Students' first days need to be made constructive

Students' first days need to be made constructive

Simon Marcus Gower, Jakarta

In the past days and weeks schools across Indonesia have been
opening up their doors again to receive students entering the new
school year. Naturally enough, this has been a time of many
trials and tribulations as existing students join new classrooms
and new students try to find their way around a new school.

Such times would be difficult enough for even adults. In adult
life we need time to adapt to new settings and find our footing
and direction to settle in and come to terms with what lies
ahead. This kind of experience, difficult enough in adulthood,
can prove extremely challenging for the, as yet, still young and
forming hearts and minds of school age children.

A humorous cartoon once depicted a mother and father the night
before a first day of school alongside a depiction of their
child. The child slept snugly in bed, whilst the mother and
father struggled to sleep and were clearly restless and nervous.
This can quite often be the case; worry-laden parents can make a
bigger deal of first days in school than children who are often
quite capable of being flexible and adapting to their new
surroundings.

However, the opposite can also be true and children can become
highly distraught and upset by the experience of the beginning of
a new school year and it is at this kind of time that they may
need much support and guidance -- even counseling -- to help them
get through a difficult time in the best possible way and
constructively set-up the grounds upon which learning throughout
the school year may quickly and efficiently be set.

The extreme reactions that children can have to first days in
school can be so great as to create concerns for their health.
Some children can be so overwhelmed that they suffer near nervous
breakdowns with crying, hyperventilating and even violent
vomiting getting in the way of them getting into school. In such
potentially traumatic times as these it is surely only reasonable
and right to expect a school to be on-hand with staff and
policies that will assist children to deal with their problems.

This would seem like a duty of care that might, reasonably
enough, be expected of schools but just taking a look at what has
been happening in recent days and weeks in Indonesia would seem
to suggest that such a duty of care is not really being taken
seriously and, in fact, it could be argued that it is being
significantly neglected. Indeed this negligence towards a duty of
care would seem, in certain instances, to be so great that
instead of protecting and looking after children at a difficult
time schools are allowing childrens suffering to be increased and
worsened by, quite frankly, idiotic behavior.

Orientation days in many schools have been allowed to
degenerate into often moronic and consistently useless abuses and
insults towards students. Instead of trying to build constructive
relationships and establish a sense of mutual respect in schools,
existing students are allowed to engage in the kinds of "freshman
foolery" more associated with American universities or worse
still abusive "hazing" that is more common in military boot camps
than caring and thoughtful schools supposedly dedicated to
education.

The kinds of nonsensical antics that could be witnessed
recently included new students being required to wear ridiculous
and often insulting nametags around their necks, being required
to wear socks of different colors and wear paper hats of the type
that would have (one hopes, in previously less sophisticated
times) been seen to symbolize a dunce or fool. All of this goes
on with seniors being given an apparent free-reign to scream and
shout at their juniors in a way that is rather more army
sergeant-major than schoolyard senior.

It is to be wondered what possible constructive outcomes are
expected or associated with this kind of behavior. Some may
suggest that it is a way of "setting tone" towards discipline and
getting new or junior students to instantly have respect for
their elders and their teachers but this miserably fails to
realize that respect (if it is to be true and lasting) cannot be
forced, it has to be earned and to be really effective it needs
to be shared; i.e. the junior respects the senior and vice versa,
junior respects teachers and vice versa.

Respect is not achieved through the forced and moronic
behaviors of students in the first few days of schools. Also, the
damage that may be done to a child's self-esteem and confidence
should not go unnoticed in all of this fooling around. The early
days of a new school year are a great opportunity to generate a
sense of shared belonging, a sense of respect and ownership for
the people and the place that make up a school and, in turn and
with time, build up a sense of teamwork and community that will
benefit the whole school year.

Of course, there will be those that claim that orientation day
"hazing" is just harmless fun and that the children are just
being given a chance to enjoy themselves -- whether they are the
abusers or the abused. In some cases this may be true and the
children may be able to construe it as such, if there is some
sense of teambuilding going on in the activities. But this seems
rare in orientation hazings.

Children can consistently be observed with glum expressions on
their faces as they fall victim to first days' fooling around.
Most often they do not seem to be garnering any fun from the
experiences they are having and any learning seems really remote
and unlikely.

During the first days back at school great opportunities exist
to try to develop a sense of community that will help students to
settle in and have a firm foundation on which to build their
studies during the coming year. There are almost constant
complaints that there is too much to study for school students
and yet time is, every year, wasted on negative and useless
orientation day pranks and fooling around.

Surely, when time pressures are of such a concern and teachers
complain that they have too much to teach from the curriculum,
the first days of school would be a great time to help students
prepare for the challenges ahead. Constructive teambuilding and
guidance towards much needed study skills would serve these
students far better than nonsense tasks and ridicule.

Schools should design these days carefully and not let them be
so negligently and dangerously wasted. The benefits of good early
learning experiences can be considerable and the duty that
schools should exercise to consider a child's psychological
welfare really have to leave little room for first days of school
of such waste and ridiculousness.

The writer is Executive Principal of the High/Scope Indonesia
School. The opinions expressed above are personal.