Concrete and Clay

Kodjo Yenga, who was killed in Hammersmith last week, was a student at my school. I have pasted below the assembly that I wrote about him:

Assembly for Kodjo

Kodjo Yenga was at Henry Compton from September 2001 until July 2006.

He sat in this hall, he sat in your seat, listening to these assemblies, he sat in your classrooms listening to your teachers, he walked the corridors, played in the grounds, talked to his friends just like all of you do each and every day. He was one of us. A Compton boy

And Kodjo is now dead.

Kodjo was a good student, he left school with good gcses and was studying 4 A Levels. He would have gone to University and had a great life ahead of him. He was also a talented musician and many of you in this room would have heard his lyrics and listened to him perform. Above all Kodjo was a decent human being, he respected his friends, his family, his school.

But Kodjo was also a member of the Royal Flush or Ryde for Life crew, and that may be one of the reasons why he is no longer here today. And if there is one lesson that needs to be learnt from Kodjo’s tragic death, it is the danger of the ‘respect’ culture – the idea that someone who does not give you respect is deserving of punishment – the idea that someone who is ‘disrespected’ has to take revenge. That leads to 16 year old boys being knifed in the heart on our streets.

This is something that everyone in this room has to think about, to start acting on. That it is wrong. We need to change our behaviour, our aggressive attitude towards each other. We have to leave each other alone, walk away. Being a man is not about being harder and tougher than someone else. Being a man is not about carrying a blade. That is being a coward. Being a man is not 10 against 1. Being a man means sorting out your problems without violence.

We have been presented with an opportunity here, in one of our darkest hours, an opportunity to change. That in our school, in Kodjo’s school we can start to change the way we deal with our problems, the way that you deal with your problems. We need to stop the violence, the level of aggression that is shown towards each other. We need to find a better way of dealing with our anger, our frustration. There isn’t a magic solution, this isn’t going to change over night, but we have learned in this tragic way the consequences of what happens if we don’t change. I don’t ever want to have to face something like this again, and no-one in this room, in our school, in our community should have to either. So when you are in a difficult situation – fix this photo in your head, change your behaviour, take responsibility.