Students behaviours a major concern

 By CLEMENT KAUPA 

 THE alarming rise in delinquent behaviour by an increasing number of high school students in recent times denotes a serious decline in discipline and moral standards.

Combined with escalating incidences of inter-school violence, warning signals are flashing that urban high schools are infused with dangerous gangland culture.

In its wake, many parents and teachers have lamented the fact that academia and discipline, to a large extent, have fled the sanctified halls of learning around the country.

Lae high schools are no exceptions, considering the sporadic cases that have hit the headlines in the press and airwaves over the years.

Engagement in violence, drinking and drug use is almost like an extra-curricular activity.

Peer pressure often leads to this but no doubt outside influence is present.

A few months ago, the city was up in furore over the shooting to death of a male high school student in a public venue, the second student murder incident in two years.

The first shockwave was delivered last year when a Bugandi Secondary School student was stabbed to death at Eriku by a fellow student during a street brawl with male students from another high school in Lae. 

Until then, a hushed topic, the murder prompted the father to speak out about the shocking level of moral decay in many of the high schools in the city.

According to the father, a priest, both male and female students belong to a number of gangs that had affiliations to shady cult practices.

Membership to these obscure gangs is through violent initiation rites that involve dangerous practices such as chest thumping which had cost the life of a student from a Port Moresby school a few years back. 

Whether organised through these gangs or cults, rumours have surfaced too about call-girl services involving high school girls and older men, mostly high-profile.  

But while emphasis is placed on these more serious misdemeanours, others like underage drinking, smoking and betelnut chewing have gone unchecked for years.

And it is suspected that numbers are growing annually of students who crossover the fine line of discipline and become chronic abusers of illicit substances.  

Though admittedly, these situations are largely unsupported by recorded facts and figures, student behavioural trends continue to reveal a high rate of social degeneration every year.

For Lae especially, it is dangerously close to saturation point and demands quick and combined remedial action by stakeholders.

Otherwise, ensuing generations will succumb to the same downward spiral that will eventually have debilitating effects on the city’s social, economic and political future.