It’s a matter of grave concern that there should be so much anger in the young that a schoolboy was capable of killing his teacher inside a classroom. Thursday’s murder in Chennai of a 41-year-old teacher by a teenaged Class 9 student may be a rare case, but it reflects the violent times we live in.

While school playground aggression among peers is not unknown, to see angst spill over into a premeditated stabbing with a cheap knife deliberately acquired for this purpose gives the crime a worrisome dimension.
Psychologists will point to the repetitive violence seen on television screens and in the movies as a possible cause. More, youngsters today connect immediately to the violence in graphic three-dimensional video games that are so representative of our times. All this does not, however, explain why there is so much pent-up belligerence in young people. Our heart goes out to the dedicated teacher who lost her life for just doing her job.
That extreme caution is needed while dealing with the sensitivities of students placed in high stress situations in classrooms is not unknown to teachers either. Their lot is to be pitied as they have to deal most with the academic insufficiency of less committed or distracted students. Counselling of young people who feel inadequate in scholastic or social skills poses a huge challenge, which is exacerbated further by the huge numbers involved in our country. We simply can’t afford to be defeated by the sheer enormity of this task.