Youth Delinquency : Resolute Solutions Required

The education community is certainly reflecting with fright on an act by a pupil in the West Region on 27 September, 2022 that could have been a catastrophe. It was the attempted poisoning by a pupil of 12 of his classmates, including a teacher.  The 13-year-old kid confessed that he was out to eliminate the teacher for constantly sending him to the chalk-board to do exercises. He equally complained that the teacher often asked him to buy her food. Frustrated by the attitude, the kid took along rat poison to put in the teacher`s bread.     
Fortunately for the teacher, her intentions were never negative. The pupil in question first spread the rat poison over sweets which the teacher sent him to buy so that she could use as motivation for other responsive kids in class. It is but normal for a teachers to take interest in children who are hardworking to make them more performant by giving them exercises. This also helps their mates to understand better or just enable the kids to keep working hard. Children who gain such confidence from their trainers are even at times a subject of envy by those who are desirous to win favours from their teacher as well. Under normal circumstances, any positive mind should consider the regular entreaties from a teacher as privileges which should be nurtured and the best advantages drawn for educational purposes.     
A clear indication that the teacher in the Njimbam Primary school in Foumbot, West Region who was almost killed by her pupil had good plans for the pupil in question is the fact that the sweets which the kid bought were intended to serve as reward for other hardworking pupils. The scene almost turned tragic as the unfortunate act by the accused pupil sent 12 of his mates to hospital for acute abdominal pain. Luckily, a quick response from the school authorities and administrative officials avoided the worse-case scenario. The head of the school confirmed on Thursday 29 September, 2022 that all those affected by the poisoned sweets were out of danger while the ill-intentioned pupil was placed in custody for questioning by the forces of law and order.      
Acts of this nature are not only disturbing, but call for in-depth reflection. If the kid concluded his Machiavellian plan by adding the second dose of the rat poison to the teacher`s bread, she might never have survived. If immediate action was not taken, parents would have been called from home to collect corpses of their kids who committed no crime to deserve death by poisoning from a spoiled brat who felt consumed by revenge for no just cause. These are situations that require the family, education community, and moral authorities in society to start asking some fundamental questions. Is the level of juvenile delinquency in the society so bad? Are children getting enough useful discussions with their parents in order to understand certain values in life? How could a child of 13 years come up with such a macabre plan whereas his teacher simply wanted to help him study well? By adopting for such a vindictive posture at a tender age, it will require tremendous combination of efforts to bring back such a child to the right path. This can only be done when all actors involved in child upbringing fully play their role and take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.     
A child who is allowed to pick up lessons from the streets. A child who grows up seeing the parents act dubiously over pertinent issues, as the case may be, in certain public functions can only copy such behavioural patterns very fast. It is mindboggling to imagine if the child even understands the consequences of taking human life. Yet, such examples abound, of late, where children commit despicable crimes as if they were acts of bravado. Some even talk with a sense of pride after such ills as if they were e...