For those who have underrated the spate of indiscipline among youth especially students, what unfolded in a senior high school in the Ashanti Region last week should have them review their rating of the situation.
What students of the Krobea Asante Technical and Vocational School in the Ashanti Region did last week to state properties and individuals is beyond imagination. The fury in the rioters as they carried out what appeared like a well rehearsed act of insanity attracted the ire of many who read the story.
Coming on the heels of the Chiana Senior High School girls’ misconduct recently points at a worrying trend in the upbringing of children in society today.
The picture could have been worse but for the intervention of police officers deployed to the scene. Fortunately, no bones were broken, the security personnel having carried out the task successfully although the destroyed properties have left a bitter taste in the palates of school authorities and residents of the town, not forgetting the country in general.
The shutting down of the school by the Regional Security Council was the appropriate response under the circumstances.
At this stage, a committee should be empanelled to probe the incident and appropriate punitive action visited upon culprits.
We should start sending out messages to the youth and even adults that Ghana is not a failed state where anybody can do as they please.
The laws of this country are working and those who flout them should be made to endure the appropriate sanctions as of course prescribed by law.
The lame reason for embarking on the act of insanity was that their seniors did not do well in their final examinations.
We are compelled to agree with a remark of somebody who said with the level of indiscipline in the school the results their seniors got were appropriate for them.
There is dearth of discipline in our schools, from primary to tertiary institutions, social media and possession of smart phones contributing somewhat to the anomaly.
If the appropriate deterrent measures are not taken against the ring leaders in the destruction of private and state vehicles, the nonsense will be replicated elsewhere. We cannot and should not tolerate acts of indiscipline from especially the youth because, it is a slow destruction of the future of the country for which posterity would not forgive us.
It is our hope that there would be no intervention from any quarter when the whip is cracked on the bad students.
Unfortunately, their parents would have to bear the cost of replacement of the destroyed items owned by both individual staff and the state.
Acts of indiscipline, when they are seen, should be stopped by both parents and teachers before they escalate to the level of destruction of properties as witnessed in the school under review.
The students in question, we can guess, are between 16 and 20, too young to be seen engaged in such acts of vandalism.
Only a probe would unearth what informed the nonsense from these young students who are future threats to national security.