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Teach your children well..!

By Robert Clements. Dated: 5/25/2017 12:14:39 AM

It was a rasta roko or road protest: Students in school uniform standing in the middle of the road! Blocking traffic! Creating traffic jams! Preventing cars and buses, taxis and other vehicles to proceed further….!
A strike!"
This happened last Saturday, because a girl was knocked down by a taxi while crossing the road…
…I can imagine the shock and anger of the other students….
..But was it the taxi driver's fault?
Didn't she see the taxi coming? Did she try to run across the road confusing the driver? My mind goes back to my years in school … Our headmaster got in touch with the traffic cops and organized a Traffic Patrol for the students on Mount Road. Every morning the seniors, were given the opportunity to regulate traffic on the road outside..
What a feeling..!
I remember holding up the STOP sign and watching the cars coming to a halt before me and then flexing my left hand with military precision and allowing the vehicles on my left to proceed.
I remember blowing my whistle powerfully and allowing the juniors in the school to cross the road, and then after the last one ad crossed cheerfully beckoning the traffic to move.
Our Traffic patrol patrolled one of the busiest roads in the city and weren't we proud we were part of this unit!
But apart from the pride, it inculcated in us a sense of road discipline.
We realized we had to cross only at pedestrian crossings.
We learnt to judge the speed of vehicles.
And later when we drove on the roads, that same discipline we learnt in school automatically became a way of life.
Last Saturday because of the strike by the school students thousands of people went late to work, and thousand of man hours were lost … a girl was injured too.
Isn't it time we taught our children about traffic rules and regulations? About how to cross, when to cross …?
Isn't it time schools organized Traffic Patrols with the help of the police.
We have enough roads all over the country for all the schools.
Lives .. precious lives can be saved, not just those of children, but of grown ups who have received such training in their schools days…
I heard there were teachers also who took part in the strike..!
When have we started teaching our children to start agitations..?
What kind of monsters are we going to allow them to grow up to be, that they are taught to disrupt normal life using wrong methods?
And finally lets stop blaming the drivers for rash driving … in ninety cases out of hundred it is we pedestrians who are to blame.
Let us teach our children well …. It's about time..!
bobsbanter@gmail.com