As the first school term draws to a close, it’s perhaps prudent to note that it hasn’t been without incident.
And of all the things that have gone wrong, playground brawls are perhaps one of the most distasteful.
And that is because it represents a collective failure of all the things that are meant to help produce decent human beings - the education system and our own households.
I don’t know why (and I apologise if it comes off as old-school, sexist chauvinism), but for some reason it’s worse when it’s girls who are at the centre of ugly fist fights.
I was barely able to watch the most recent video of two young girls in uniform, laying into each other on the school grounds of Hoërskool Bastion in Gauteng.
Even more upsetting is the crowd of fellow pupils cheering them on, laughing and doing nothing.
How did we get to a place where we no longer help each other, especially the vulnerable among us?
As a society, we are supposed to be evolving into better human beings.
But instead we seem to be getting worse with time, showing off the most despicable parts of our personalities in public for all the world to see.
In an era where we celebrate politicians who call each other ugly names, use provocative language and become physical on national TV, this is clearly a sign of failed leadership.
Add to that the fact that they are presiding over a national sense of hopelessness epitomised by out-of-control youth unemployment, and one can almost understand how frustration can spill over into physical violence.
Then of course there’s the one pupil with the cellphone, busy recording the entire thing.
Social media gets some of the blame here.
We have taught our kids to whip out their phones first, before doing anything to rescue or diffuse a situation.
It was a while ago when there was a video of a man risking life and limb on a sewer pipe to rescue a child from raging flood waters.
Instead of helping him, a crowd of onlookers all had their phones out to record the drama.
It’s almost as if they are waiting for something terrible to happen, so they can have it on their phones and presumably get hundreds of likes and shares on Facebook.
This is what social media has reduced us to; a bunch of gawking, cheering, narcissistic onlookers more interested in how the situation is going to benefit our egos.
We cannot allow our children to act out in this way.
We cannot be allowing them to believe that violence is an option.
It is blatantly obvious that our government is not equipped or willing to plough resources into our children and our education system.
It is up to us as parents to guide our kids and to give them the tools to deal with challenging situations.
We are supposed to help them find their way; shield them from this overly- violent society, not watch as they become active participants.
Because if they see violence as a solution now while they are still young, then we are sitting on a ticking time bomb for when they enter the adult world.