“Our schools are very toxic. Walls, doors, windows are like in a gas chamber. Their ecological restoration is urgent.” This recent warning issued by experts generates more and more controversy, mostly on collateral issues. Just one example: the toxicity of schools mostly derives from their current activity. The sound toxicity has become usual during the breaks between classes, but even during classes themselves, when the frequent calls on mobile phones causes disturbances in terms of hearing, attention and behaviour for pupils, which no longer take into consideration the exigencies of their teachers. And sound toxicity is a minor issue compared to the toxicity of the violence that plagues schools and their surroundings. Brawls between pupils have become so frequent that they are regarded now like some form of “game,” also because the adequate official reaction is undermined by the misperception of the concept of freedom.
This error reached a phase when it is mistaken for anarchy. This also explains the opposition manifest by many pupils towards the idea of school uniform. This would give a common clothing tint meant to negate the social discrepancies which push the children of many poor families towards school abandonment, which exceeds 20 pc today.These economic and social contradictions present in schools increases pupils’ violence to atrocious extremes. The public was shocked, for many days, by the image of a 17 year old schoolgirl from Buzau beaten, forced on her knees, abused and terribly humiliated in the very yard of the high-school. In a separate recent incident, a 16 year old pupil from the Ferentari district of Bucharest was stabbed to death by his best friend and schoolmate. Another episode of this tragedy: While leaving school and on his way home, a pupil of Voluntari, Ilfov County was stabbed by an interloper and barely escaped alive after he was urgently taken to hospital. In Alexandria, Teleorman County, a pupil of the Theoretic High-School was stabbed by a “mentally impaired” schoolmate. The fact that even the mentally deranged people commit such crimes is another result of mistaking freedom for anarchy. And this is the source of yet another serious issue: the consumption of illegal drugs has tripled in schools these years, while the age of consumers has decreased towards 14.And the trend of freedom collapsing to anarchy is only a reflex of the lack of responsibility, with dramatic social effects. It is precisely this deficit of responsibility that recently determined the EU to suspend funding worth over EUR 10 bln allotted for the projects of three Romanian ministries. This social and political anarchy also puts pressure on teachers, pupils and parents, and even the guards hired by school. One of the latest – and numerous – cases of this kind involves a number of teachers from a Buzau school, which demanded bribe in exchange of a graduation mark in the Baccalaureate exam. In Constanta, a teacher recruited 13 year old schoolgirls for a prostitution ring, saying that she wanted “to financially help the children.”School thus became a space easily penetrated by the most obscure and damaging interventions from outside. This explains the fact that, each year, about 100 contests are organised in schools, of which only 50 pc of them are approved by the Ministry. Their purpose: various kinds of mystified “businesses” that sometimes involves even school principals and inspectors. For them, too, the individualistic freedom of action, the egotistic initiative are pushed towards anarchy, sometimes “with all due papers.” This was also the case of a private university of Bucharest which cannot be closed by authorities, although it is considered illegal by the Ministry of Education. Anarchy thus has made its way into “official” papers as well.It is precisely this kind of anarchy that amplifies, in contempt of the law. Although laws are well conceived and enjoy wide appreciated, they are not observed. This is what the minister of Education believes regarding the increase of school violence: “we have very good laws that are not observed.” And they are infringed because of family and the entire social, economic and political environment, for which the individual, egotistic interest has supreme priority, hostile to the general interest of the state. Thus, the moral and organisational deficit present in a certain sector – education or any other field – is only the reflex freedom turning into anarchy, at general scale.This negative phenomenon takes place now, at the very moment when the supreme reason of freedom – as superior behaviour, authentic creation, production of material and spiritual value, – is largely absent. This also explains why Romania imports today 70 pc of the agricultural products it needs, although it has the agricultural potential to feed a population of approximately 80 million. In other economic sectors, things are even more difficult, despite the existing potential.In these conditions, can family still have the traditionally decisive role in countering school violence, as the minister of Education considers as necessary? It is hard to give an affirmative answer in today’s conditions, when Romanian family is itself under attack from many directions. One of these is the discontinuity of aspirations under the pressure of increasingly difficult work and living conditions. Family members start having contradictory tendencies, which generate family violence. These contradictions are generated by the reduction of the sources of existence, which force one or both parents to emigrate in search of a job.But emigration does not solve the issue, because it amplifies the discrepancies of poverty which, correlated with the lack of education, brutalises all three age categories of a family: grandparents, parents and children.Women and children are those who feel the strongest effects of this tragedy. The cases of family violence are increasingly frequent, and official figures only reflect the reported cases of assault. They are only the tip of the iceberg, because many other cases of violence go unreported, but have dire consequences for the unity of family.Family violence and violent break-ups of families explain the invasion of drugs from the ages of 12-14, and fuel juvenile delinquency, itself on the increase. Worth mentioning are also the terrible cases of suicide committed by teenagers, confused by domestic clashes and be the confusion between freedom and anarchy. This confusion is the very source of sinister sexual abuses and of child abandonment. In this process, out national unity and solidarity become ever more vulnerable, also to the adepts of secessionist regions, stimulated by the chaotic regionalisation also promoted by some of those that rule over Romania.Freedom represent a sacred human right, but only when it is organically accompanied by responsibility and creation. In their absence, it turns into sacrilege. It becomes anarchy!
