Rise of disciplinary problems

Recently, there has been a drastic rise in disciplinary cases among the students of SMK Jalan Bunga, Sg. Panjang. It has caught the attention of many teachers and myself as the Head Prefect of this school. We do not want this scenario to continuously ruin the good reputation of this school. A survey and interviews have been carried out to investigate the core reasons towards this alarming issue. It has been identified that there are many causes that have led to this serious problem.

Among them are lack of parents attention. Parents nowadays are too busy with their work. Some of them are workaholics where they devote themselves to their job and rarely have time for their children. Whereas some parents nature of their work is that they go out early in the morning and come home late at night. When they return home, they are too tired to mix around with their children. When parents are not around for their children and do not monitor their childrens’ activities and who their children become friends with, this gives total freedom to the children to do whatever they like and wherever they like. The negative impact is that students will misuse the freedom given by their parents and may be influenced to carry out bad things that have been taught by their peers.

Moreover, the second reason is that they have no interest in their studies. This causes them to skip school. They rather prefer going to cyber cafes than learn in school. In addition, there have been a few students who have been caught by the discipline teacher yesterday as they sneaked out of school after recess and went to the nearest cyber café in this area. Besides, they do not practice the moral values that they have learnt. They do know about it but they do not act it out and prefer to practice negative moral values. They only memorize the moral values that their religion tells them to practice so that they can score well in their exams. However, they do not actually realize the importance of practicing it in daily life.

On top of that, financial problems also contribute to the students’ misbehavior. Due to lack of money, some students steal other students’ money or belonging . There have been many cases of money being stolen and bags with new books lost too. Although they can be categorized as underprivileged students, this does not give them the right to steal other peoples’ money and things. They should however be given help by the school authority.

Apart from that, peer pressure is definitely one of the reasons why students are involved in disciplinary cases. Nowadays, there is a current trend where ‘ good is bad’ and ‘ bad is good’. The bad guys in school are seen as ‘ cool’ and the good guys are seen as ‘ nerds’. Thus, some students join these bad gangs to be well-known and if they do not join or do not carry out disciplinary problems, they may be labeled as ‘ losers’. This will demotivate them thus in the end, they feel that they have no choice except for being a follower of the ‘ gangsters’. If not, they may lose friends and power.

On top of that, influence from mass media is also a factor. The mass media controls teenagers in many ways and especially in terms of behavior. The students tend to ‘ copycat’ what they see in the internet, television, movies and etc. However, the sad part is that they tend to follow the negative behavior rather than follow the positive behavior.

All problems must have a solution and for this particular issue, there are also suggestions that should be practiced in order to curb or decrease the number of disciplinary problems in our school. Firstly, parents should spend more time with their children. They must spend quality time with their children no matter how busy or tiring their work is. This is because teenagers want their parents attention and they are still not matured enough to make rightful decisions on their own. Therefore, parents must always monitor their children and make sure they make friends with good people and do not get involved in unhealthy activities.

Furthermore, stress on moral values should be implemented by carrying out campaigns, programmes and talks. There must be a certain squad that can handle all these programmes. Besides, motivational talks must also be conducted to instill awareness on students on the importance of always practicing a highly respected behavior. The speakers must motivate the students to change their perception of ‘ bad is good’ towards ‘ bad is evil’ and ‘ good is awesome’.

Other than that, counseling sessions should be given to all the students who have carried out wrongdoings to make them realize the consequences of their immoral behavior and its impact towards their future. In addition, I would like to suggest the enforcement of school rules and school punishment. This is to frighten the students so that they will not even think about doing anything that opposes the schools rules.

Lastly, the suggestion of the ‘ Caring School Programme’. This is necessary so that the students know that they are cared by the teachers and they are valuable individuals who have so much potential. We have to make them realize that if they constantly carry out bad behavior, it would be such a loss not only to the school but they themselves gain the most loss if they do not maximize their potential as a student who can make this nation proud.

In conclusion, this issue is certainly not a light issue as our students future are in stake. In addition, it does not only affect the students who are involved in the disciplinary cases, it also affects the innocent students as they may become influenced or they may become victims of these naughty students. Therefore, instant and wise actions must be carried out immediately to prevent this problem from becoming worse. Hopefully, we can achieve our goal of becoming a prestigious and high performance school .