“It should be more the teachers’ and school’s responsibility than the pupils’. We are not in school to manage the school - we are there to learn.”
These are the words of the Cults Academy pupil who claims he knew that Bailey Gwynne’s killer carried a knife but did not report it.
Speaking to STV, he said he regretted he had not spoken out at the time but said he “didn’t want to get involved” and that the boy - who went on to kill - was probably “just being stupid”.
Being vigilant about spotting children with weapons was not really pupils’ job, he said, and it was “unrealistic” to expect them to “snitch” on their friends.
It’s hard not to feel sympathy for the pupil. After all, how many of us have ignored something difficult out of a sense of self-protection or a desire to mind one’s own business?
But out of all the thousands of words that have been uttered about this tragedy so far, it was this anonymous boy’s quotes that really stood out.
Andrew Lowe, who has investigated the incident, has quite rightly recommended that schools provide safe ways for pupils to report their peers if they carry weapons, and called for online restrictions on the sale of knives.
The suggestion that teachers should be given the power to search pupils for weapons might also help to prevent another tragedy - although teaching unions disagree.
Collective responsibility
But the boy’s words - his admission that he felt the safety of his peers was essentially his teachers’ responsibility, and not his, highlights a deeper problem within schools and society.
This increasing sense that pupils are now customers of the school system, expected to merely turn up and be educated, must partly be to blame.
More than ever - in an increasingly individualistic society where we encourage children to focus on personal achievement - schools must work hard to instil a sense of collective responsibility.
It is important that every pupil feels they have a role to play in improving their school. They have to have a sense that what you do - or don’t do - matters. They must also be given a sense of ownership and pride in the school they have contributed to.
Children should also know that their efforts make a difference, and are not a token gesture towards “pupil voice” initiatives.
It is perhaps apt, then, that Education Scotland is now seeking the help of pupils in evaluating the quality of teaching in our schools.
Instilling this sense of collective responsibility will help to shape an ideal society: one where people do not close their eyes to injustice or a person in need, leaving it to “the authorities” to deal with.
The authorities, like teachers, cannot be everywhere, all the time, and need responsible citizens to play their role.
The biggest lesson, as Andrew Lowe explains in a TESS interview this week, is perhaps that such tragedies can happen anywhere.
Nobody would have expected this sort of terrible incident to happen at Cults - a good school in a well-heeled area. But it is proof that underneath the headline exam results and statistics on the school’s intake there are a thousand stories of individual pupils - all of whom have a role to play and a voice that needs to be heard.
Schools also need to look at why the killer himself lashed out and did what he did. Those who knew him said he was “a quiet boy”; so quiet, perhaps, that he had not spoken to anyone about whatever was bothering him.
Lashing out violently is often a culmination of mounting frustration and, ultimately, a sense of powerlessness.
Perhaps, somehow, the system failed him too.
@IrenaBarker
