‘Children need discipline’ shapes future’

To build better citizens for tomorrow, young people need discipline at an early age, a teacher says.
Dorothy Kaima, who teaches at  St Mary’s Primary School in East Sepik, told The National that student discipline has been a much talked about issue in schools.
“In St Mary’s, we are trying to tackle it by introducing programmes that will help students become better citizens,” she said.
Kaima said one of those programmes was the scout movement introduced to the province last year. St Mary’s is a pioneer school in the programme.
Three of their senior teachers, Matil Konjib, Salvatore Wieng and Kaima attended trainings last year and were now imparting the skills to the students.
The first batch from last year is now attending secondary schools.
Last Wednesday, 93 of their students (Grades 3-8) in the second batch received certificates to become recognised members of the Scout Association of PNG.
She said the programme assisted teachers to look at areas to groom students into good citizens.
“The programme teaches skills to students in developing respect, keeping themselves clean, how to save themselves in disasters and to have a good and healthier lifestyle in future,” Kaima said.
“It is a good programme and if all the schools in the province took this up, we will all put our hands together to make PNG better place with good citizens.”
Scout executive commissioner Gabriel Molok further stressed on the laws involved in the movement.
“There are actually 10 laws that students need to abide by and some of them include honesty, caring, trustworthiness, loyalty, friendliness, thinking of others, bravery, not being wasteful and so on.”