Small assault, nobody hurt

At the boarding school where I work, there was an unexpected turn of events yesterday at about 10pm when five local youths scaled the gate in pursuit of two of my students. Their attentions were not, sad to say, honorable. More violent. Fortunately, they were deterred by the presence of myself and a colleague.

Skipping the details of why my two students were being pursued by locals, one is left to wonder what the optimum reaction should be. This is not a deprived area, and although there is relative depravation, it would take a sociologist of manic genius to flog that as an excuse for everybody involved. I suspect (as mentioned earlier this week) family problems, but I have no idea.

If they were caught (not likely), they should be punished in some way. I've always thought this is non-negotiable; there should certainly be more of an emphasis placed on the rehabilitation of incarcerated prisoners, but rehabilitation as a concept makes no sense without the original acceptance of wrongdoing and the implied punishment.

But this was a small incident, and would have been so even if my students had been physically hurt, sadly. The foremost emotion was pity; pity that people would choose to spend their Friday evenings drinking and pursuing other people with intent to harm. But I strongly suspect that my pity would mean nothing to them.

Give them something to do? But what, and what happens if they get bored? In the last resort, whose life is it anyway?

Larkin may have been right, but not in the way he meant.