Gurgaon School shooting incident gives us some restless moments to think about our millions of school-going teenagers. The alarm bell has begun ringing. Except bullying from the dead, not much is known behind such an extreme violent step by two boys against their classmate. Whether two youths throwing acid on a school girl near Nizamuddin Bridge in Delhi or killing at a remote village school in Madhya Pradesh or killing of a girl at Shantiniketan, violent behaviours from student fraternity are pouring in from every parts of the country, and more and more such incidents would come up if due efforts are not taken to nip the trend in the bud.
So, who are to be blamed for the arrival of American type violent culture among teenagers? Perhaps all of us – parents, teachers, friends and society – are responsible for making our young generation obstinate, aggressive and violent. Let us explore the angle of love, hate, vengeance and violent crimes among the young generation. Inherent genes, modern life style at home, consumer culture, stress to excel, TV soap operas, movies, etc., you can count many more. Also, many human development causes depend on the place of living, family background, upbringing, education, riches, social status and types of friends.
A father, for example, in half pants and a mother in a dress more revealing than concealing can be a matter of temptation to growing boys and girls within the forewalls of home. Or a father wielding gun at home is helping his boy or girl to learn violence at an early stage. Or a very busy and socialite mother paves the way for her young daughter to have an easy access to explore porn sites on the Internet in the loneliness of the house. Or a father having extra-marital affair can be an excuse for his son’s acts of omission and commission. Or a daily fight between the father and the mother can lead to depressing moments for young ones, which, in turn, fill their hearts with pent up emotions. And this pent up emotion would surely gush forth somewhere.
In a class of young boys and girls from different socio-economic set up, we can trace different attitudes, temperament, behaviours and manners. Some boys are born gentle; they can feel crush, yearn and weep for the intended girl but never think about harming her or others even if she loves someone else. Such holy type boys would always feel good for the girl, steal the occasional glance with care, try (or at least think about) to protect her, write eulogizing poems or sing melancholy sonnets or would pen epistle in the silence of the night. They can be replica of Ghalib’s line, khak ho jayenge hum unko khabar hone tak (I will turn to ashes till you would know my love for you) or will have the aesthetic feeling of WB Yeats who says, “A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love”. But this breed is rare in the era of liberalization and globalization.
Some, on other hand, are aggressive like Heathcliff, the hero of Emily Bronte’s novel of the same name, who likes to have his girl by hook or by crook. He shows macho mania to scare other competitors in the classroom for he knows beauty has thousand followers. He is bitter, bully and bad. And if there two such over sentimental suitors in a classroom, there are likely chances that fight between them is inevitable, which can be bloody at times. This breed needs urgent attention.
Some are meek and coward; they would like to love but would not gather the courage to say or talk or initiate love even while they are in their friends’ company. This breed can be dangerous in a sense that they could create confusion among his classmates, but rarely directly involved. He is a cajoler, not a fighter. This breed is too dangerous.
Crush comes to the teenagers as sudden encounter, which turns into a serious business if the focus is nursed long, even though the targeted girl or boy may not be known to what is going on inside a dozen hearts in his/her classroom. A boy was daggered to death six years ago in a small city in Bihar by his classmate simply because the killer had a feeling that the deceased committed the crime of loving the same girl that he loved. Much later, to his consternation, he knew the boy was innocent. Interestingly, the girl was totally unknown to the whole incident. In comparison to the yonder days when much of our crushes during school days came to an end silently, modern crush does create stories, sometimes violent ones.
Reciprocal crush is becoming a regular feature in classrooms whereby the young generation would love to be busy with, sometimes totally engrossed: a two-way affair in a classroom can be the focus of collective jealousy, and if an Iago happens to enter the arena, what follows is confusion, confrontation and crime if the affair is not severed or checked in time or comes to an end naturally. However, tripartite affair (involving a girl and two boys or vice verse) can be lethal. For example, two boys showing love for a single girl in all their talks post-school journey would surely result in long-term envy between them. And if both of them take it as challenge to win the girl, the consequences can be too grave to gauge. To modern day, cell-phone carrying teenagers, such trend comes via a negative competition generated because of cut-throat competition prevalent in the social environment where everyone is busy snatching away the benefits, riches, positions, status or name by intelligence, expertise or evil design or sometimes by proxy.
In a situation like one-girl-many-boys, problem becomes social in a locality or a law and order issue in school. Girls are at greater risk in such scenario if she is not interested in anyone of them while enmity among boys could rarely be seen till the girl focuses her attention on any single boy. In this typical scenario, a girl can be an object of collective boos and teases, or even violent attacks by pre-meditated group and would carry wrong name to her character as well even though she can be totally innocent. Such collective bullying exerts enormous impacts on a girl’s personality.
To some bullying is inherent in genes. According to a recent report by the Guardian, a team of international researchers has carried out a study and found a strong genetic influence on whether a child becomes a bully or a victim of bullying. The study has found an answer to one of the most intractable squabbles in family life that argumentative and disruptive children are born, not made. This may not be true in all societies, circumstances and situations, but it gives rise to a fresh debate.
Family riches add fuel to the fire, if not used properly. And if it is accompanied with dad’s power, it takes away the normal human fear from even the normal teenager’s mind. The son of a senior bureaucrat or a minister or high ranking police official will laugh at the legal barriers because his father talks about his power or access or approach at the dinner table almost daily. Not only it helps make a boy a bully, but also it takes away his natural human instinct to follow the law. Hence, instead of becoming a saviour like Big B of Shehenshah, he would prefer to be a rapist Raj Babbar of Insaaf ka Tarazu. Crime sneaks into classroom via this type of family boosts.
In schools, some boys pay the price for others’ sins. If a great majority in a classroom wants to be serious about studies, a few would not care at all. So, any meeting of the two breeds may give rise to uneasy confrontation. And the gentle, soft spoken, talented among the serious breed can be the target of teases, pushes and shoves and deliberate fights followed by group formation. All post-school fights are not only to show off the supremacy of individual groups, but also to ensconce the fear of one social class or caste group of students into the other one. Bhumihar group versus Yadava group fights, for example, are normal in schools in Bihar. But the group formation in elite schools of metro cities is based more on economic reality or locality or knowledge or ego factor than the caste consciousness.
Parental side is often partial, in this regard. It is true that even the best of parents fail to decipher the minds of their wards; some do know their unruly boys whose attitudes are the indicators of bad omen, and experience the trailers being enacted within the homely environment as well. They tend, in most of the cases, to ignore or keep silence or even side when confronted with a complaint from the neighbours or schools. Ignoring an evil deed does not mean discarding it. Rather the problems needs to be rooted out than the person as is the wont among parents who transgress all human limits at times just to show how strict they are and in the process help deviated minds go astray. Till certain age, teenagers must fear someone in the house like pedestrians fear to cross the road in Delhi these days lest they would be caught by Delhi Traffic Police. However, this rule can even be applied to sincere young boys and girls who have developed the sense of responsibility early in life.
Whether in school or homely environment, reward and fear are the two fundamentals that stimulate human actions, and more so when the age is tender. Among others, reward also includes occasional praises, motivational, close talk, and outings. Fear does not come via beating or shouting or scolding but by a symbolic seriousness in certain matters whereby a young mind is checked from committing wrong deeds he or she is supposed to perform. Fear among teenagers comes via respect and respect via true filial love. This rule applies to teachers, parents and caregivers. A close teachers-students or parents-siblings relations allow the young boys and girls to open up their hearts and thoughts; they can crack jokes with them but never forget to transgress the limit; they would laugh with them but never forget to cross the boundary that encroaches upon respect, and would even tell things that are hard to be elicited even by the veteran psychologists.
The first and best-known intervention to reduce bullying among school children was launched by Olweus in Norway and Sweden in the early 1980s. The interventions focus on three programme levels: school-wide interventions, classroom-level interventions and individual-level interventions. While our schools are to an extent try to follow the first two interventions, they totally ignore the third intervention completely, which calls for direct discussion with students identified as bullies and victims. Professional teachers and busy parents hardly get time or care about to have a man-to-man talk with the young boys and girls, and by the time they become serious it is often too late.
Moral values are something entirely missing from the best of schools in India albeit the country could boost of the finest tradition of character building in ancient times. Sticks were carried as a symbol to inculcate a superficial fear among young minds meant to stop them from sundry wrongdoings, not to scare and frighten. We need a very holistic approach to tackle the young mind growing up in the newly-found westernized culture of this country. This approach can be based on understanding the young minds and applying the interventions that Olweus proposed. However, we should not forget if some are the future Gandhis, Nehrus, Kalams and Bhabhas in our schools, a few can be Gawlis, Dawoods, and Veerappans as well. This latter breed needs urgent attention.
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