Skip to main content

Wicked Seniors: Making Education Safe for All

So a few days ago, a lady had innocently posted for the relationship X’s audience about her initial indifference about her husband and how she didn’t think he was attractive enough at the time. (Honestly I didn’t take too much time to read because, you know — it’s too much and a very chaotic street on X). 


Whilst her post was innocently targeted at her audience, she indirectly triggered emotions and trauma deeply buried in the a lot of people who were her husband’s junior in secondary school. For context, I was also his junior and I can relate to a lot of these comments/stories. It was so bad that after I graduated, my dad said “none of his kids will ever step on a unity school” again and he made sure of that. 


We all agree that bullying in schools is not an uncommon practice in schools; this doesn’t make it right neither have we founded a structure to eliminate this terrible act that influences and shapes kids through their formative years into young adults. The stories from the X drama were personal and other similar stories were shared on my class WhatsApp group and there were different reactions — some right, others naive or insensitive but it was really good to hear people talk about feelings they’ve bottled up for ~ 17 years or more. 


As at yesterday night, I thought we had moved on but I was surprised when I saw a new discussion today about the issue— but this time tending towards snitches and some people trying to rewrite history. In the moment, I thought of what a sustainable solution could be and how people could heal or move forward. 


My solution: 

I don’t believe that there is a saviour anywhere (in the schools) that can scale but we need to build a system that makes school safer for kids. By safe I mean safe to engage with teachers, student and administrators. This might be as an independent body that randomly collects information about bullies and work with schools to address the situation. Whilst punitive measures can be effective (in some cases), we also need to take time to educate everyone on “making education safe for all”. 

I don’t know if I can work on this anytime soon but I believe it’s something that can done through my upcoming fund (more information coming soon). But if to think it’s something you’re interested in, please do reach out by sending a DM on X @iyoaye and I’ll be happy to chat about this. 


Side note: if you don’t know how bad this issue is, please take some time to watch the origin of madam koi koi on Netflix — it depicts some of these issues and I must warn it can be traumatic for folks who have experienced some sort of SV/A. 


God loves you. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Draughts: on meeting new people

    Chess is a game I wish I dedicated more time to learning beyond the rudiments of movement which I learned from the free version of chess pro on my first desktop computer. On the other hand, I spent some time playing draughts aka checkers with my friends after exams in secondary school. Seun (who we popularly called Àgbè) was the best player in school and would beat us in rounds. Haha 😂. One of those afternoons, it felt like I was going to win, I had 2 kings and a 2 other tiles while he had 3 tiles and a king. For a moment, I excitedly boasted about winning and reveled in the idea of winning him for the first time.  Guess what? I lost 😡.  One of the many lessons I learned from playing draughts was the willingness to concede a tile or even my king (in some cases) so that I can ultimately win the game. This lesson stuck and today, it’s one that I use in my dealings with people especially when meeting new people.  For someone with some level of social anxiet...
Post a Comment
Read more

Clocks/Watches: on Consistency

I didn't have any idea of what to write because it is one of those days when I am in my feels and also not feeling up to it. I feel a little bit sad because it's an estranged friend's birthday and as much as I would want to wish them a happy birthday (probably send a gift), I am not quite sure of the reaction. It's also quite interesting because we have two different ideas/views of what the cause of the issue is and at this point 🤷🤷🤷. (Happy birthday to you) But while contemplating on whether to write or not, I thought about the need for my resolve for this blog - making sure that no 2 days go by without my writing something. This is considering different things happen during the course of my day and it's worth reflecting and sharing in a place that's much saner than Twitter (now X) - here. In the moment , the word consistency popped in my head and I was wondering what I'd consider to be the most consistent thing from my everyday life and my answer was a...
Post a Comment
Read more