Are our schools safe?

The Pradyuman killing and the arrest of the new suspect, a Cl. XI schoolboy from the same school, Ryan International at Bhondsi, makes chilling reading when you are made aware of the possible reason for the murder, to get a school holiday that would postpone a PTA meeting and an exam scheduled on that day. What is our society coming to? When children in their teens can think of measures as extreme as this to get away from regular events on school calendars. It speaks of a complete lack of upbringing of the suspect with no inculcation of proper moral values by his parents and other elders in his family. The school as far as the incident is concerned is less to blame apart from the regular security measures that it flouted. But at the same time one feels that the school should keep an eagle eye open on the students in the higher classes to look for possible offenders since murder is a rare occurrence but bullying, incorrect dealings with the other sex,  smoking, use of drugs etc. are quite possible the risk factors for our schoolchildren in a rapidly changing modern society. If the CBI is proved right in the arrest of the Cl. XI schoolboy for Pradyuman’s murder, we need to take measures to sanitise our schools sufficiently since we would not want them to go the way of US schools where shootings, knifing, drug abuse etc. over the years have been quite rampant. This is being stated since in the last five years or so in the NCR we have had incidents of knifing and shootings reported in the media committed by schoolchildren but maybe not necessarily on school premises. Most of these are related to bravado, rivalry or girl related issues. We could also consider having psychological tests conducted annually by the schools for all children above 12 years to see the child’s development and what kind of tendencies he/she are showing. The reports of these tests can be shared with the children and their parents/guardians.  If there is anything adverse then those responsible for the child get all the more time to address the issues and a chance to iron them out. But what makes the murder at the Ryan International school at Bhondsi diabolical, since maybe Pradyuman would have lived but then some other poor child would have died at the hands of the the killer. For the killer, it seems the act was more important than the identity of the victim.