It is time we saved our children from burning schools and scorched future

The month of July 2016 has seen more schools torched by student arsonists than at any time in our history as a nation. A spirit of pyromania has possessed some of our boys as they go about burning schools as if it were child play.

They seem to think they can burn their problems and grievances away, and the ashes will give them the relief they seek. How deluded are these children of ours, and they are children because virtually all of them are 18 years old and below.

These young pyromaniacs are totally misled young people, who mistakenly think they are all grown up and know it all, and yet they have fallen victim to faceless manipulation by some of the worst elements in our societies.

These are individuals and groups that believe it is not only ok but even a right to cheat in exams, not withstanding that continuously doing so devalues every exam, and therefore the long term outcome is exams that are completely useless to those who take them.

They are the same individuals and groups that have become cartels controlling the education sector in every way, and see the reforms being implemented by the Cabinet Secretary for Education as doomsday come too soon.

CLOSURE OF SCHOOLS

Their intentions are clear, create a crisis of burning schools that will precipitate the early closure of schools. This will in turn create political pressure to end the reforms, and life will resume in the final term with the status quo, except for the hapless students who burnt down their schools and are probably spending the next few years of their lives in jail.

It is therefore saddening when a teachers’ union and a leading opposition leader call for exactly this outcome. Are they aware they are playing to the script of the cartels against education sector reforms? Have they chosen to reward the impunity shown by pyromaniac students and their shadowy puppeteers?
Have they thought through the consequences of their words, and what would happen if schools were to be closed because of what is going on now.

That many more schools would get burned down in the future, because it would be clear there are no consequences and any aggrieved students would be able to set their schools on fire without worrying about paying the price.

Moreover, as a society, should we not be deeply concerned that we now have in our homes and midst thousands of young people who have learned how to burn down buildings as an expression of grievance? So what happens when as parents we cross the young pyromaniac in our homes?

COMMUNITIES IN DANGER

Will he not set our homes on fire too in rage? Is that young fellow with a taste for arson not an active danger to our families? In fact, given that some of these young arsonists now have “experience” in burning down buildings when enraged, our communities are in potential danger.

Therefore to protect our schools, homes and communities, it is imperative the children who burnt down schools face the consequences.

They need to understand the seriousness of their crime. My proposal however is that instead of jailing them and possibly turning many of them into hardened criminals in the future, they should instead be sentenced to rebuilding the very schools they burned down, and doing the very exams they were dodging — tough love rather than jail time.

This is because it is important to keep in mind the young pyromaniacs are both perpetrators and victims.
They are victims of the shadowy cartels that have organised these fires, whose identities need to be investigated and also brought to book.

It will be most unfair to punish the students who were manipulated and let the adult manipulators behind the scenes get away with their crimes.

Therefore even more efforts should be made to unmask these individuals, so that as poor young people have the rest of their lives destroyed, the adults behind the scenes also pay a similar price.

At the heart of all this is hollowing out of values and civic virtue from our society. If the adults had a strong foundation in values and civic virtue, they would not manipulate the students to burn down the schools.

So let us fireproof our schools and future by not only dealing with the immediate situation but also by ensuring we instill in our children and grown ups, a strong foundation of civic values and virtue. If we fail to do so, it is likely a scorched future awaits us as a society.

Sam Mwale is commentator on social and public policy issues.