Student Demonstrations Are a Sign of the Moral Decay in our Schools
The Education Hub with Benedicto Kondowe
Student demonstrations, varying in degrees of violence and impact, are seemingly a permanent feature of the education system in Malawi, at all levels. Year after year, school closures and disruptions in learning — be it in primary and secondary schools or the public colleges — are all but guaranteed events on the school calendar. Not only do these demos disrupt the flow of school timetables, they almost always result in the destruction of school property. Many times, they even cross over into harming the general public directly through such acts as the destruction of motor vehicles that are in the vicinity, setting up roadblocks to disrupt traffic, throwing rocks and burning tires.
In addition, protests also frequently indirectly affect the public by placing innocent individuals and bystanders in harm’s way of dispersion tactics by the police, which often entail the deployment of tear gas.
What is one to make of this recurring, nearly predictable trend especially when one considers the fact the root causes of these demonstrations vary wildly yet lead to the same kind of uproars? There have been protests sparked by dissatisfaction with allocated allowances, such as the May 2013 demos by Poly college students demanding increments to their upkeep and August 2015 demos at the same institution over government’s failure to provide them with loans and allowances for fees and upkeep in a timely manner.
We have seen demonstrations occur over the suspension of school itself such as the June 2017 protests by public primary and secondary school students who staged multiple violent demonstrations in Blantyre and Balaka over a prolonged teacher’s strike or the July 2021 demos by students of the University of Malawi demonstrating in Zomba over the continued suspension of online classes.
Whatever the inciting matter, discontent felt by students led to demonstrations.
These regularly occurring protests happen due to an assortment of interlinking issues and deficiencies. To begin with, the absence of effective discipline in learning institutions, whether that is in higher education or in the foundational tiers, is a big accelerating factor in these issues of student unrest.
Both students and education providers are disorganised in ethos and action.
The inefficiencies of government and institutions’ management foster frustration within the students whose recourse (demonstrations) is frequently unproductive and causes even more problems for both sides of the aisle.
Another cause for frequent demonstrations is the real and/or felt sidelining of their voices in the decision making process as well as the decision making by education providers and management being against their best interests. This, of course, could be mitigated by opening up spaces for dialogue through student leadership, as I publicly noted in 2015 following a demo-induced closure of the polytechnic.
However, although there have been steps taken for student leadership to foster the contact and dialogue that is frequently missing, demonstrations remain a threat tactic for the student body. For instance, in September 2021 Concerned Students Movement (CSM), a movement that fights for students’ welfare at the Malawi University of Business and Applied Science (MUBAS), planned to hold demonstrations to force university management to improve living conditions for students. This despite the fact that just a few years before, in 2015, when disruptions to learning were severe enough for students, including senior members of the Student Union, to publicly issue an apology for what they themselves deemed “backward, uncivilised, uncalled for” demonstrations.
Generally speaking, students of all levels seem to lack an appreciation of the importance of dialogue to resolve conflicts or disagreements in the spirit of democracy and human rights.
Perhaps an indication of this is the fact that the protocols and structures that should be followed in times of conflict between students and management are not firmly in place; such that once lessons are learned by one set of students, those that follow are doomed to the same actions, mistakes and their consequences.
Another problem, frequently, is the actions of the few impacting the many; such as in February 2022 when MUST was forced to send students home after some students’ riots disrupted upcoming examinations and led to staff harassment. Due to the disgruntlement of some students, the entire body was essentially punished.
All of this shows that there is a need for all stakeholders to act in a manner that reverts the ongoing decay of education institutions in order to restore the discipline that has been lost.
Students should not expect to go scot-free in the name of human rights when they break laws at school or whilst interacting with the law. They must know that they stand to bear full consequences.
Parents and guardians should also play their rightful role in inculcating good morals upon their children and to make sure that the pupils they send off to school do not easily succumb to the influence, peer pressure, or bad behaviour that bleeds into their lives as schoolgoers, from their fellow school pupils.
Institutions must ensure their own discipline through efficient organisation and they must enforce discipline rules by subjecting culprits of violence to disciplinary penalties. NGOs and school governance structures should raise awareness on the importance of preserving school property and promoting dialogue to resolve some of the challenges.
In this way, perhaps something new can grow from the decay.
