Where do the feelings go?

Written 13 Feb 2017

About ten years ago, I had an eighteen-month teaching stint at a high school about 3km from where I lived. This was my first experience of teaching at a high school, so I was fairly clueless as to the dynamics, especially of a school in an area rife with gangsterism. Further lulling me into a false sense of security, I had just come from seven years in the TEFL industry, where the maximum class size is 10, and you teach adults from all over the world, many of whom are professionals, well-travelled, with broad frames of reference.

I’m embarrassed when I think about it now, but I remember, when asked how I’d deal with discipline issues, I said something about knowing how to keep my lessons interesting enough not to have those kinds of issues. Ew! How smug. How ignorant. I can only imagine what my more experienced colleagues were thinking.

Needless to say, I had a rude awakening. It soon became clear that the silence in all the classes, on my first day, was about their curiosity. From Day 2, the more boisterous kids let their true colours show, and I found myself at a complete loss for how to handle what seemed like irrational behaviour. No-one listened to my appeals to settle down so that we could enjoy the lesson, and no-one cared, because once they’d established that I did not use corporal punishment, they took it as a green light to test me in every possible way. They were also quite happy naming my colleagues who continued to use corporal punishment, despite it being illegal in South Arica. It angered me that the continued use of corporal punishment compromised the ability of the rest of us to achieve order in our classrooms.

One day stands out in my memory. A stupid fight broke out in my classroom. This kind of thing happened many times a day, and I became a bit of a meme (that word did not exist then), for once again dashing to the classroom door and shouting, “Security!!!”’, while every learner in the classroom was either involved in the fight, actively encouraging the fight, or standing by quietly, preparing to watch the fight. Occasionally there’d be a small group trying to stop the fight, but this was rare. When a fight broke out, it gave others with pent-up anger and frustration a chance to live vicariously through their more openly-aggressive classmates.

Like most of the other classroom fights I’d witnessed, this one started with a simple misunderstanding, followed by a violent outburst, an exchange of expletive-ridden insults, and then violence. The fact that one of the fighters was a boy and the other a girl made no difference. They were swearing, screaming, pulling, smacking, punching and kicking. My biggest fear was that one of them would take out a sharp instrument and take the fight to the next level.

Eventually the security staff came in, and one of the learners was taken to a separate room, to cool down away from the class. The period ended, and the classroom emptied as the kids left for their next lesson. My next class was actually a sweet group of Grade 8s, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I could start to put the unpleasantness behind me. I was still shaken, though, and wondered how it was possible for the learners themselves to continue with their school day after seeing something like that.

Somewhere during that next period, there was a commotion outside, and people were shouting, “Lock the doors!” I reacted too late; by the time I realised there was real danger, the gangster was inside my classroom. He was bare-chested, had a wild look in his eyes, and was holding a cleaver in one of his hands. He held it at about the height of his head, gripping it fiercely, like he was ready to slam it down into someone. The combination of his bare upper body, his eyes that showed no sign of being present in the moment, and that gleaming silver knife, was frightening, to say the least. We all froze. He paced up and down, taking big, directionless steps, scanning the room with his wild eyes. I had no idea what would happen next.  When he didn’t find the person he’d been looking for, he walked out in that same maniacal way. 

We locked the door and all started talking at once. It seemed as though the gangster had been informed about the earlier fight in my classroom and had come to kill one of the kids involved. Yes. That’s what people mean when they say that teaching in gang-ridden areas is dangerous. They come into your classroom! What surprised me then was the number of children who found it humorous that I had been so scared. They told me my eyes had been “so wide!”.  To some of them, it was old hat, I realised, and to others it was genuinely frightening. They’d felt as fearful as I had. I reported it to the principal, and requested counselling for the class (and the previous class, who’d witnessed the fight). Months later, when I left the school, not wanting to renew my contract and having been headhunted for my next job in the TEFL industry, no counselling had been arranged yet. That kind of thing was just not taken seriously.

This incident came to mind when I saw the fracas in our South African parliament, on the 9^th of February.  After all the verbal unpleasantness, followed by the violence inside parliament, when the EFF had been removed and the DA (and other parties) had walked out in protest, how did those who stayed behind feel? Surely people were traumatised? Surely it was one of the hardest things to do, to remain seated in that venue after all of that? And then our country’s president, Jacob Zuma,  demonstrating that things could actually get more bizarre, giggled – the most inappropriate response possible. After which he proceeded to give his State of the Nation (SONA) address. How could anyone take him seriously?   

It was like in any other part of my life – if you’ve shown, by your actions, that you’re without integrity, nothing that you say could ever convince me otherwise.  I switched off the television set, disappointed and disgusted. A former ANC supporter, I longed for the current smugly corrupt leaders to fall flat on their faces, voted out by an equally disappointed and disgusted electorate.

In the post SONA fallout, the following day, a caller on talk radio said that we should not be surprised that young people today seem to be so out of hand, because the political leaders of our country behaved like wild animals, themselves.  For the record, I know many young people who are not out of hand, and who actually inspire me and give me great hope for our country’s future.

If I’m not mistaken, this is at least the third time we’ve seen the same sequence of events at the annual opening of parliament.

Come to think of it, why do they make such a fuss about no corporal punishment in schools when strong-arm tactics are used so liberally in parliament, supposedly the bastion of all that is good and law-abiding?

Lol. Or, to quote ‘Number One’: “Hehehehe”.