Monday July 3, 2006
Assault shows worrying trend
By STEPHEN THEN
MIRI: The assault case involving a group of lower secondary schoolgirls here has brought to light the emerging trend of young students displaying aggressive outbursts, said the Sarawak Teachers Union.
Union president William Gani Bina said there was an urgent need to find out why teenagers these days were easily carried away by their emotions.
“What has happened is not a case resulting from organised gangsterism in school. Rather, it shows that children these days lose control of their emotions very easily and display outbursts openly, even at a very young age.
“These problematic students need help, and schools need to help them. Expelling them from school will not do them any good,” he said on Saturday when commenting on the footage of the assault, widely circulated through websites and handphones.
St Joseph Secondary School girls in uniform have been captured on a camera phone kicking, punching and slapping a Form Two girl from St Columba Secondary School repeatedly and pulling her hair, watched by a group of schoolboys.
The incident took place at the beachfront, and the schools, which have furnished reports on the incident to the Education Ministry and state Education Department, are awaiting directives on the punishment to be meted out.
Gani appealed to the ministry and the department to temper justice with mercy.
“The ministry and the department view this case seriously and rightly so, but these kids are very young.
“If they have no previous record of such aggression, they should not be expelled. Give them a second chance. Let the school deal with them internally using its own discipline system,” he said.
To the suggestion that schools in Sarawak may be increasingly affected by student gangs, he said the union, based on feedback and surveillance, had found that there was no “organised” gangsterism in schools.
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