Shift the focus in schools

THE fight against violence and illegal extracurricular activities in schools has taken a bold turn. Parents at Bugandi Secondary School in Lae last Wednesday pressured principal Ben Yana and his teachers to draw up a contract for them to sign before the third term started.
The contract would state that if their children misbehaved and were involved in school fights, cult activities, taking illicit substances including being drunk on school ground, the students stood to be expelled.
It is the first time that any parent body in any national high or secondary school stood up to take the brunt of their children’s misdemeanors, although at the National Polytech in Lae, students were required to enter into an agreement before starting lectures this year.
The parents at Bugandi wanted the school administration to come up with the terms of the contract by this week in the hope that classes would continue without disruption so that their children in Grades 10 and 12 could prepare for their examinations in October.
The parents were told by Yana before the chairman of the governing council Benson Suwang (who is also chairman of law and order in the Morobe provincial government) that the school would hold a reconciliation ceremony, like the one organised by principal Christopher Raymond at Lae Secondary last month.
The students from the five different fraternity, peer, or cult groups would come together, shake hands and burn the books that apparently hold names of their fellow group members. 
With that, the school administration hopes that the ties and bonds forged in the groups would both literally and figuratively go up in smoke.
The proposal is absurd and preposterous. It is symbolic, and nothing much else.
Yana and his teachers and chairman Suwang might want to take another look.
They have to view the actions of the students as a part of exploring old and new traditions of school life which are normal activities among peer cliques that provide a sense of belonging and positive support for school achievement. The search for identity cannot easily by severed by a mere act of burning a little black book.
Experience elsewhere has shown that this search is not confined to PNG and is taken up generation after generation.
Unlike in the US and the UK, where fraternity clubs have remained over hundreds of years focused on academic excellence, the fraternity clubs in Nigeria had metamorphosed in a flash – relatively speaking.
There, the fraternity clubs such as the Pyrates Confraternity was founded on lofty ideals by the Nobel Laurete, Wole Soyinka and others at the University College, Ibadan (now called the University of Ibadan), in 1953.
 Unfortunately, towards the end of 1960s, the original aims of the Pyrates Confraternity were abandoned. The confraternity gradually grew into a secret cult that was later to proliferate into many splinter groups. The change was accelerated by yet other changes taking place both at the universities and the entire Nigerian society. The changes observed in the Nigerian society included violent military coups, state-sponsored political assassinations, proliferation of ethnic militia, communal clashes and total erosion of the traditional family values.
The thought of the frightening trend happening in Papua New Guinea is spine tingling.
What Yana and Suwang and the parents need to do is to make use of the outcome-based education in personal development classes.
Research by academics in Nigeria and PNG have shown that the students would need to be refocused. Or, as the learned Misty Baloiloi has oft-repeated: be taught to “shift the paradigm”.
The University of Technology vice-chancellor told a gathering of the AOG church two weeks ago that Papua New Guineans need to refocus their goals in life. He used the term “paradigm shift”.
He has said that to students at Bumayong Secondary and told anyone else who would listen.
Baloiloi wants students particularly to learn and practise habits that will make them better people.
One of the best tools is available in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey. One of the suggestions in the book is for a teenager to breakaway from the peer group and set goals and work towards them.
Perhaps, Bugandi, and all other secondary shools, might want to pursue the subject.