Crime and School Violence in Botswana Secondary Schools

This book is a product of my PhD Dissertation which I completed in Spring 2003 in the University of Ohio, Athens, USA. The work captures the fact that in traditional villages in Botswana, education was carefully supervised by the elders for the maintenance of law and order among children in the home and in society. But, this village education has now been replaced by modern stratified structures mainly the Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MOE& SD), Ministry of Labor and Home Affairs each ministry plagued by rampant problems. The purpose of this research has been to address the problem of violence in secondary schools as exemplified by one school--Moeding College in the village of Otse. The research was carried out over an eight week period among a school population of approximately 1570 students, 95% of whom lived in the hostels. Several developments in school worsened student discipline including the lack of collegiality and the isolation of the academic setting from the MOE&SD. The failure of the curriculum to address teachers' needs to prepare students for end of year examinations appeared to intensify use of discipline.