Classroom punishment

Nothing warrants physical aggression towards a student

The case of a four-year-old boy in Multan experiencing temporary hearing loss because his teacher blew a figurative gasket upon being unable to manage his classroom is disgraceful. The student became a scapegoat for the collective behaviour of the class. The problems with this issue are multifaceted, the primary of which is the adherence to corporal punishment in Pakistani classrooms. Other issues deal with the weakness of education; teachers with limited teacher resources and little practice in classroom management. Granted, considering the kind of behaviour our youth is exposed to daily be it terrorism, violence, or crime and drugs, public and private school teachers have a mammoth task of undoing the damage. Much of this learned violence is brought into schools by students and demonstrated to fellow classmates, which must stop. Nothing, however, warrants physical aggression towards a student.

Education programmes are needed to impart knowledge on classroom management. Admittedly, because many teachers do not come from formal teacher training programmes, school systems have a responsibility to provide teachers with the relevant training especially considering that many schools are housed in large cities and ghettoised areas where crime and violence are common

Recognising we have many other medieval statutes, lawmakers and school boards should outlaw any form of corporal punishment and strike hard against perpetrators because support for the same by Pakistani teachers is as high as 70 per cent according to recent reports. In the case above, the principal must take ownership of his staff member’s actions and be reprimanded for not having stricter rules against physicality by teachers. Authorities must execute implementation of provincial corporal punishment laws and consider a national law, such as the Prohibition of Corporal Punishment Bill 2014, which did not pass the Senate. The teacher in question has proven too unstable to be responsible for young children and must no longer be allowed to work with children.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 30^th, 2017.

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