Innocence lost

What is of greater concern than the failure in duty of care, is the actions of the boys who killed their class fellow.

The report that a six-year-old was beaten to death by his classmates as the result of a children’s dispute about the unlocking of a school gate, gives us a chilling insight. Violence in the adult world is commonplace and has to be extreme before it is remarked upon. But violence among children is relatively unusual — or so one might think and assume — beyond the scraps and playground fights that happen in every country and every culture. Violence of such savagery being inflicted by a group of children on a contemporary that it leads to his death, really should give us all pause for thought. The child, a pupil at a government-run primary school, was trying to leave school during a break but the children deputed as gate guardians would not let him do so and then set about beating him with their fists, kicking him and then using sticks to beat him. He died of his injuries.

Such an incident should set alarm bells ringing. It seems that no responsible adult within the school went to the aid of the boy being beaten, and then failed to summon medical help when it was clear that he needed it. Some teachers deny this, but an adult should have intervened as the boy’s screams were widely heard in the neighbourhood. What is, perhaps, of greater concern than the failure in duty of care, is the actions of the boys who killed their class fellow. They collectively participated in the murder of a child and none of them thought to stop individually themselves or stop their fellows from committing murder. This represents a complete absence of a vital piece of their moral architecture — the ability to distinguish between right and wrong coupled with the inability to recognise and control aberrant behaviour in themselves. None of these children are going to be prosecuted as they are below the age of criminal responsibility but we hope that this failure of moral compass is checked both in individuals and society.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2014.

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