Student Radio Brings Peace
by Rod Hughes
Leave it to the Ticos to find unique ways to bring peace.
The Alajuela Institute has established a low frequency radio station on its high school campus to broadcast home-grown programs and music throughout the buildings, supervised by a teacher but run by the kids.
School administrators and students alike report less friction between the kids. The station functions during recess and lunch hour except during final exams and plays on loudspeakers in the halls. The “control room,” constructed by the kids themselves, consists of a modest sound booth and minimal equipment.
Ronald Gonzalez, an 11th year student and one of the DJs, explains that the station plays all kinds of music but songs with morally objectionable lyrics are screened out. “We started work on this project five years ago and we have a library of 1,000 songs,” he added.
The Institute, founded in 1887, also boasts murals painted by the students. They don’t mar the walls in this school, says the director.
Cristina Rodriguez, the counselor, says that inter-student aggression among the 1,800 attending this high school is now nearly unknown.
The morning daily La Nacion featured a disturbing report today that underscores the importance of Alajuela Institute’s strategy: During the 2006 school year, 57 firearms carried by students were confiscated by teachers here. This is a relatively recent phenomenon in this country where ownership of firearms by adults was rare until the Nicaraguan civil wars in the 1980s.
Two weeks ago, a high school in the western San Jose suburb of Pavas was temporarily closed due to disorders that even included threats to teachers. In Liberia, an unusual case of a single student bullying other students and threatening a teacher underscores a disciplinary problem for school administrators—they cannot legally expell him under the Education Code. Conferences with the family have been fruitless and even the school’s pleas to stop the student from taking private karate lessons (which he uses in attacks on other students) have been lost in the deaf ears of the adoring parents. The student is 17 years old and is in a class of 12- and 13-year-olds, showing poor performance in the past.