Nothing is more shocking than the violence of children. For any society, children are the embodiment of innocence, free from the wiles and lies of the corrupt, adult world they are yet to enter. Not surprisingly, the murder of a school teacher by a 15-year-old boy in Chennai who was angry at being reprimanded for his poor performance in class has thrown up deeply disquieting questions on parenting, teaching, and social and cultural mores. By all accounts, the teacher did nothing beyond the ordinary routine. After the boy fared badly in the subject she taught, Hindi, she made notes in his school diary to draw the attention of his parents. Students in similar situations do tend to nurse a grudge against the teacher but, in this case, the boy went much further, planning the killing and waiting for an opportune moment to strike. Clearly, the murder was an extraordinary fallout of an everyday situation. What might otherwise have ended in a commonplace student prank against the teacher triggered a shocking, inexplicable act. This is what makes the task of guarding against the recurrence of such violence almost impossible.
Many factors are at play, some of them at larger societal levels that are not easily controllable. Blaming parenting is easy, but this is no more than a way of absolving the rest of society of all responsibility. There is nothing to suggest the boy was brought up in abnormal circumstances; all his siblings have done well for themselves. By locating the murder in the specificity of the circumstances, other problematic issues are brushed under the carpet. Of course, parents bear a greater share of the responsibility for the behaviour of their children, but bad parenting cannot explain all deviant behaviour. While several things are wrong with our education system, including the processes of examination and evaluation, these cannot be understood as major contributors to the violence in schools. Films and other forms of popular culture also have an impact on young minds, but then again, it would be simplistic to relate them directly to real-life violence. The fact is children do not occupy an innocent world of their own; they are very much a part of the nasty, adult universe. At one level, then, the teacher's murder is indicative of a collective failure of society — our schools cannot remain untouched when the world outside is not peaceful, fair and just. But we need also to pursue remedies at the school level itself, including counselling and other early warning systems that can help children cope with the stress and strain of learning.
This incident has happened in Chennai (The Hindu's headquarters), and in one of the upper middle class households (which happens to be The Hindu's stronghold in readership). Thinking of solutions, I would like to focus on the topic of how newspapers can influence the psyche of children/parents/teachers and the society. Let's think along these lines : How can a newspaper make children/parents/teachers/society interested in their articles, instead of them choosing TV, cinema and internet as their selected choice of news, reading and entertainment? How can a newspaper conduct periodic seminars and brainstorming sessions for parents and teachers to come together and discuss solutions? How can a newspaper influence the education patterns and policy of the government? How can a newspaper downplay insignificant events and focus more on community building? How can a newspaper provide/enable funds for NGO education initiatives? How can a newspaper empower teachers? Much can be done !
I strongly feel the education system should be reformed. Children can remain as epitome of innocence only if the amount of stress is lowered. The grading system should be in place. There should be periodic interaction between parents and teachers, not when a particular student fails. A good relationship between teachers and parents should be established. The biggest hindrance in building teacher-parent relationship is the population outburst. The number of students in a class should be controlled. It is our collective responsibility to make sure that such incidents doesn't recur. Good grief!!!
The children these days are growing very fast. They are becoming adults very fast. They learn very fast. The dare came from his own surroundings and environment in which the child grew after going from school.
The children these days are growing very fast. They are becoming adults very fast. They learn very fast. The dare came from his own surroundings and environment in which the child grew after going from school.
our medias,movies,gave training for violence. my dear parents, u don't teach your child that 'movies are hobbies' this will create dirty minds for them. .
Kids learn from the elders, they wanna act like grownups, they aspire to be grownups. There was a time when the films portrayed heroes as upright. MGR neither drank nor smoked on-screen. But these days, there is not a single film without a joint drinking scene. In fact the heroes must drink in order to prove themselves 'cool'. Villians and anti-social elements have become heroes. Think about its influence on the tender minds of the kids!
With all due respect and sympathy, the case is pretty simple - teacher reprimanded student; student killed teacher; student blames it on violent movies. The significant external forces in play here are the school, the parents, the education system, the student's friends and violent movies. From a solution perspective - albeit too simplistic: 1) All schools must have a more proactive and engaging moral and civics program and buttress the same with anonymous private counselling 2) Strict censorship rating on movies and enforcement of the same (PG-13, PG-17, etc) is required. 3) Parents need to wake up to reality - make the teenager your friend, encourage him or her to pursue a career of their choice, be the first line of defense on enforcing censorship at home 4) The education system needs the most reform among others - cut throat competition has led every two legged creature to be an engineer or a doctor, thus curbing aspirations to become an artist or a scientist at a very young age.
There is no other remedy to eradicate the present trend of violence in the minds of youth than inculcating the essence of Bhagavath gita from the very childhood stage. While parents of these days themselves do not believe the existence of God, how the children can have such qualities of having trust on God. Parents due to their higher educational status spare no time with the children in discussing ethical values of life. I asked a child a question, just a question 'Who is Rama?'. He bewildered, 'Rama? You mean the man who killed Ravana?' I was happy. Atleast he knew Rama. I asked him 'How do you know Rama?' He was quick in his answer 'Teacher asked me to write a sentence Rama killed Ravana into passive voice!' Where our culture moves to?
Schools should have guidance counsellors whose doors are always open and can identify students in trouble by evaluating sudden or consistent fall in grades. Weekly meeting between troubled students and the counsellors can help students vent out their feeling. Even mentorship programs wherein senior students(or house captains) are introduced to students can provide them with someone they can trust.
There is so much bla bla in your editorial. But I like your newspaper even if I disagree with some of its contents. May be you should have explained to your readers how it was in the past? Why there is so much brutality in the school now? In western countries regularly we learn that teachers are ill treated or harassed by students. We know the reason here: the weakness of parenting system there. But in India where we used to learn early "Mata , Pita, Guru .." why this sort of trouble? May be this is a consequence of opening the country to the world without rules? One thing is astonishing me how parents are able to give to their child every day 100 rupees?
Well ! I too agree with most of the reasons sited for such incidents. But relating our education system with this incident is not warranted. Here the issue is a boy killed someone with some grudge. its problem with the boy. If he were a worker and be faced similar situation with his collegue or owner, he might do the same. Certainly the issue is why he resorted to such extreme nature. Our education system has nothing to do with this.
I strongly feel that the present day media, especially the cinema and TV are mainly responsible for this kind of outrageous behaviour in children. Day in and day out they are exposed to all kinds of crimes which influence the young minds.Fear of strong punishment only should stop them at this stage.
While I do agree that many films are irresponsible in showing the adult world to children, there are excellent movies like "Dhoni" by Prakashraj that prompts the audience to take the education system seriously and work towards fixing the underlying deficiencies. What a sad conincidence - "Dhoni" just got released with a theme to fix exactly what happened in Chennai school.
A teacher has to be held in awe by the students. He/She should not be seen as someone who can be easily hit or attacked.The teacher should not have sweet words all the times or harsh words all the times. The teacher should try to be the mother or father that the child misses at home. Teachers should understand the family and backgrounds of their students. verall, our Society should not forget Gandhiji. All persons involved should Introspect, Act and Watch.
PS: Umamaheswari Teacher deserves our tributes in whatever ways possible.
The children of this generation are losing their innocence very early.The schools have just become a place where they go and get bookish knowledge.The grade that they score is taken as a benchmark and this is the basis on which they are judged.The parents too care just about the good grades of their children.They dont care how their children are scoring those grades.The basis of judgement of students on the basis of marks needs to be stops.Its time we give them knowledge not just about books but about the world. How to cope with this world where morality has totally degraded.The shows like Roadies which is very popular among children needs to be looked upon. What it teaches?Entertainment needs to be good not vulgar.The censorboard of our Nation needs to be responsible, it needs to see what to show the people and what not to. The movies show that hero is a Don.What will that teach our children?It's high time we need to make a change in order to stop such incidents.
The motivation behind the student's action needs to be studied. It could be the parents' abnormal reaction to the student's bad performance commented upon by the teacher. Or was there any prejudice on the part of the teacher while dealing with the shortcomings of the student. The parents are to be blamed in so far as not instilling in the student moral values and providing him with pocket money out of proportion to his needs. There is need for schools to engage qualified psychiatrists to study the distortions in behaviour of students and engage them and their parents in counselling. For all we know the family might have had a history of violent temperament which has been unwittingly passed on to the progeny. Surely the student would have had some role model in his mind while giving vent to his anger without thinking of the consequences of the unacceptable distortion in his behavior in society. The plight of the deceased teacher's family members is pathetic losing their beloved one.
Our Educational system needs a complete reform. They should not focus only on studies but other activities as well. Had the school encouraged the boy for the other talents that he had, he would not have taken this drastic step. The encouragement that he receives for other activities would have consoled him and made him feel better. Values also play an important part in the student. They mold them and discipline them. But it is sad that values related books are sleeping in the bookshelves. Parents on the other hand should regularly focus on their children and encourage them even if they had got one mark more than the previous one. The boy has told in the report that he watched Agneepath movie nearly 30 times. What were the parents doing at that time. More than the teacher or the father, it is the mother who knows every movement of her kid. It is hard to blame a mother because as a woman who knows what problems she might be facing in the family. I should blame both.
I do not fully agree with the edit. While all sections of the society have a responsibility, it is the parents of the boy, who are the most culpable. Inculcating values in the young minds is one of the most important aspects of parenting. From the reports, it appears that the young criminal has been spoilt by pampering. Value education is one of the very relevant suggestions and it needs to be part of the curriculum.
In order to give better education to their children most families
especially small families have both the parents earning leaving the
children at the mercy of TV and internet where they are not guided
properly as to what to watch and what not to watch. Children in joint
families have different things to do and have constant contact with
people with affection,love and understanding. The mother has more
influence in the family over boys or girls. She, and only She can
contribute to make the children better citizens. Either earn more and
ignore the children or provide them with love affection and
understanding which is most essential in their growing stage.
1. Teacher to Student ratio has to be increased several fold. Right
now we have one teacher handling multiple subjects and handling more
than 60 odd students. Controlling so many students is very
difficult, so teachers end up resorting to harsh punishments quite
often. Obviously, once a corporeal punishment is adopted, the system
is sending subliminal message saying that such violence is OK, consequently students end up learning violence. To recruit more
teachers, means more money. So education cess has to be increased to
meet such costs.
2. Violence depiction in visual media has to be censored strictly.
Showing multiple angles of a murder scene is not ART. One yardstick
to contain movie violence is, the per ca-pita crime rate in the
country and per capita crime scenes in movies should be equal.
Though movie certifications are given, it is not being strictly
enforced due to variety of reasons.
For the present incident we all are responsible equally. It is true that every student has his own level of understanding. If he is not performing well in the examinations either in a single subject or more than that, it is not his responsibility to perform well them in the next time. The teacher and the parents both should come together and talk about that not about the marks. I also want to question at our education system. It is good that student should have knowledge of all subjects but, if he is not good at any subject than we all try to have his focus on that one. His intelligence in other subjects or in a single subject is wasted. He should be encouraged by the education system (family and teachers) to make his future in that field in which he is good. This is the solution for stopping these types of events.
There are many factors that are to be considered. Look at the parents of today, both work, earn lakhs, join their kids in a corporate schools, that includes an AC bus service,laptops, interet,swiping in/out of ID cards!!It makes one wonder,have the parents joined their kids in school or in some research center!! I think its time, some corporate organisation starts a parenting class for parents at their workplace, because corporate sells for parents. But on a serious note, its time we bring back the old methods of teaching at schools, 8 periods a day, each period lasting for 45 mins, a PT(Play time),drawing and crafting period twice a week etc. Let the schools and parents realise, kids are kids after all. We want our kids to have a good school education that includes an overall development of the student, its only when you have an overall development our education is complete in every sense. Only when a kid explores all his skills, he realises what he truly wants to become
This dastardly act also an eye opener that not only students from
lower strata of society behave strangely, a boy from a respectable
family enjoying good pocket money who does not entertain friends can
also be adverse person.More over he has not escaped from the crime
fully knowing the consequences he has to face. I am monitoring my son
who is in EIGHT STD in a well established CBSE School in South
Chennai both by attending PARENT-TEACHER MEETINGS as well as seeing
Report cards.I have observed the teachers never admonish the PUPILS
but presenting facts why and how to excel in studies which enable my
son to cope up his negative side, now he is on better side and we
engage tut ions especially maths. This is very clear that most people
observe Media influences, but my son is viewing all the program's in
our presence only.My sympathies for the family and the institution
that lost a valuable teacher.
M sorry to say but I am able to find out any solution for such worst situation of moral degradation.. Eventually I think that movies are one of many reason for such activities.. If not dealt carefully such events would have more deeper effect on pious relation of Student and Teacher.. Feeling so sad for Teacher and Her family. May all of them stay in peace.
The editorial aptly highlights a range of factors that might have contributed to the shocking incident but stops short of suggesting any remedial measures to prevent any recurrence of such incidents in future. Or perhaps, as the editorial broadly hints, any simplistic remedy is difficult to prescribe. However I would like to suggest that it’s high time our schools and colleges started thinking in terms of incorporating what is sometimes referred to as a 360 degree feedback mechanism where not just faculty but students are also given an opportunity to offer feedback about the teachers. The present incident is also a consequence of the absence of a mechanism which can serve as an outlet for the pent up emotions and anger of the students. A feedback mechanism will effectively allow the students to register their protest and anger which can be used to track signs of aberrant behavior among students thus prompting the authorities to take suitable action, counseling being one of them.
Its very distressing to know that a child of today's world cannot
endure criticism. The outcome of this humiliation is traumatizing.
What makes a child even think of taking such extreme actions! Its not
the parenthood or the society which needs to be blamed alone, but also
the conditions and the environment the child is raised nowadays. Not
having to spend quality time with parents and grand parents and with
talks of good values and principles just disappearing away, child is
brought up in conditions where he is just witnessing the harsh
realities of life- crime corruption and killing. Moved by such
incidents around, he takes no time to apply it in his own life,
unaware of the consequences it might lead to. It is our responsibility
to guide our young minds in the right direction, telling them the
difference between the good and the evil, and how to lead a
respectable life. And all this can be easily achieved by first
teaching the child- the meaning of love.
The influence of politics and cinema in Tamil Nadu has always been
overt. In the past two decades, it has been even more pronounced. The
public space, the intellectual space and every other space is now
dominated by politics and cinema. What passes for values, morals and
ethics in day to day life in this state and in this city is
horrifying. The people in this city practise self pity, victimhood,
aggressive response even to slight provocation, righteous indignation,
vigilantism, general heroism and hypocritical socialism on a daily
basis. Politics and cinema reinforce this as appropriate behaviour.
Television channels glorify hypocrisy as a way of life. Incidents such
as the killing of a doctor and this murder in the classroom in the
name of righting a wrong will not subside if we as citizens do not
take appropriate action at home and in public spaces.
Ofcourse,indignant response from us will not help but urgent action is
required to arrest this heart rending deterioration in culture.
Parents are more responsible than the school or society. Just watch the small screen and you will find late night shows broadcast at all times. The government should step in and censor screening of violent shows during daytime. It is a sad truth that children miss parents love and affection when both parents work
In movies they show many things. Why blame movies all the times. It's just a part of entertainment and not to be taken seriously. Coming to education the boy must have spoken to his parents and tried to find a solution rather than showing hatered towards a teacher. the teacher was just doing her bit and the boy reacted to this in the opposite way not knowing that his teacher wanted him to take studies seriously. no teacher would like to see their children performing bad.
To quote from your editorial “they are very much a part of the nasty, adult universe" speak for itself. Need for counseling and early warning systems are quite vital and it will take reasonable time to get implemented .Needless to say that every school should have a counsellor. At the same time can't we do the bare minimum of hearing the children after school? Every parent need not be professional counselors. But certainly they are good enough to tackle the issues if noticed in the budding stage as they know their child better than anybody.
Quality education, Quantity education & Socialy inclusive education are three diffrent classes/patterns of education. Each has it's own merit & limitation. Yet in school education we are bent on creating a hybrid of all three simultaneously. Compared to a decade back the children of today are vastly exposed to a plethora of information good & bad.Taking their mind away from the bad requires special effort. Expecting this from school teacher or counciller is being too simplistick. As I have said which hat should the teacher wear? Quality,quantity or Inclusivity? The end result is the teacher as well as the student has to remain satsfied with 33 percent each. And the irony is that we call them failure because they have earned 33 percent only. My sympathies are both with the family of teacher as well as student.
"At one level, then, the teacher's murder is indicative of a collective failure of society" - very well put . But what has happened is , in the name of "progress" we have comlicated simple , effective systems which have worked well. Back to simplicity is the need of the day - smaller schools, smaller classes , harmonious relationship between parensts ,teachers and students . Schools / Universities have become "factories" churning out graduates in search of ever evasive rainbow dreams - quantity and NOT quality is ruling roost ...educational institutions must do some deep soul searching and understand the "Dharma" of educating the younger generation and not make them in to automatons reacting to the divergent scenery unfolding in front of them from a variety of sources - be it TV / movies/ media ... may wisdom prevail over these educators who run schools, parents who admit their children to these schools and children who should make the most of it and become glorious individuals.
Nowadays with the exposure of internet we have violent,sexual and plethora of other live stream which can be reckoned as disturbing for children if we go by their tender age;but to blame internet for this sordid state of affairs is just a tip of iceberg for this deep rooted problem .Most important factors are lack of ethics and ethos instilled in offspring ,exposure to bad acts of society,family pressure to excel in examination ,flawed education system,some time lack of values in parents themselves.Now what is a way out? Certainly it is complex question which requires whole lot of reforms right from pedagogy up to legislative level.A society which has been in constant exposure to value neutral things like internet and other technical advancement must be regulated otherwise it grow like Frankenstein monster and devour whole society.
Movies do have a great impact on children. Not being biased but i have watched various south indian movies and they show lot of violence and aggression.(this is what people likes). Howsoever this is also the trend in bollywood making hindi versions of these movies.film certification board need to regulate such violences in the movies otherwise society will have to face the consequences.."I am not a shahrukh fan."
I was a school student not very long ago. I know what it feels like to be a student. I have been influenced by the movies and such but never did it turn into violence. I have also been a classmate to certain students who had the tendency to be violent. All of them seemed not to have a strong parent who would show them the right path. Over that they thought they were rebellious when they bunked the classes and smoked when they were in 8th standard. As you said parents alone are not to blame here. Everyone in the society must take blame. These kids had friends who were much older and were involved in rowdy activities. Naturally these kids also did the same thing in school. Bullying others, getting into fights and other sort of things. Having seen all this first hand, I fully agree to your suggestion that every school must have a counsellor who is trained and sensitive towards such issue. Punishment alone cannot solve this problem but it will only make it worse as I have seen it personally.
''The leaders of all political parties including the ruling party should pass a condolence resolution in the sate assembly and all of them should vote for the full financial support for her two children till the they become qualified to be doctors ae per wishes of the mother.The teachers in the state should see that the children are trained properly to achieve that distinction. In the famous Tamil film "Nayagan" by Manirathnam,a boy murdering a man in south and turned in Mumbai as a hero Nayagan.The best scene in that film was when the grand son asks him "Are you good man or a bad man?",the Nayagan replies "I do not know myself."If the films are to be blamed for this violence,then the children would also change and regret their deeds.
Perhaps this is not the first time,such aberrations in the behaviour of the children have come to light all over the world.What is pathetic is the fact that the teacher in this case is the victim.While it is true that the entire society should take responsibility for this kind of behaviour among young children,influence of cinema especially bad cinema cannot be undermined on the young minds.Censor boards should note this incident and take appropriate action against any cinema glorifying violence and vengeful acts.Parents should be extremely careful in showing movies to the children and it is their prime duty towards their wards that they grow up in a mentally healthy atmosphere at home.Many parents fail in their duty and that is not simplifying but hard fact.Parents cannot and should not expect present day schools to give importance to moral education;let us accept it as every body expects schools exist for only academic excellence!Let us save the teachers,for God'ssake
the parents of the boy are responsible for this dastardly act.
they should have seen the diary regularly and should have taken action when the boy was weak in some subjects. even after remarks more than ten times by the teacher,no action might not have been taken by the parents.
this is a warning for all parents.
You are absolutely right in your analysis but have given no concrete suggestions to curb such future happenings. to my mind, i have taught for 36 years, the current mess is the outcome of our society's over indulgence in competitive doings in all fields. While failures are an integral parts of our lives no section of the society, from parents to school to society at large ever teaches our youngsters how to cope with failures. hence the chaos.
It is rightly said that films and other allied culture or parenting cannot be directly held responsible for such deviant behaviour of children. Such dastardly acts show presence of anger, thoughtlessness about others like the teacher, the parents etc and about the morality .Whether we believe in God or not, we have to believe in a standard of morality wherein violence and hatred are to be eliminated.Nothing deters some , but a moral education and periodical counselling will have good effects. Our governments are eager to give sex education to innocent school children, but do not care to offer a good moral education to teach, non-violence, humility, respect towards elders and teachers, the need for truth and justice in dealings etc. We hope the Govt. will lok into these aspects
Agree with the view as stated: "Blaming parenting is easy, but this is no more than a way of absolving the rest of society of all responsibility." However the same society has not had produced a 15-year old boy student murderer so far. Every student has had the same societal exposure. Why would one turn so violent? The disproportionate share of responsibility is with his parents. Even if they didn't say much, or interact much with him, that too is a factor. I would not be surprised if one of the adults in the family had cursed the teacher as a mistaken show of support and love for their child. Parents must learn to accept tough love from a teacher. If there are more parents like this boy's, then we surely have a societal issue to worry about.
This is one of most shocking incidents heard or witnessed in my life. Though there is no remedy to what happened because the damage done is irreversible, schools should review their policy procedures in order to ensure the safety of the teachers and other staff members. Morality and discipline take the front seat compared to the education itself, even if it is the very purpose of schools, colleges and universities.
In my opinion, a law should be passed that prevent students carrying dangerous weapons like guns, daggers, knives, etc.
While students do need to be counselled to respect teachers, it is far
too often that teachers need that very same training and counselling as
well. Teachers often are not sensitive to their students' needs. While
there are many good teachers, there are many who are biased, and harass
the students. Furthermore, the teaching of Hindi has often been done in
a very harsh and unpleasant manner adding insult to injury.
In the School curriculum, a period is assigned for teaching morals and
ethics and it is termed as Value Education period.It is time that we
all woke up to see it !
Well i'm completely agreeing on whatever you have written!! It's a common failure for all of us!! The boy should must have been indulged in illegal activities,plus exposure to filmy world specially deep-rooted brutal movies that are coming in these days!! These type of things should be avoided because our children are the basic root of society!! If root is getting ruined then seriously doomsday is nearer to us!!
People go violent when they don't know how else to respond. Schools
should equip youngsters with a repertoire of ways in which to deliver
a non-violent punch. For example, if they are good with words, they
can deliver a verbal knock-out and feel satisfied that they have
dealt with the situation effectively.
we need to introduce phychiatric counselling within the school premises for sure. Helping the students emotionally cope with the expectations of the outside world is a must.
This act, that too from a 15-year old boy, forces us to find out where we are failing.. This article successfully mentioned almost all the possible reasons.. I disagree with the statement - "Films......have an impact....., but it would be simplistic to relate them directly to real-life violence." We know our country and its craze towards cinemas.. Films, most of which are demonstrating violence in the big screen, are contributing equally in child's behavior as parenting, if not more.. Not an exaggeration !! Accept the fact that movies have greater impact than what we think it do.. It is clearly visible nowadays even in our own homes.. New age parents should start educating their children on how to keep the movies out of their mind.. If we fail to do so, we will be heading towards a worse scenario which any human cannot even comprehend..
Please Email the Editor