Corporal Punishment

Using some mild type of punishment is OK to discipline students. All this student teacher `friendship` is pile of crap. Students in US lack respect in general. Few want to teach these days.

Corporal punishment in extreme is damaging and leaves negative impact thru life.

In old days. When classrooms did not have walls or doors (under a tree), many a students tired of corporal punishment, would let their sentiments know about corporal punishment to the ``masters`` in choicest Punjabi abuse and run away. Those were the good old days.

There is a difference between punishing a child and child abuse. A couple of raps on the palm of the hand with a ruler for misbehaviour does NOT constitute abuse; neither is spanking a child. Hitting a little girl several times on the head with a heavy textbook is abuse. We risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we ban all corporal punishment because some sadists abuse children.

i feel sorry for what u may have experienced as a very young child. your particular experience may have been quite damaging but i do feel small punishments are not only okay but sometimes required to teach a child. as for physical abuse, thats a different story and itll be good to hear what chowkies vies are on the subject and thier own experiences.

Kinza - This is a very well written article. I fully agree with you that corporal punishment, in ALL its forms, should be banned from schools and from homes. For a short term benefit, they cause a long lasting damage. This violence that is ingrained in children`s minds then carries over to society when those children grow up to be adults. Beating of a human being is not a way to correct that human being.

Whats good for the goose is good for the gander. If children can become better human beings after getting these beatings, then parents and teachers should recieve the same treatment to help them excel as well.

I studied in a boarding school in India. and teachers were not allowed to touch a child. To enforce discipline through punishment, we were made to do physical exercises, detention or revocation of certain privelages. I am sure that these forms of punishments can be adapted for day school as this is a far better way of correcting a child.

I remember that we had an art teacher who at times could not control himself, and would end up slapping a student. The next scene would usually be of the student heading towards the Headmasters office and the art teacher running after the child and apologizing !!!

Note: This is a serious topic, and so are my comments here.

To #1 kaurasach, #2 fuzair, and #3 paindupastry

I must respectfully disagree with all three of you. Here is why.

Even if you say that “a little bit” of spanking is okay, how do you ensure that you are not opening the flood gates? Once those grown-up hands have been raised in anger, they have a way of taking over. Who is going to be present there, monitoring that just the “proper” amount gets administered, no matter how “peeved” the teacher is. That “little” bit may end up as being a LOT for a “receiving” child. Some kids can be more fragile than others, so what is a “proper” amount?

There should be absolutely NO physical punishment allowed in this whole equation between an adult and a child, because it is always unequal in favor of the adult. The onus must always remain on the adult to keep his temper, no matter how maddening the circumstances.

Kids are always learning: from their parents and family members, from school peers and teachers, from surrounding society, media, and so on. Even when a teacher is spanking a child, the child is still learning: learning that it is okay to use physical violence to settle an issue. At the same time, the child misses an opportunity to learn how to communicate even under very trying circumstances! Therefore, children who are victims of abuse (whether at home, school, or elsewhere) are likely to grow up into adults who are uncommunicative and violence prone – perpetuating the vicious circle of the abused children growing into abusive adults.

I still have occasional nightmares about one particular episode from my childhood. I will never forget that day in grade 6 (in North Bihar) when this Science teacher made an example of this one errant student. In retrospect, I don’t even remember the infraction that kid had committed, so it may have been very minor. But boy that teacher was mad! Not only he broke several canes on the back of that kid, he humiliated him further by forcing the kid to spit in the kids’s own outstretched palm, then making him lick that palm clean right in front of the class! I am not sure if it helped that one kid’s conduct become any better, but I am reasonably sure the other members of that class, who were not even touched, got indelibly damaged too and the whole class still carries that memory-I certainly do even after all those years. In retrospect, I realize that particular teacher was probably a disturbed individual, maybe even an abuse victim himself in childhood. But the system that allowed him to operate in that setup where he exerted such a degree of control was the real culprit!

There, I have said it.

Sincerely,
BeeJay.

Hitting with a ruler,fist,book or slap constitutes physical abuse.More painful is the blow to the ego of the child because this is done in open in front of the whole class,sometimes the whole school.Studies have proved beyond doubt that children exposed to physical abuse at school or home grow up to become violent adults.At the same time it is unfair to blame teachers solely for this because they are not properly trained to handle the psychy of young children.Child psychology has to be a compulsory subject for teacher training courses(which I suppose is at avery rudimentary level at present).
Teacher-student ratio is another problem in our part of the world.There may be 50 to 100 students in one class and at some places,single teacher handles 2-3 classes at the same time.Plus there are poor woking conditions,no electicity,poor buildings,adhocism,pressures from beaurocracy etc. which always weigh on teacher`s mind.Expecting teachers to behave in ideal manner under these conditions amounts to asking too much.Frustrated teachers sometimes displace their anger on helpless children.There is no point in comparing American or English teaching system with Pakistani or Indian one.

Corporal punishment has been legally banned by the Supreme court in India but cases of children being severly battered are still being reported.Till now i have heard only of one incident in which the teacher was suspended from duty for his act.Parents,whose children report being beaten up at school,also usually ignore it,thereby becoming also guilty to some extent.

malik 99 and paindupastry: thanks for liking the article...abuse is the worst form of educating a kid....all through my school years I hated going to school because of a few insane teachers...I have this wish that one day I can meet them face to face and inflict the same type of punishments on them just the way they inflicted on us...i was lucky enough to have a loving family and guidance and so moved on with my life on the right track but not everyone can cope with these kinda experiences easily...

kaurasach, fuzair: I compeletely DISAGREE with you...I do agree however, that disciplining is required for kids but that can be done through other means like for instance setting up good examples. There`s a big difference between a parent disciplining a kid (even if it involves minor spanking) and a teacher spanking a kid in front of the whole class...

BeeJay: totally agree with you...nice comments...i can feel what you must`ve gone through after watching that humiliating episode at your school...no doubt, these things haunt u forever...

Chow,

Kinza Farhan

Personally, I have endured Corporal Punishment in the school to the extent of abuse. About 99% of it was well desreved because of of the pranks I used to pull sparing no one including teachers. It was just all impulsive like a djinn had overpowered me. Once a teacher who was called the dehshat khan among the school children was thru punishing me, I asked him if I could go to drink water. He was so pissed that he told me that the only way I could go was thru the window. Piece of cake, I jumped the window. By the time I was done drinking water Lucifer took over my control. I climbed the school roof thru the drain pipe, which we usually used to do to retrieve our cricket balls; walked to the ventilator (roshandan) of my class room; opened it from outside and shouted ``Sir may I come in``. My parents were called the next day and they told me to shape up or else....I went straight for one whole week. That was the longest I ever did. Next week, as I was conducting the early morning assembly program, I took a moment at the podium after the event and called attention of the whole school, that was lined up in the school yard to look at the school gate where a dozen or so of late comers were standing, waiting to be punished after the assembly, and then admitted to their classroom. Their punishment was the subject of my speech. ``How long we will have to endure this abuse by teachers``, ``how do you expect us to become responsible citizens, when all we learn here is that might is right``. Damage was already done when teachers snatched the mike from me. I called all the students for a walk out. And the school walked out. That was the first ever in school; it slipped the rugg under from all teachers. Though they were able to bring the students back in by intimidation, coercion and threats, the pressing issue was how to deal with me. I deserved to be rusticated and most of the teachers were in favor of that but my urdu teacher was the only one against it. She made impassioned speeches in front of the school committee in my presence and and sometimes in my absence. Not to mention that she was my mother`s friend but she was also the in-charge of student discipline. So at last, the solution to this ``menace`` that she presented was finally accepted by the committee. They appointed me the Chief Proctor of the school. I was in grade 9 then. That was very first because the C.Proctor has always been traditionally the grade 10 student. So corporal punishment worked quite well for me. It made me the king of all proctors- girls and boys. Some of them were quite cute - (girl proctors I mean) and I already knew that usually girls have a fetish for the man at the helm.

Urstruly:
A not so innocent query.

Do Proctors later become Proctologists?

echo

to some extent. As a proctor when you get a chance to exercise your powers to have finger in everything it becomes a second nature.

Urstruly:
grassiaa muchoo!

`` dil sey shauqu-e ruukh-e nak-O na gayaa
taaknaa jhaanknaa kabhh-O na gayaa``.

--hUm bhee koo-ay rah-e dildaar kay zindaani haiN.

ahquar ,
vghairaa vghairaa

READ this & cry.

Corporate punishment & such debates are luxuries in a country where the entire system under Muslim-brahmins is hell-bent to turn the nation into Dalitistaan.

``If everybody gets same education, where will servants come from``? The Ma Ma Blacksheep swings her chakdee ( fat-laden behind) and coquettishly brushes by Ba Ba Blacksheep.

Ba Ba Blacksheep acts--what else--sheepish. Bah Humbug, he mutters!

---

as a teacher myself i can see first-hand what the banning of corporal punishment in schools has done to the educatiuon system here in the UK: ruined it! Kids have no resepct anymore. What used to be the envy of the world is now a travesty.

Our elders were correct when they said, ``maan baap ka pyaar aur ustaad kii maar phool hotay hain`` (The love of the parents and the (corporal) punishment of the teacher are flowers)``.

In Panjabi we say: Allah sent down four divinely revealed books...and the fifth was the danda!
and:

Danda-peer!

But then there are our Ba Ba Blacksheep.



Tony Blair woos Muslim voters
UK Bureau
march 24, 2005

Conscious
of the fact that Muslims are angry because of his Iraq policy, Tony
Blair has started to woo them through various concessions. Muslims
affect outcomes in at least eight constituencies where they are in
large numbers. But in many other fringe seats their support is also
vital.

On Wednesday night, Blair rebuked his own Chief Inspector
of Schools for criticising Islamic education in the country. He
distanced himself from the chief inspector David Bell in a lengthy
interview with a Muslim newspaper.

Bell had said that Muslim
faith schools were failing to prepare pupils for life in British
society. He had also said that the pupils were not being prepared to
respect other cultures. But Blair distanced himself from Bell, the man
the Government has put in charge of raising standards in schools.
|
``
I don`t actually agree with the comment that they are not teaching kids
proper discipline or how to integrate into the community,`` Blair told
the Muslim Weekly. Such a statement is seen to underline Blair`s
anxiety about the Muslim support to Labour in the forthcoming General
Election, expected on May 5.

He also insisted that Labour had
gone out of its way to help British Muslims. Pressed on why should
Muslims vote Labour, Blair said, `` There is multi-cultural and
multi-racial society we believe in that we have done a lot to foster in
this country in the past few years.``

But it is as yet to be seen how much Blair would succeed in mollifying Muslims.