Treating students like children

By Rohana R. Wasala-May 25, 2014

Around 5,000 students marched from Kelaniya close to the Presidential secretariat to protest against a series of issues related to university students. (file photo)

Students or other citizens for that matter should never be treated like criminals by the police with or without apparent reasons; it is up to the courts to pass judgment on them based on evidence. However, there cannot be any objection from the general public to them being apprehended as criminal suspects by the police when they are found to disobey court orders, but this should be done humanely without violating the basic human rights of the students and it should be done within the law; the humanity of the police personnel (mostly coming from the same social background as the protesting students, and even less privileged perhaps) must also be respected. 
The Island editorial under the title Treating students like criminals (21 May 2014), in my opinion, hit the nail on the head regarding the long unsettled problem of the controversial curtailment of the Allied Health Sciences course at the Peradeniya University by one year. In a situation where the authorities concerned are trying to pass the buck to someone else and where some otherwise highly regarded professionals are said to be opposing a restoration of the originally stipulated four year duration of that course, and where certain disgruntled, discredited, and opportunistic politicians are trying to fuel student unrest just to assert their presence and also where the law enforcement functionaries seem to be at their tether’s end, a supreme court intervention should perhaps be sought in order to protect the students.

I, for one, believe that ultimately it is the rulers who take responsibility. Why is this apparent lack of concern on their part that has led to such a pass being prolonged? A sign on the desk of Mr Truman, a distinguished former US president, read: "The buck stops here"! That was the great Truman. But it seems that we have only false men here! The less said about them the better it is for our own sanity and peace of mind.

Students or other citizens for that matter should never be treated like criminals by the police with or without apparent reasons; it is up to the courts to pass judgment on them based on evidence. However, there cannot be any objection from the general public to them being apprehended as criminal suspects by the police when they are found to disobey court orders, but this should be done humanely without violating the basic human rights of the students and it should be done within the law; the humanity of the police personnel (mostly coming from the same social background as the protesting students, and even less privileged perhaps) must also be respected. The very few offending students there are must be made to realize that they cannot act in contravention of the law of the land with impunity and that laws are there for the protection of the persons as well as the rights of all citizens including them. But it takes adults to understand this, and it is up to the students to think and act as adults, and not like spoilt children.

To my mind there appear to be two emerging trends in the manner that some important sections of the adult population choose to treat students in this country. The two modes of interaction (or rather non-interaction) that have come into to being between adults and young students as a result are stark opposites. One way was recently demonstrated by the alleged rough handling by the police of some young activists connected with illegal student protests in Colombo during the World Conference on Youth; the police stand accused of treating the demonstrating students like criminals. While disapproving of violence by both sides, many inconvenienced common people feel that certain violent elements among the majority of innocent students deserve to be treated as criminals, and that some sort of firm control of the occasional disruptive behaviour of students must be imposed by the authorities. So one way that our society likes to deal with unruly students is to treat them like criminals. The other emerging trend, in my view, is for adults, particularly certain politicians and a handful of media persons, to treat or more frequently to talk about students in higher educational institutions as well as those in schools as if they were mere ‘children’ yet to be potty-trained. The emotive Sinhalese word ‘daruwan’ (children) is often heard these days piously enunciated by a few politicos in power and their stooges in the media. The attitude that is revealed in this second way in which people try to verbally mollycoddle the youth of the country and keep them subdued is much more hypocritical, and hence more condemnable, than the first (i.e. treating students like criminals) which surely we will see the last of soon enough.

University students are adults themselves or at least are on the threshold of adulthood, though among them there could be a tiny handful of individuals who expect to be treated as ‘children’ (which itself could be a hangover from parental spoiling back home!). It is demeaning for young persons to be described or addressed as ‘daruwan’ (children) in situations where their normal personal development into adulthood is vitally important. A child is a young human being passing through the years between the time of birth and the time that he or she is about to be accepted into adult society (which is legally termed the age of majority). Most countries including ours set the age of majority at 18, which makes it possible for Sri Lankans just past their 18th birthday to vote at parliamentary elections. So, even legally most of our students in higher education institutions, being above 18, fall into the category of adults.

Astrophysicist Dr Neil DeGrasse Tyson says that a normal child (a young human) is born a scientist, by which he means that children by their biological nature are independent explorers of their surroundings. True, human babies are more dependent on parents or other adult guardians for their protection and survival than the young of other animal species; but they are naturally ever eager to assume control over themselves and their environment, for that potential is their genetic inheritance. So their search for independence starts early, something most parents understand by experience. Certain, normally too protective, uninformed or poorly informed, Lankan parents, however, see this as a child’s insubordination to adult guidance or mere love of mischief; and they might resort to various stratagems or raw punishment to control their ‘waywardness’, thereby actually suppressing or totally eliminating the child’s independent spirit and creativity which is their birthright. What a child instinctively wants is to be or act like a grownup. Parents and other adult members of the human society have a responsibility to do everything possible to help young people to develop normally into adulthood. To keep young persons constantly reminded of their ‘childhood’, as some fond parents and crafty politicians do, is not the best way to promote the development of mature traits in them.

A few politicians and their journalistic fellow travelers (particularly in some government TV channels) have suddenly grown fond of the term ‘daruwan’ to refer to young people who are actually no longer children. Obviously, these people mean to exhibit an almost parental concern with the welfare of the students by casually adopting that loaded word in the Sinhala language (‘daruwan’) in talking about them. But everybody knows that they are hypocrites, that they only want to keep young students from creating trouble for the establishment through legitimate protests and other demonstrations in asserting their right to influence government policies that affect them. Trying to treat young adults (students in higher education) as if they were immature ‘daruwan’ (children) without instead assigning them adult responsibilities to fulfil could turn them into real ‘maruwan’ (murderers), as happened in a Sri Lankan university not so long ago.