Corporal Punishment: Where does Human reason go?

Binita Tiwari

New Delhi

Sat, 29 Mar 2008: 

Since four months Rinki Kaushiki had been grappling with life and finally on Wednesday succumbed to her injury. The fifteen years old and student of Class X of Dinkar Model School was allegedly thrashed by her teacher, Dheerendra for purportedly refusing to take tuition from him.

The death of this child s once again raised the question of silent but violent practices of Corporal Punishment (CP) in our school.

CP is defined as giving pain and suffering which is anticipated to change a person’s behaviour but the age-old practice has come under severe criticism by social scientists and psychiatrist. Many countries have thoroughly banned this mode of punishment but still it continues to thrive on this so-called civilized world.

What could be more painful than a punishment, which takes someone’s life meant for correction? Is it not the reflection of serious melancholy in our society? What purpose can beating and caning serve if the damage is too harsh to a student’s life? Is it not the case of grave human right abuse? The agony that one of the safest places in the world, school, cannot take guarantee of your child’s life is spine chilling.

Since last few months several of such cases have come to the forefront, one of them was shocking incident in which a teacher allegedly made a girl student to strip in class. Did the teacher bother for a while that by doing so he has given an intense feeling of shame to the girl, which is not only painful but can have deleterious effect on girl’s psychology. The damages by such punishment are profound and can vary from depression to low self-esteem to suicide depending upon the emotional level of the students.

Many suggestions have poured in from academicians and experts to review our education system, which does not give value to ones creativity and imagination but rather value cramming the plethora of books. Also the numbers of school are growing uncontrollably and hence many incompetent teachers have made their way at those respectable posts. Moreover the pay scale is not sufficient and the growing pressure on teacher because of underperformance of students has also grown.

The teacher finds scapegoating as the only option to vent their emotion and pressure. They move their blame and responsibility away from themselves which not only turned out to be barbaric but deadly too on students’ life.

The helpless students who get such punishments not only become rebellious but also prone to drug abuse and alcohol addiction. Many studies have found that such students grow up to become a molester or a rapist too, while others say that pornography has its root in our tradition of beating our children.

The United Nation Human rights standard has discouraged the use of CP; many other organisations including the American Psychological Association have opposed the use of CP in any form. It says, “corporal punishment is violent, unnecessary, may lower self-esteem, is likely to train children to use physical violence, and is liable to instill hostility and rage without reducing the undesired behavior.”

In India an NGO “Plan India” in its inter state study has found that on an average every government school student in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan gets hit by teachers at least five times per class per day. This study very much give an indication that CP is still deep rooted as a mode of disciplinary action in our school.

Not only teachers in school but parents too punish their children to correct them, rather impact of such punishment sometime remains attached to the one’s life. The punishment meant to discipline can cripple them for lifetime. It can break the trust bond between teacher and student, between parents and children who chose CP as an easy and a quick mode to correct the behavioral difficulties.

Studies are there which support positive reinforcement as much more effective tool to improve children. By making true effort to look into the problem of children behaving in particular manner as the problem can be one but cause can be many.

But when students bore the frustration of teachers without being the reason, the conduct of teachers too comes under scanner. Recently the Central Government has sent advisories to all State Governments to ban corporal punishment in schools, it also must generate enough consensus to educate teacher before assigning them the duty, which not only build character but add to the grooming of the nation.

There must be some other way to tell children what not to do and there must be some way to tell children what to do.