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Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Tossing the infant away
Delhi schools are quite in the news these days. After the DPS MMS scandal comes the St Columba’s alcohol incident. St Colomba’s, a school in central Delhi, has expelled seven students after “they were caught drinking alcohol inside the school campus.” They were all class 12 students.
Our moral police, as well as our actual uniformed police, have lost all sense of proportion here. Teenage kids do silly things sometimes, and authorities have a right to reprimand them, but jeopardising their career in such a manner is irresponsible. Surely there must have been modes of internal punishment that could have sufficed in this case. Had the parents concerned been told about it, the kids would surely have got hell at home. But drinking alcohol on the sly does not merit such a response, at such a critical juncture in their lives. That goes for the girl in the MMS case as well, who was a victim of the whole fracas, and deserved sympathy and counselling instead of expulsion.
Newspapers these days are full of editorialising about how our society is being degraded, and how what our teenagers are up to is an indicator of that. Well, even if the bathwater is dirty, it is no reason, as that old German phrase goes, to throw the baby out. Or to blame the rubber duck.
Our moral police, as well as our actual uniformed police, have lost all sense of proportion here. Teenage kids do silly things sometimes, and authorities have a right to reprimand them, but jeopardising their career in such a manner is irresponsible. Surely there must have been modes of internal punishment that could have sufficed in this case. Had the parents concerned been told about it, the kids would surely have got hell at home. But drinking alcohol on the sly does not merit such a response, at such a critical juncture in their lives. That goes for the girl in the MMS case as well, who was a victim of the whole fracas, and deserved sympathy and counselling instead of expulsion.
Newspapers these days are full of editorialising about how our society is being degraded, and how what our teenagers are up to is an indicator of that. Well, even if the bathwater is dirty, it is no reason, as that old German phrase goes, to throw the baby out. Or to blame the rubber duck.
