A day after the gruesome murder of Class 8 student G. Baskaran in his classroom at the Government Boys Higher Secondary School in Pandalgudi, the Virudhunagar education department has decided to offer counselling and support to the students of the school who might be affected by the incident.
“Since the incident happened on the school premises, we want to offer support to the students and have them talk to a counsellor as they feel traumatised by what has happened. A mobile counselling unit will be stationed at the school on Monday and a counsellor will be available through the day,” said Chief Educational Officer V. Jeyakumar. At present, there are 10 such mobile counselling vans which operate across 32 districts. “Virudhunagar, Madurai and Theni have one mobile counselling unit which stays in each district for a month,” Mr. Jeyakumar said.
The incident has also raised questions about the need to identify children with issues and counsel them appropriately at the right time.
The accused in the murder, who was a Plus One dropout of the same school, was described by his teachers as an introvert who drew graphic and violent images on his notebooks.
‘Look beyond lessons’“There needs to be an onus on the educational system and on the society in identifying and helping such children. Effort has to be taken by teachers to look beyond the daily lessons and syllabus to identify if the children are affected or disturbed by something,” said Dheep, chairman of TopKids, youth/child guidance and counselling centre.
“Violent videogames which convey sublime messages of ‘killing’ or ‘destroying’ people who oppose has contributed in making children these days angry and demanding. The exposure to graphic themes in media and popular culture has led to the concepts of right and wrong blurring for the children,” Dr. Dheep added.
While institutions such as TOPKIDS conduct free counselling sessions at schools in the southern districts, there are very few schools which have a full-time counsellor on campus. “For government schools, the only access to counsellors is sometimes only available through such mobile counselling units,” a teacher working in a city school here said.
