THE claims made by some students and their parents in the past two weeks are disturbing.

Their school principals, they alleged, had told them not to talk about serious incidents that had happened in their schools.

Not even to their parents? I wonder.

On one occasion, a student had thrown a punch at his female form teacher and then again at his adult male counsellor. The police deemed it fit for the boy to be picked up.

In another school, seven upper secondary students had taunted and abused a lower secondary student for being effeminate. The school deemed it fit for the culprits to be publicly caned.

But - and this is what shocked me - students in both schools were told to keep mum about the incidents.

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To quote several students The New Paper spoke to, "there was a gag order" imposed by the schools. They were not to talk about the incident, or blog about it.

And a letter, from a parent of a boy from one of the schools to me, was really telling.

He said: "What is appalling is that instead of finding a solution to the problem, all the students were gathered in the school hall where the principal told the students to keep it private and keep the matter discreet. This is definitely not what I expect from this school."

As a parent, I, too, would be disturbed if the school were to tell my kids to keep things from me. Especially incidents like the ones mentioned above.

I would be very concerned if my children were studying in a school where students have zero respect for authority.

Worse, I would be absolutely disturbed if my children were studying in a school where there were groups of bullies roaming the corridors, instilling fear in their juniors.

I dare say that I would probably take my kids out of the school, for I wonder what kind of learning can take place in an environment of fear.

It is indeed disturbing if schools tell their students to keep mum on the day-to-day happenings in their lives.

In our home, questions like "How did your day go?", "Did anything out of the ordinary happen today?" or "Is there something new you learnt in school today?" are asked almost daily.

And usually, the kids would provide some fresh information, be it some competition the school won, test results or something they did for the first time.

So I can imagine the trauma they would be put through if they were told by their schools not to discuss a major incident like that of a public caning meted out on some cowardly seniors who bullied one younger boy or some emotionally disturbed kid who beat his teachers.

Both incidents would provide for good learning experiences, not only in the school, but at home as well.

What exactly is emotionally disturbed and is it an acceptable reason to go wild?

Should seniors earn respect from juniors, or is beating it out of them the way to go? What would be the appropriate form of punishment for such offences?

There is plenty of talk about communication with stakeholders in education, and schools must realise that one key stakeholder is the parent.

And parents, even if they are not the first to be informed, should at least be kept informed of major incidents and how the schools handled them.

Otherwise, they may be forced to start overruling the schools' directives, and that may just lead to a whole bunch of confused children.

This article was first published in The New Paper.