How teachers are perpetrating bullying in schools

Kenya: Schools are opening and as a parent you have done everything you can to prepare your child. You entrust the teachers with your child’s safety. But there is something disturbing them yet they have never told you. Bullying is a monster they encounter every day in school.

Forget the old bullying, that was student to student. It is now a thing of the past. Bullying is still here with us only that this time it is perpetrated by teachers. The protectors have become the oppressors in our schools.

 I remember in high school a deputy principal hurled these disheartening words to a candidate. “You are useless, and with your horrible grades you can never make it. In this school we do not want people who pull the mean grade down.” This brutal statement ripped the victim’s heart, breaking him to tears.

The latter was the tallest and among the most popular students in the school particularly due to his charisma which made him interact with many amiably. There is no doubt that for a young man of his ‘status’, to cry in front of everyone at the assembly, he was gravely hurt.

In my school, if one wasn’t performing well, you became a subject to maltreatment from teachers. You were punished severely even when caught in trouble alongside the brighter lads who often were favoured in many ways. It was clear discrimination.

There is what teachers call ‘panel beating’. This refers to when a student reports to the staff room with regards to a mistake noted, a group of teachers who sometimes are unaware of the offence committed, descend on that student with blows, kicks and whips. This mainly happened in boy schools.

I remember one day when I fell sick and was at my breaking point. I had never felt that close to death, even after taking incessant medication from the school dispensary my health was still deteriorating. Upon requesting permission to seek further treatment away from school, the deputy principal first pulled out our class performance list from his filing cabinet to check my academic strength.

“You are a poor performer yet you want to go home. You can go ahead because I do not want you to die here but when you fail your exams do not implicate me,” he said harshly.

Poor performers had no voice and the situation is not unique to my school. Many schools in the country have reduced education to a matter of mean scores forcing teachers to impose pain, fear and distress to prune underperformers so the school can remain with the best.

When your kid is not happy going back to school; it doesn’t mean he is not ready to study but probably he could be traumatized by what awaits him, brutal teachers who do not care about children’s feelings.

What they don’t know or rather assume is that some of these abuses do not escape student’s minds. They often break them forever and only a few pick up and move on.

The charismatic tall student, who was told he was heading nowhere, now serves as the Executive regional representative of Africa at Commonwealth Youth council. What if he never recovered from the heart wrenching bullying words of his teacher?

We appreciate the knowledge and discipline you installed in us but treat students respectably and in the most human way, minding about their future which you are responsible to guide if not to safeguard.