Indiscipline in Our Schools-‘’THE POINT NEWPWPER EDITORIAL 1ST SEPTEMBER 2011)’

Dearest level headed, patriotic and sincere readers, allow me to use this opportunity to make some clarifications and sound your genuine opinion on this week’s topic for discussion published on the editorial of The Point newspaper on Thursday 1st September, 2011.
The topic is very controversial particularly at school levels. However, we would want to divulge the topic disorderliness not at the school level but to give it a holistic view  in order to bring the author of “indiscipline in our schools!” to the bandwagon of the teachers and school administrations as a real life state of affairs in school system.
I do not know the author and I don’t understand if he is/was a trained teacher or educationist nor had basic knowledge in contemporary school supervision. I would still implore on Alfred Jarry to contribute on education matter more so education in depth which can only be accessed on no other newspapers in the country or in the sub region than THE DAILY NEWS newspaper on every Monday.
Readers, it would be necessary to make a detail justification of restraint and unruliness before we can point accusing finger to schools or to each other, and to know where to put the blame.
Discipline is viewed in many ways and these include;

1.  Discipline is viewed as the practice of training people to obey rules and order and punishing them if they do not, the control behavior or situation that results from the training.

2.   Discipline is seen as a method of training one’s mind or body of controlling his or her behavior or the way one lives and work etc.

3   Discipline is the ability to control oneself or to punish somebody for something they have done.
On the other hand, indiscipline is unenthusiastic or wrong side of discipline which is viewed as a lack of control in the deeds of a group of people.
The current global policies of series of rights of the child, human rights, rights of the girl child etc is not concealed to any sober, educated adult  in this world. In schools, we are doing everything humanely possible as a third world country in teaching school going children to acquire the expected required education, discipline, awareness and skills as enshrined in the education master plans  of the millennium development blue print.
In schools we deal with both adolescents and adults of different family backgrounds; some of which are exceptionally poor and some from single parent females. This is a very hard and difficult task for a fewer number of teachers to achieved. With all these, we are doing our paramount best as entrusted by the state and those parents to instill discipline and ethical values in those children and Allah the Almighty is helping us in the dignified struggle.
It should be bear in mind that schools are not solely responsible for instituting discipline in people but are designed for people to learn and acquire knowledge and skills. This period needs tolerant, dedications, concentrations, commitments and self control. That is why we apply an element of discipline during the period, “education without morality tantamount to nonentity”.
Discipline should be inculcated in children from their infancy at homes inorder to comply with rules and orders in any forms from the family component to the national level. The actuality of the issue is that there is lack of control of behaviors of people at homes which spreads to schools leaving behind the rationale some people use in blaming indiscipline in schools failing to assail parents and other relevant factors that had contributed to the menace.
There are a lot of indiscipline parents in our societies who had contaminated the entire system. Those indiscipline parents or guardians are the ones who will go to schools, fight or abuse teachers in the presence of their children. Such people should understand even “the teeth and the tongue” sometimes fight in the mouth.
At times, school children use their parent’s or relative’s positions to create mayhem in schools and  among these may be children of politicians, security personnel (soldiers, police, intelligent officers etc.), and senior education officers among others. Such intimidating factors made most teachers to shy away from participating in disciplining students in schools and it is not helpful.     It is also worth mentioning that there are some parents who are very serious in disciplining their children and they encourage teachers to discipline their children too when they go wrong. These are the parents who brought up their own children at home with good moral behavior and discipline.
At some point in certain events, we can witness to some of the disorderliness in the society, and examples are like in football matches, inter houses and schools athletics competitions. Some of those kinds of behaviors are eye soaring.
During the recent observance of Eid-Ul-Fitr, with the Muslim elders, the president at the state house told them to inculcate discipline in their children, noting that most of those girls that wear short dresses in the streets are Muslims and they infact come from homes. In schools the uniforms should be descent wears that they put on throughout the five days in the week. “this is where the problem lies, because it is not only the responsibility of the religious leaders or the schools authorities to inculcate discipline in our children; it should also be the responsibility of each and every parent as well to discipline his or her children” Jammeh stated. If the president of the country is aware of acute indiscipline in the society and is using the parents to lessen the acute indiscipline in the children, then what do you think schools can do to abate indiscipline in schools?
We are worried about indiscipline in schools but let’s emphasized that there is indiscipline in all sectors all over the globe.  What had recently happened in UK, the Arab spring, the political in-fights and differences are all manifesting indiscipline in Society. When we have indiscipline elders and leaders; when elders don’t have respect for young ones; when wife and husband don’t have respect for each other; when male disregard females; when the ruling parties don’t respect those who oppose them; when the armed security men and women turn their weapons on unarmed civilians; when oppositions fail to respect ruling parties; where there is no freedom  of speech and expression , there is bound to be chaos and disorderliness. If the rich no more values the poor;  elites use their intelligences to mislead the less educated ;   misappropriation of public funds and corruptions on the rise; while  racial discrimination, tribalism, favoritism  continues, we are at a critical juncture in combating indiscipline.
We therefore end by saying that as far as we are aware this menace, indiscipline is in both homes and schools and in many aspect of our society.  Parents must discipline their children at homes and we must all play our own roles in society and in our schools. We do have indiscipline teachers and school administrators and they must work on their own conducts as well in order to instill discipline into the children, because children emulates easily.
I want to assure Alfred Jarry that cigarette smoking, truancy and absenteeism, the use of mobile phones among others, are all practiced in both homes and schools. Please go and visit schools and see for yourself the effort of teachers in trying to inculcate good morals and give the students the best education they deserve. Teachers need recommendations and more motivations in terms of good payments of salaries and incentives. Along the way, we lost so many trained and competent teachers whose services are irreparable due to job dissatisfactions.
 The bottom line is that we have discipline in schools to some extent and parents must also do their own parts as role models at homes.