The director of education in the Eastern Province has ordered a student’s suspension from school for two years for assaulting a teacher. In my opinion, such a punishment is not the correct solution to problems involving students, and neither does it reflect positively on the relations between students and teachers.
Imagine the mental suffering of a student expelled from class for just two or three hours! Compare those feelings to the suffering of someone expelled for two years!
Access to education is a sacred right and an obligation for all of us. Enforcing such a harsh penalty means we have denied a student his right. Young students are passing through a most sensitive and problematic part of their lives. Not content with only the suspension, the education department had the expelled student and his father sign an undertaking that the boy would return to school only after rehabilitating himself and improving his conduct and showing that he was committed to abide by school regulations.
This is a negative point against the Ministry of Education. If the ministry fails to cultivate good manners and correct behavior in students who attend class regularly, how can it expect to do so with students who are thrown into the street? By this logic, we should expect our children to go to school, be expelled for some period, come back and resume class as if nothing had happened.
It is like punishing a patient in the intensive care unit by temporarily disconnecting his life-support simply because he refused to take the medicine his doctor ordered.
It seems we have up to now failed to come up with an alternative solution to the harsh penalties giving to erring students or to replace the suspensions and expulsions from school.
We could have at least benefited from the experiences of others in this area. Forcing students and parents to sign undertakings should be a last resort and only after all other options have been exhausted.
For example, school managements could oblige erring students to undertake non-academic work, community service or even some kind of sports activity on the premises of the school. This would have more impact on the erring student and on his colleagues as well.
In some countries, courts impose such penalties on students instead of sending them to prison which may ruin their future. We read of a judge ordering a student to clean a street in the neighborhood after school as a punishment instead of suspending him from class. We should at least try such methods.
Hiking Petrol Prices
Khaled Al-Sulaiman/Okaz
There was nothing new in last week’s announcement of a coming increase in petrol prices. It is part of an infection that has been plaguing our society for years now and it is a problem for which no one seems willing to suggest a solution. It was thus not surprising to add an increase in the price of petrol to the long list of services and commodities that have seen their prices increase over the years. The price of petrol too should be allowed to have its share of increases, just the same as electricity, water, gas and other commodities.
Over the past 20 years the prices of electricity, water, cooking gas, cars, real estate rents, consumer goods, air tickets and almost everything has gone up. Only one thing has remained completely unchanged and static — wages. The salaries and wages that support almost every household and person in our consumer society has been the only thing that has not experienced an increase.
The question that keeps coming up over and over is how people can be expected to cope with all these increases that never seem to stop. How can people make ends meet and strike a balance between a limited income and securing their basic needs as long as prices of basic goods and services keep going up? Those who plan for these increases tend to forget that if things continue in this way, there may come a time when many will not be able to cope with the rising cost of living. This is surely inevitable unless wages are routinely revised and increased — but this seems an unlikely possibility as long as the majority of citizens are government employees. This is a matter calling for urgent action so that we don’t wake up one morning to find goods and services in plenty but no one who can afford them.
Arab News From the Local Press 5 July 2003
