Child Abuse In Our Secondary Schools By Tolani Faranpojo

Child abuse in our society is no news to our ears at least not anymore. It saddens my heart how we as individuals have thrown cautions and sanctity of life to the wind. We don’t value and respect the humanly dignifying responses to issues. How pathetic!

Our secondary schools have been flagged ‘terror homes’ in recent times as news of abuse isn’t something that wouldn’t make the news in our day to day activities.

Child abuse has taken a new dimension in our basic institutions of learning. It has been proven that our minds attract and process information faster than the speed of light; reasons the mind of a teenage boy or girl would interprete information so quickly that the information becomes a part of them. Child abuse in secondary schools is basically an ’information’ that sticks to the mentality of a child if not quickly approached and dealt with.

Spare the rod, spoil the child; no doubt this is a religious obligatory warning.. Even the secular laws dictates that you discipline a child to inculcate the right value system into him or her but discipline isn’t abuse,  we see teachers inflict terrible pains on their students, recreate horrors, damage their conscience and leave damning marks on their table of reasoning,  something most teenagers carry around and react with.

Our young girls are subject of sexual abuses, male teachers who haven’t disciplined themselves, gloat over body structures and facial appearances of obviously developing girls, indecent touches become a norm, some even go as far as proposing love and affection just to get sexual gratifications, benefits and satisfactions.

Our girls are not safe.  They are warned strictly never to tell anyone about whatever is going on, great deal of fear is instilled that parents would not have a clue of what is happening. It becomes a scar, some of them don’t heal from such experiences which plays quite often in their heads.

I don’t have a problem with whips but why transfer your aggression on a child who knows nothing about how your wife or your husband, friend or family member got you sore? You beat up a child for mistakes in assignments or class works, inflict terrible marks on the body and even have mates do him or her a satire, ‘olodo rabata’ you drag his or her self-worth, reduce drastically his or her self-esteem as regards what he or she can do, school becomes a horror ground, and the reality that tomorrow is another school day becomes a sharp pain in the heart.. ‘this man will touch my body again and I can’t tell anyone, he said he will deal with me just like he does with Tunde (Tunde is always flogged a hundred strokes for scoring poorly in tests)’.. ‘I’m scared of writing class exercises, my teacher said I’m a block head and I might not amount to anything useful in life,  they even sing terrible songs for me’.

Most teachers have been instruments of horror more than the original reason for employment which is knowledge impartation. I feel school owners should not only check vitality of the CVs before giving employment letters, a background check should be done.  Some people are so damaged morally that the only good about them is the Curriculum Vitae. A damaged individual can never pass knowledge accurately. Why touch a teenage girl inappropriately? Why sing mockery songs because he scored so low in his class exercise? Why subject his self-esteem to dirt because his reception of information is rather slow?  Why beat him to pulp because he doesn’t understand what you have explained over and over again?

A teacher with infidelity tendencies with his spouse, a drunk, a anger personified individual, sadist would not in every moral sense pass the much needed knowledge to the child.. Don’t just employ teachers,  get a mentor in a teacher,  certify his or her psychological mannerism and finally, parents have the obligation to making sure they get so close to their wards so they are comfortable to relate anything even the so called ‘awkward private’ matters to them.

A whole lot of kids are suffering in silence, dying inside of them because of their muted speech sense obtained from the tyranny of their ‘loving teachers and uncles and aunties’. The cries of ‘Child Abuse’ in our secondary schools have gone up and the smokes are reaching the high heavens, the outcome of this cry……..sighs