Why preying on schoolchildren is so easy today
Abuse can only be inflicted by someone who is more powerful, by someone who is bigger, by someone who is stronger than the victim, both physically and mentally.
It happens to children in the places traditionally considered the safest for them - the home and the school; the Gurukul. That there are so many cases of vile abuse being reported in both these havens is a sad reflection of how degenerate we have become as a society.
Our deconstruction has begun and the desecration of the sacred relationship between the teacher and the taught is one of the most frightening results of this breaking down of our value systems.
I have seen and heard about schools from all over the country. In the light of all the ugly happenings in schools these days, it is imperative to discuss measures taken to ensure the safety of our children. What is it that schools are doing right and what more must they do?
In the schools where the management and promoters are very aware and cognisant of these lurking dangers, steps are taken to ensure that there is no undue privacy allowed to anyone in the school premises.
Even the principal's office has a large glass window, albeit a soundproof one, but one that allows for complete visibility. The other offices too are the designed the same way. So, under no circumstances can a leery head of the school act inappropriately with either his staff or his students. The risk of being caught is too much, especially if the walls are transparent.
The classrooms are also made in a manner where a panel of glass is fixed on the doors, allowing for visibility at all times. The only place with no glass on the doors is the toilet, and good schools ensure that each toilet is manned by an attendant - male or female depending on the users.
The school buses are disallowed tinted glasses or thick curtains. It is mandatory that a teacher or even two teachers accompany the children to their various bus stops. The buses must also always have a driver and a conductor on board - there is no compromise in this. Even if there is only one child left on the bus, the teacher on duty has to ensure that the child is dropped at her bus stop, safely. Only then can the teacher disembark and consider her job as bus escort accomplished.
Not just this, I have seen the owners of schools stand outside when the bell rings to announce the end of the day. The children have been sent to school on their responsibility and they must ensure that they are sent back home safely. This ensures the work is better done, transport lists are better maintained and standard operating procedures are taken care of.
The other day, a school owner, with a strength of 10,000 students studying in his various schools was visibly upset. A school bus had not been able to go inside a narrow lane because of flooding, and the conductor and teacher had allowed the children to disembark outside the lane and walk home. He said, "The homes were close to where the bus was stranded."
The owner was livid that the children were allowed to walk on the road, unsupervised, even for that short distance. "I have to see which SOP is in place for such a situation," he said.
He called for an immediate meeting. In such schools, if an accident does happen, the people know it wasn't because the management was entirely careless.Workshops and such like activities where resource comes from outside the school are encouraged to come in twos. In case a female or male helper is not available, a teacher sits in. In a writing workshop, a male facilitator had left the room when a student of a senior class had plonked herself next to him on a sofa and stretched out languorously. She was wearing a provocatively short uniform that left almost nothing to the imagination. He said he moved away from there because he could not take the risk of any finger pointing.
How were the students allowed to dress that way? "Is it not inviting danger? I am a parent myself and I felt so uncomfortable. What about the other staff who may or may not be so sensitive? After all, if you strip away everything, who are these people? Men and students who growing up much too fast for their own good. This is the responsibility of both the parents and the school," the resource person was upset.
I agreed with him. Students do push boundaries and can tend to be brazen, thinking they won't be harmed. They are growing up on a steady diet of TV and the internet, which are full of Game Of Thrones-type content. And then, when a child is molested on the pretext of an extra class, all hell breaks loose. In such cases, prevention is definitely better than cure. The school administration must take note of each activity that takes place in school and after school hours too.
Parents must be in touch with the school regularly to meet each teacher and get an overview of who their ward is spending many hours with. Visibility is very important. It is a deterrent and can be intimidating for someone with devious and evil intentions. The other compulsory need is that of communication. Parents must be open to discussions with their children. Let no parent push a child towards better marks in such a way that she allows a wolf in sheep's clothing to take advantage of her in return for that 90 percent in the exam.
Sickening photographs find their way into the internet. A child sitting in the most awkward of ways in the lap of a schoolteacher whose eyes look glazed with lust. More saddening that the backdrop is of a blackboard. What is happening? Who took those images? Why did the person not object? Are these the people who have found nothing "better" to do in the outside world and have become teachers just because they had to have a job? Are they not whetted? How have they entered our classrooms to prey upon our children?
How we will erase these scars from our collective consciousness? Or should they remain grim reminders of the reality of our times and our responsibility to set things right again?