School managements cannot run away from their responsibility of providing and sustaining a safe and secure environment for children
Schools, by definition, are safe learning environments. That is their first duty — if they accomplish nothing else, they are duty-bound to provide safety to those who are given unto their care. A safe place to learn from each other.
It seems some schools deny this — or try to. I wonder if that would stand up to scrutiny. Parents have been asked to sign away this as part of the school admission process. But even if a parent signs on a paper that says the school is not responsible for safety it does not release a school from its primary responsibility. Children go to school to learn. They cannot learn in environments that are unsafe or riven with fear. If a school has teachers who intimidate or humiliate children in class, they are failing in their duty to provide a safe environment. If they have teachers who beat children on the pretext of teaching then they are merely bullying because they have power. This is abuse, not teaching. A school that allows this to happen on their premises is responsible.
This is no isolated incident. Children are beaten and abused in schools all over the country. This happens both in private sector schools and in Government schools. A school principal once told me, “The child knows it all, but the answer comes out only when he is slapped.” That horrific statement still reverberates. He was about to demonstrate that to me right there, when I chose to demonstrate another way of testing for learning. I do not know if I managed to change his mind that day, but I tried. This rot runs deep. Many parents too believe that slapping a child is part of an effective teacher's tool kit — in fact, some even respect teachers who do inflict this on children. There are others who claim that no harm was done to them even though they were slapped as children.
It is time that we held our schools responsible for raising standards of civility and citizenship rather than allowing them to sink to levels indicative of the lowest common multipliers of society. And this takes work.
The first is oversight. Everything that is done in every school must be supervised and checked by someone who has a different set of stakes in the system. Teachers are a check and balance on teachers, teachers manage students, administrators manage funds, auditors manage administrators and so on. It is up to every institution to set up their governance operations, but they must have a system that is in place, is operational, is tracked and is responsible for things going right at the school.
The second is participation. There must be reasonable participation from all stakeholders of the school. The school management committee set up is a great idea — but many rural schools suffer as parent members are illiterate and unable to contribute. Urban schools often see school parents as adversaries. Build constructive solutions to better participation — don't freeze just because there is a problem.
The third is education. learning and keeping up with the times is essential for parents. teachers and schools, not just students. We need to build room in school timetables to explore and understand school safety together. Schools need to work with students and parents to explain safe touch, for example. Or to role-play and show how there are alternatives to hurting a child to discipline and align them with others. Parental coaching sessions that help them support children are as essential as teachers being trained in — for instance — gender mainstreaming. A safe learning environment fosters growth, questioning and definitely allows for disagreement.