Rebellious Teenage Students: Scourge That Should Be Treated

Marrakech – An outrageous video filmed by a high school student inside a Moroccan classroom has been circulating the internet during the past couple of days. The disgraceful video shows how students turned into a musical band singing loudly, using their tables as musical instruments, shouting at the top of their voices, and making sounds that do not suit whatsoever an educational institution, not paying the least respect to their teacher whose only concerns are to give them lessons and make sure to see them progress. This kind of students don’t leave to their teacher any other option but to leave the classroom shocked from what just took place in his class, helpless towards what to do about it and defenseless against what might happen to him once he meets those students outside the school walls.

When a teacher has such students in one or more of his classes, he or she tries to use all means possible to contain their anger and rebellion, understanding that dealing with teenagers is a delicate matter that should be approached sensibly. So, he or she advises them that it is not in their interest to act out inside the classrooms, shows them that he or she is aware of the different issues they may be facing and is always going to be there for them to provide them with the help they need to overcome their problems.

When the latter approaches don’t appear fruitful, the teacher moves to the stage of scolding the nasty students who are usually the cause of the riots, threatens them to subtract marks off their grades, to deprive them of the lesson by sending them outside, or to write a report about their odious behaviors, hence the involvement of their parents. Thus, they will be suspended temporarily or required to change classes or even schools, since any teacher who is familiar with the case will refuse to have such shameless students in his or her classroom.

However, most students who cause such unbearable disturbances are sometimes high on drugs when their teacher is giving them advice or are simply not interested in it and are not concerned with their marks. They don’t worry if their parents are involved, nor do they care if they are suspended or even expelled, because for them society will never understand nor feel their pain. Therefore, they deem normal to cause pain to their society.

I am sure that many teachers all around Morocco have been suffering from these types of behaviors that sometimes go beyond being disruptive to other students to becoming dangerous to teachers themselves as I once mentioned in my previous article about this matter.

Teachers have become more and more chained by circulars that emphasize only one thing: teachers ought to endure all sorts of students’ rebellion and avoid asking them to leave the classroom because these students might face danger outside. Isn’t it obvious that the danger will be more serious if they stay in a classroom where they don’t want to be in the first place, with classmates who, they believe, are superior to them and with a teacher who, in their minds, represents opposition? Doesn’t too much pressure cause explosion?

How about, instead of keeping these rebellious students in classrooms against their will, we make sure they are ready to be there first? How about we offer them the psychological help and guidance that they seriously need in order to improve themselves from the inside out? Why don’t we treat the unstable ones first before we put them in the same class as the stable ones who have a desire to learn but whose bad luck brings them together with others who don’t?

Only when we start implementing serious measures, can we see radical change happen to our educational system. Only then can such outrageous acts as the ones in the video mentioned above decrease significantly and leave room for proper learning to take place. Only then can teachers be enthusiastic about their job, worry more about how to make the lessons interesting and productive, and worry less about how to teach classes with members whose disoriented behavior spreads in the entire educational institution ruining it as do malignant cancer cells to a person’s body.