Will sparing the rod spoil our school children?

Being subjected to violence by teachers suppresses creativity and initiative in children even when they are older.


Syed Mohammad Ali April 07, 2013
The writer is a development consultant and a PhD student at the University of Melbourne syed.ali@tribune.com.pk

Hitting a child at school — or outside it — is banned in many countries which recognise it as an evident form of child abuse. However, in countries like our own, corporal punishment has been rampantly used with children at school, at home, and in the workplace where many poor children are forced into labour.

Provincial governments have officially tired to ban the use of corporal punishment in government schools. Education departments in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Balochistan issued directives to this effect over a decade ago, while Sindh took longer to follow suit. In effect, however, the directives were not strictly enforced since corporal punishment was considered a valid form of maintaining discipline.

Institutionalised corporal punishment within the education system has been commonly cited as a major reason for children not completing their studies. According to one study, 30 per cent of the children found to have left government schools by the fifth grade in the past year had done so due to being beaten up by their teachers

In 2005, the UN Children’s Fund, in collaboration with Save the Children and the government, conducted an in-depth survey to determine the extent of corporal punishment. Over 3,500 children were interviewed in three districts during this survey, all of whom reported being subjected to some form of physical punishment. The Islamabad-based Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and the Pakistan Pediatric Association have also been highlighting the lingering problem of teachers using physical violence in schools.

Given this scenario, it was encouraging to see the National Assembly unanimously adopt a bill last month, just prior to its dissolution, providing up to one-year imprisonment and up to Rs50,000 penalty for the person found guilty of inflicting corporal punishment on children. Additionally, the person found responsible for the punishment can also be charged under separate laws if physical injury occurs. While the Senate still needs to pass this bill for it to become a law, this move is a welcome step.

Also, there is need to create more awareness about the damage corporal punishment causes. Child psychologists and educationists point out how corporal punishment instills fear in students and has an adverse impact on their school performance. Being subjected to violence by teachers also suppresses creativity and initiative in children even when they are older. Corporal punishment has been blamed for the wider forms of violence prevalent in our society, ranging from domestic violence to crime.

Corporal punishment can, however, easily be replaced with the use of more constructive pedagogical approaches. Placing responsibilities on students who are not found to be paying due attention to their studies, for instance, has been found to make them more responsible as well as better learners. Involving parents in ensuring students do their homework or to prevent their school absence can also deliver more effective results than hitting students. Such techniques require more effort by teachers, aided by supplemental measures such as more manageable classroom sizes, but they have been shown to deliver more effective results than inflicting physical punishment.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 8th, 2013.

COMMENTS (9)

cautious | 10 years ago | Reply

If the child is a problem then send him home for punishment - teachers have no business hitting kids and if they can only control kids by hitting them - they should find another occupation. Lastly - where are the parents in all this - you would think that a parent who had his child abused by a teacher would stick up for the kid.

Socrates | 10 years ago | Reply

@amir jafri: I am yet to meet one of those thousands.

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