Alain Jeannot
4 March 2008
Port Louis — According to a piece of "research in school shootings" carried out by Glenn W Muschert of Miami University, only one out of 2 million school-age youth will die from homicide or suicide at school each year. Yet, these reassuring statistics cannot stop us from feeling aggrieved by news of shootings like the one on the premises of Northern Illinois University recently. However, feeling temporarily sorry will not prevent these barbaric acts indicative of a serious sickness gnawing at our society.
Almost all of us would brandish education as the locomotive of a civilised social organisation. Well, this can be fully accepted provided it is agreed that education is not merely tantamount to a tabulation of facts and figures which leads to the granting of a certificate.
If academic recognition were a guarantee of success in life and society, Stephen Kazmierczak , an outstanding graduate in sociology would not have transformed himself into a killing machine in Illinois . Education aims at leading out as suggested by its very etymology. An educated nation is one where all conditions are gathered to draw the best out of each and every citizen.
This is a quite a great and noble challenge which calls for appropriate attention to the development of all skills a human being should master in order to be capable of making the right choices at all times.
It is to be noted that the "best teachers" in the column devoted to them in this very publication, are chosen on criteria other than that of being merely capable of infusing academic knowledge in interviewees' minds.
Our society needs to promote more profound reflections and relationships, underpinned by an even greater sense of commitment and care starting from home and during each and every day spent at school.
We should teach our children to loathe intolerance, bullying , gang culture and false conceptions of masculinity which contribute to the putrefaction of our social fabric. This decay which we have got used to, until it from time to time wakes us from our torpor with a spectacular blast like a fatal shooting spree, must be addressed at all costs.
We need to teach children to behave more profoundly and not as superficially as the majority who were searching about Scarlet Johansson on the internet while another tragedy had rung an alarm bell on the state of our relationships. Those who think that such tragedies only affect the US should think twice. Last December two 14 year-old teenagers from a top school in India shot a fellow student who was bullying them!
If we in Mauritius have been safe from these incidents till now, it's simply because we do not have access to firearms. The culture of violence and intolerance expresses itself in less spectacular ways, but this does not mean it should be overlooked.
Therefore it is imperative that we should be brought to think more deeply before making choices. We need to think about the consequences of our choices and their ultimate impact on our society.
This type of reflection requires an all-round education. That is why teachers, parents and the media should endeavour to promote right values which guide to right choices.
This is no easy task in a world dictated by other imperatives. Even the powerful media have difficulty provoking a "sober longer term examination of school shooting as a whole"(G W Muschert) because they are often trapped by the wrong but commercially right choice of having to highlight the dramatic aspects of the event . Yet, it is vital we work upon our capacity to make the right choices if we do not want to be blown up one day despite the statistically flimsy risks. Education would then be the invaluable shield against destruction.
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