‘I want my boy to be a man…’
Is the arrest of 1,353 minors, in September alone, for various offenses, an alarmingly big number or not? The majority of those offenses was recorded in Attica. A few days ago, a 16-year-old high school student in the center of Athens injured two of his classmates with a screwdriver. Recently, a group of girls attacked a 15-year-old in the suburb of Kifissia and robbed her, after beating her. There are almost daily incidents of teenagers participating in violent attacks.
How much does this concern us as a state and as a society? What is the number that will compel us to act with a sense of urgency or must we wait for a fatal incident that will leave us “speechless” and “shocked”?
Deputy Education Minister Domna Michailidou recently announced the creation of a specialized four-member task force with the aim of “informing the educational community on how to act on the issues of violence in schools” as soon as an incident occurs. This group will examine the complaints, which will be reported on a special digital platform. Let’s assume that, when this idea is put in action, it will support teachers to a certain degree, who remain helpless and without the necessary (cognitive and psychological) tools to deal with increasingly complex situations. It is a small initiative in the face of a river of violence, but at least it is an action.
But who will deal with the parents? The family is the cell in which the characteristics of the child/adolescent and, eventually, adult are formed in the first place. At one parents’ meeting at a public school, a father rejected to address the fact that his son was bullying his classmates, stating, “I want my boy to be a man, not a [expletive].” In fact, the teacher of the delinquent student was almost accused of intimidating the student with a ruler that was found at her desk, if the school director had not intervened.
This incident is indicative, but not isolated. In different ways – inexhaustible in ingenuity – parents refuse to see the consequences of the reality they themselves shape for their children, and this blindness leaves no room for cooperation to prevent the worst.
We can wait, until the arrests of juvenile delinquents skyrocket to the point where we lose count – and our sense of direction as a society.
