A Student Brings A Gun To School

[Credo]

Yesterday, one of the teacher's caught a lower mathyom student with a gun. She took it away, but got quite frantic, since it appeared to be a real gun, it was not plastic and it was quite heavy. She didn't know what to do, and I told her to take it to the Director, immediately. The Director was apparently quite scared and didn't dare touch the gun. Someone checked it and it found to be a pellet-type gun, but a rather powerful one.

I was a little surprised today to see the student at school. It seems there was no disciplinary action taken.

Has anybody encountered this type of situation before? What did the school do?

Edited December 16, 2011 by Credo

[slapout]

First, check to see if the kid has a 'permit to carry'

Second, find out who his father/guardian is

If the kid is young (less than 9 years old), a call to the parents should take care of the problem. Too many questions that need to be answered, prior to any hope of real advice. Yes, I have been involved in the this type of scenario and the little one was just trying to impress his peers. No lack of privilege discipline, was considered as the father took care of it, in a arse lifting way.

[Credo]

He does not have a permit to carry a weapon. Even if he did, the school is not the place to bring a weapon, which he tried to conceal. He is 13-14 years old. He was showing the weapon around to other kids when he didn't think he would get caught. He's not a problem kid, but he is one of the lower functioning kids, grade wise and doesn't have a lot of friends.

From my secondary information, this was an accident waiting to happen.

At my previous school, which was affiliated with this one, students were routinely given a short suspension for carry a pocket knife. The policy was pretty strictly enforced.

These are private schools. The kids aren't bad, but I am concerned that the message needs to go out that this is serious and there are consequences.

As it stands now, it appears that it's being ignored.

[Ijustwannateach]

^That's par for the course.

Safety issues are rarely addressed properly in Thai schools. Look around at the dangerous crumbling infrastructure. Watch when they build something new with power tools scattered about and used just centimetres away from students strolling past with no barriers or guards. Just try to find a grounded electrical outlet. You wouldn't say that they were building the schools purposefully to be dangerous, but they certainly don't seem aware of some very common-awareness stuff- possibly because those same dangers existed when THEY were kids and they never realised the level of risk, so that's just 'how things are'.

I would say that when I have raised specific obvious issues, Thai personnel have seen the problem and did take prompt action to correct it. But as for seeing it themselves, it's just not something that often seems to happen.

When it comes to weapons or materials that could be explosive or inflammable, there is a LITTLE more awareness about why this shouldn't be happening in a school- but only a little. And there really isn't any way left to discipline students for these kinds of violations; there's no corporal punishment (legally, anyway) and they can't fail; there's also an understandable reluctance to make it a criminal matter.

One thing that may help- if these incidents are repeated- is if your school has a PTA or equivalent, to get the parents on the issue. No one wants their kids going to schools in which other kids have weapons. I really wouldn't like to see Thailand repeat what some American schools have done and require metal detector checks on entry, but perhaps the parents could apply a bit more pressure to the school to take the issue itself very, very seriously (after all, the school wouldn't want to see hoards of students leaving over safety issues).

[Credo]

Thanks. It's strange that two schools with the same administration would have such different approaches to the issue. We will talk to the administration next week about it.

This student isn't really the problem. I don't think he had any bad intentions, but the message has to get through to ALL students that this is not permitted.