To plead that children have been inculcated by their home and family environments into acting with disregard for law and humanity is unacceptable.
The unacceptable behaviour models so easily viewed through TV and the internet and the effects on children should not be seen as an impediment for teachers, who should be able to work out ways of cancelling out those patterns of behaviour and conduct no matter how strongly they are imprinted on a child.
In the five hours a day and the 100-odd days that they have contact with those children each year, teachers should be able to rehabilitate their charges, some of whom only attend a fraction of the allocated time.
Teachers should be able to instil practices which will negate the influences of any underlying criminal modelling in our communities. They should be able to eradicate negative and anti-social attitudes which are fostered by the home environment.
Should a 10-year-old boy, in describing his aspirations, appear as one that will have him incarcerated in prison like his gang member idols, then his teacher should be able to change that view of the future and ensure that he becomes a responsible and law-abiding adult.
If a child sees nothing wrong with relating how his mother is beaten up by her partner who objects to the fact that there is no steak in the fridge then a teacher should be able to expose the inhumanity of such actions, and have the child become a loving and caring adult.
If a child engages in physical bullying because he has suffered physical abuse from adults, then a teacher is expected to erase those attitudes and replace them with non-violent perspectives.
In many similar situations teachers are failing to correct and remedy the ills of society, and that is just not good, especially as the Minister has stipulated that schools and their teachers must have programmes which inculcate acceptable attitudes and behaviours into their students, which will include children of a failing sector of our society.
ROBIN SHEPHERD
Pamapuria
