Bring
back borstals for school bullies and put CCTV
cameras in classrooms to protect teachers from
yob students.
Whoever
becomes education minister when the Executive
meets on 8 May needs to ensure they don't waste
time pussy footing about what will replace the
Eleven Plus exam.
The
new Northern education supremo needs to make it
a priority to look after teachers and pupils who
want to work.
Devolution
presents the North with a golden opportunity to
stamp out the thug culture polluting our classrooms.
With
the Northern suicide rate reaching epidemic proportions,
how many more decent kids will either kill themselves,
or face serious mental problems because schools
lack the laws to really go head-to-head with playground
bullies and classroom hoods?
And
some of the parents of these yobs are just as
guilty as the bullying vermin they breed. These
ma's and da's will lie through their teeth rather
than admit their brats are classroom thugs.
They
dismiss their bullying brats' behaviour as “just
a wee phase they're going through”, or else
“sure, my child wouldn't even hurt a fly!”
If
the future Executive does not give schools, courts
and the police additional powers to combat school
bullies, it is only a matter of time before the
North's vigilante culture targets the so-called
bullies themselves and the hunters become the
hunted.
Ever
since the banning of the cane in the late 1980s,
bullies have lived in a thugs' paradise –
taunting teachers and pupil victims alike with
their 'you can't touch me' mentality.
Just
try taking a school bully, or even their parents,
to court. It only adds more stress and pressure
to the victims. The North needs to install a punitive
system where bullies and their parents know there
is no hiding place.
Some
of the bullies' softest targets have been children
with either learning difficulties or kids on the
autistic spectrum. Any brat found guilty of bullying
a mentally or physically disabled youngster or
adult should spend a mandatory six months in borstal.
The
modern-day Young Offenders' Centres give the perception
of being holiday camps. Instead, let's restore
the 'gud auld' borstal mentality where time in
a YOC is akin to an American-style hard labour
prison regime.
And
the parents of convicted bullies should be fined
a minimum of five grand every time their brats
offend. ASBOs are viewed as badges of honour to
these bullying scum, and restorative justice schemes
laughed off as silly adult jokes.
If
the Government can introduce a sex offenders register
to keep an eye on convicted perverts, surely the
new Executive could introduce a bullying register
which schools and employers could consult to see
if they are hiring a known classroom thug.
Naturally,
the bullies' parents will scream human rights
to high heaven. Never mind the hurt and pain bullies
have inflicted on their innocent victims –
these parents are very good at painting their
youthful thugs as 'golden children'.
Unfortunately,
police figures show hate crimes are on the increase
in the North. But it only takes one or two people
to retaliate physically against bullies, or their
parents and a dangerous floodgate will be opened.
As
a society, we have to face the hard reality the
only effective way to protect innocent pupils
and teachers is to restore corporal punishment.
Okay,
many parents can tell horror stories of how some
teachers abused the corporal punishment system
in the past to boost their own egos, or go on
personal power trips.
But
equally, the bitter medicine is that detentions,
suspensions, expulsions, sin bins and well-minded
anti-bullying teams don't work. Bullying is a
fire that can only be fought with fire –
and that is the return of the cane with appointed
senior staff being given the authority to administer
it.
Oh
how the civil liberties, human rights and trendy
liberals will have a field day combating this
move.
Then
again, what will these so-called 'do gooders'
tell the parents of a child lying on a life support
machine because of a bullying attack by classroom
yobs? What do they say to the husband of a female
teacher who has been raped at school 'for a joke'?
What
do they tell the wife of a male teacher who has
been bludgeoned with iron bars as he got into
his car at school?
Forget
the fine words of the so-called anti-bullying
initiatives. They are just empty rhetoric. Parents
of bullied kids want action. Hopefully, the incoming
Executive will have the balls to take that action
and confine the scourge of bullying to the classroom
dustbin.
