Mahatmas and Mandelas? Wake up, man. Many of these children are versed in the arts of violence and sacking the principal or asking for a bullying policy hardly deals with root causes.

And why pick on Milnerton High? I know for a fact that there are scores of high schools that regularly experience violent acts visited on vulnerable learners, the ‘old Boys’ schools being the worst.

At one private school, a boy ended up in ICU, but thank goodness the assault was not filmed on someone’s cellphone, the cynic might say. When Milnerton happened, many principals were breathing a sigh of relief: rather them than us.

Of course schools like Milnerton have a role to play in mitigating the consequences of violence learnt through other institutions. There should be anti-bullying policies in place. Non-violent behaviour should be modelled by every teacher.

Speakers on the subject should appear regularly at assembly. Posters in corridors and classrooms should extol human values. Workshops should be mandatory on conflict resolution. Leadership should be present throughout the school especially in areas where negative behaviours fester; every principal knows were those spaces are on the school grounds. Punishment should be swift, and restorative justice must always be on the table for those willing to change their ways.

Believe it or not, schools actually exist to teach students the subject matter, not to monitor or change the behaviour of every learner who learnt the habits of fist over glove.

Still, for an effective resolution of such violent incidents all institutions must play their part, including police and counselling services. But for heaven’s sake, stop swooping down on schools as the problem.

I close with a challenge question to you parents: do you beat your children for wrongdoing? If so, please refrain from judging Milnerton High school for not doing enough. You have no right to speak.