Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
May 02, 2013 Editorial
The issue of corporal punishment in schools has reared its head once more. These past few days the Guyana Teachers’ Union announced that it would not support the abolition of corporal punishment in schools.
It noticed the increasing incidence of students attacking teachers, some of the attacks so serious that in one case a teacher aborted. Then there was the case of the teacher who suffered severe head injuries when some pupils put a heavy object over a door so that the teacher could be hurt when she entered the classroom.
In Lodge, not so long ago a student attacked a male teacher and caused the teacher to be hospitalised. Of course the student ran, and tries as they might, the law enforcers failed to find him. Incidents of violence against teachers are too numerous to mention.
There are those who argue that corporal punishment translates into violence when the child leaves school. The argument is that the child believes that violence is the major way of solving problems therefore corporal punishment merely perpetuates violence in the society.
One individual cited a reference from a Canadian research to support his argument. It was unfortunate that there were no other reports to support the argument. Proponents of corporal punishment point to the tried and proven. The older folk in the society use themselves as examples. They say that they were subjected to corporal punishment and that they are none the worse as adults.
Everyone is certain that no child loves being beaten but that is where the consensus ends. Some children would become reserved while others would become aggressive. One commentator on the issue some time back said that adults beat children because they could. There is also the finding that there are parents and teachers who vent their anger on children.
These may all be true but no one is finding a solution to the extent of indiscipline that prevails among children. At the same time no one is stopping to consider the inadequacies of the teachers. The inadequate would resort to corporal punishment to compensate for that inadequacy.
However, there are ardent teachers who are going to encounter students who would not respond to the best efforts of the teachers. It is this that has prompted the Guyana Teachers Union to consider the use of corporal punishment as a last resort.
In some cases physical punishment works but in others it fails most horribly. The result is that efforts must then turn to the household and the environment from which the child comes. Research has shown that violence is often a cycle. A child exposed to violence in the home from early in life will grow with the belief that violence is the only way out.
In many cases, then, the orientation of the child begins in the home and there is where most of the problems of student violence against teachers begin. And it is here that those who propose or oppose the retention of corporal punishment in schools should focus their attention.
In Guyana counseling services are extremely limited so schools with difficult children have few options, one of which is to beat the child into submission. The other is to ignore the child which is often the case as the Education Ministry vacillates on whether to maintain corporal punishment in schools. It has already taken away the power of the school to expel recalcitrant children.
The solution may lie in the Education Ministry recruiting more people, this time to work in the field for the benefit of children who come from dysfunctional homes. Research has already shown that children who come from stable homes tend to perform well both academically and socially.
Indeed there is a school inspectorate but by its own admission the Education says that these may take four years to make a return visit to schools. Until this situation is rectified one may suggest that the system maintains that with which it has worked over the years.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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