Parents of a high school girl have laid charges of rape against two of her fellow pupils after she was filmed giving a boy oral sex... in the school’s library.
This, sadly, was the most read Daily Voice story of the week.
What’s wrong with this picture? Gosh, where does one even start?
Munier finds himself asking the following question over and over again: What the hell is wrong with kids these days?
Let’s forget for a minute that the two 15-year-old learners, a girl and a boy, have appeared in the Muizenberg Magistrates’ Court on charges of rape and the distribution of child pornography. It’s after the fact, as they say.
Let’s also skip the part about the video of the incident going viral on social media. You can’t blame the cellphone, it was merely a tool used to give the vuil act a platform - to gain fame, infamy or attention online.
Let’s instead focus on what would possess these youngsters to engage in such vulgar behaviour in public.
To Munier, the explanation is quite simple.
Look, kids will be kids and will always get up to mischief.
But the laaities of today, in general, have no respect.
SIES: Video of schoolkids having oral sex in the library.
There’s no respect for teachers and no respect for school rules and property.
They’ve also lost that old-fashioned respect for parents and other adults.
Gone are the days when kids would respect and fear (often the two were interchangeable) authority figures.
They would only speak when spoken to, and were taught to remain silent when the “big people” were talking.
Those were the days of strict parenting and schooling, when discipline was of paramount importance and often enforced by hidings and corporal punishment.
Many “old school” commentators feel that doing away with “a lekker pak slae” was where it all went wrong for us as a society.
That once we spared the rod, we effectively spoiled the child.
Right or wrong, one thing Munier agrees with is that our children are spoilt.
Parents mos don’t want laaities to sukkel like they did; they want to give them a better life.
So modern family life revolves around the kids who are the centre of the universe not the adults.
In less strict households, kids get their way more often than not.
They get what they want and they get to behave as they please.
Because parents have become softer, the consequences, if any, are more relaxed.
And if they can get away with it at home, you know they’ll do worse at school, where teachers, in trying to discipline unruly laaities, fear incurring the wrath of parents and the authorities.
No! It can’t go on like this, or the generation to follow will be a horde of hooligans.
Parents and educators, we need to be more strict in our homes and in our classrooms.
Munier is not advocating for child abuse here, but these kids of ours are in desperate need of discipline and respect.
taariq.halim@inl.co.za