MY WEEKEND: Bullying is unacceptable!

I was appalled when I read about the barbaric happenings at Alliance High, which is supposed to be one of the country’s best secondary schools.

This is an institution that houses some of the brightest children in the country, many of whom go on to become successful and influential members of society. It was, therefore, frightful to learn of the horrifying and inhumane acts meted out on Form One students by prefects and older students.

As I write this, one of the students cannot walk without the assistance of crutches, thanks to the bloody and merciless beating he got from his peers. In this esteemed school, it seems being in Form One is a crime and, to be properly inducted into it, you have to go through senseless flogging, lie on graves at 3am, “swim” on grass and wash toilets at 4am. I am speechless.

I am speechless not because I was unaware that monolisation (that is what we called it in my day) takes place in our secondary schools, rather, that it takes place in such a highly regarded institution, and in such barbaric proportions — and worse still, in the full glare of the school’s administration. How saddening. How demoralising.  

I went to an all-girls provincial boarding school. After reading this stomach-churning story about the criminal acts that have been going on at Alliance High, I have come to the realisation that my former school might as well have been a monastery. I mean, the worst that happened to Form Ones was being assigned the top bunker and waiting until the Form Threes and Fours had fetched bathing water before we could fetch ours.

From stories I have heard over the years, though, Alliance High is just one of the many schools in the country that have given their older students and prefects a free rein over the rest of the students. The students with no upper hand are theirs to lord it over. The fact is that this school is just one of the many in the country where students are tortured and mistreated by their fellow students. Teachers in these schools know about it, but they do nothing about it, after all, that is just how things are done, how the system has worked for years, for decades.

While discussing this story with a colleague on Thursday, she dismissed the issue, saying, “Boys will always be boys.”

I was appalled. Appalled because this kind of dismissive attitude is what fuels this kind of inhuman behaviour, what normalises it, yet there is nothing remotely normal about torturing a fellow student. I dare say that this kind of behaviour also reflects the kind of upbringing our children are getting, it shines a spotlight into the homes that these children come from. It turns the glare on their parents, and we must ask whether they have failed as their children’s primary care givers, after all, charity does begin at home.

And no, this kind of pervasive behaviour cannot be dismissed as a phase that young people go through. If your teen has dyed his hair green and taken to walking around with half his underwear popping out of his trousers, you could describe that as a phase, a phase that he will mercifully outgrow at some point. If your teen, however, has a habit of clobbering his schoolmates with a hockey stick or kicking them around for fun, this is not a phase, it is cause for great alarm. Because it is not normal.

Think about it. If these students, these minors, can beat a fellow schoolmate so viciously until they draw blood and cripple him in the process, what makes them any different from the thugs that have made a career out of terrorising hardworking Kenyans going about their business, maiming and killing them at will? It is only a matter of time before such beatings result in death, if it hasn’t happened already.

The fact is that we have a big problem in our hands, a gigantic problem that we have ignored for too long. We should be very afraid that these same bullies in our high schools are the future of this country, the same people that might one day occupy the highest offices in the land, the decision makers that will set the agenda for our schools and other institutions.

It is time that we cut off the head of this monster, sooner, rather than later.

[email protected]; Twitter: @cnjerius. The writer is the Daily Nation features editor