NST Editorial: No quarter for sadism

The plaintive protests of some of the parents of students expelled from Mara Junior Science Colleges in Negri Sembilan and Johor, begging that their offspring be allowed to sit their SPM exams, might have been heart-wrenching — if not for public sympathy being rightly reserved for their bruised, battered and broken victims. Entrepreneur and Co-operative Development Minister Datuk Seri Khaled Nordin, whose ministry oversees Mara, is absolutely right not to heed these requests. Do these parents not realise that their teenagers have become sadistic bullies? They have disgraced their families and schools, terrorising their schoolmates and comporting themselves in a manner that, had they been just a couple of years older, would have had them hauled into court to face charges. Do they expect the school authorities and society at large to indulge such behaviour as adolescent exuberance and boisterousness?

Perhaps they do. The parents of the 13-year-old schoolgirl who last week was struck by a teacher whom she had insulted with foul obscenities evinced such outrage over the incident as to go all the way to see the deputy minister of education, seeking the destruction of the teacher’s career. They may succeed at that — no one denies the teacher went too far — but to present their little darling as a poor tormented naif is also going too far. That a child could learn such language by such an age is possibly beyond parental control, but to have no compunction against directing it at an adult — her own teacher, at that — speaks to upbringing.

So is it with the so-called "little godfathers" of the MRSMs and, in another recent instance, the Malay College Kuala Kangsar. Hazing or "ragging" is a "tradition" in such institutions. Tolerated as a way to establish esprit de corps and the discipline of hierarchies, such purposes are utterly defeated by the brutal sadism that has come to characterise these episodes, whether they be in schools or the uniformed corps. Enough with tolerating such abuse as youthful high jinks. Khaled should stand firm in his decision to throw these teens out of school, if not behind bars — and his cue should be taken by the Education Ministry. So what if these bullies are "smart" and their schools "prestigious"? Grant them their ambitions of thuggery, if that’s their fate, and let them be dealt with not by anguished hand-wringing over child-rearing but by exercise of the Penal Code.