Abstract
M.Ed. (Educational Management)
Driving around Soweto during a normal school day is perplexing. This situation does not worry a certain sector of people only, but it worries everybody from the State President to the ordinary person in the street.
As late as 09h00 one finds secondary school learners walking slowly to their schools. One asks oneself when these learners will reach school, because school has already started. These learners miss morning periods frequently and they hardly care. While one is still perturbed about this state of affairs, one encounters: between 10h00 and 11h00, learners who are already on their way home in full school uniform. School is out for them.
Inside some of these schools, the problem is worse. One finds teachers discussing their own problems in the staff rooms or basking in the sun instead of being in their classrooms doing their work. Meantime the learners who happen to be in school start making noise, fighting and even threatening some of the teachers and principals who try to discipline them. Some of these teachers become victims of violence. Often homework is not done, and absenteeism is rife. Parents in their turn feel disempowei-ed. They can't call their children to order because some of these children have become aggressive to both the teachers and their parents. Some of them will retort that they also have rights. They have a right to do as they please.
At the end of the year everybody gets worried when it is found that some of the schools in Soweto have produced as low as 4% Grade 12 pass rate. This is a pathetic situation. Such children get involved in crime and render the country unsafe. It is clear that most schools in Soweto have many problems. There are, therefore, definite areas of concern which need to be explored, solutions to be found and implemented without delay by all stakeholders in order to assist a black learner and his/her teachers to find their feet in some of our undisciplined schools and to behave in a manner that is expected of them. In other words the norms and values of each community must be transmitted and maintained if indiscipline is to be curbed.
Discipline is as old as education. Without discipline there will be no education in any institution. This study will attempt to investigate the causes and consequences of indiscipline in schools. It will put forward some guidelines and recommendations for the implementation of solutions to the indiscipline problems facing our teachers and learners in black Soweto schools. These guidelines and recommendations are inconclusive, and they call for further research.