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Students’ (mis)behaviour
S.S. RAJAGOPALAN
The exhortation of Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer to frame a child rights code (The Hindu, November 14) is timely and should be acted upon in view of continuing violence on children. The death of a student asked to run around the ground as punishment for late-coming evoked a good deal of response. But it was strange that most of it justified the punishment. A senior secondary school principal went to the extent of calling it a sta
ndard practice. But it was disappointing that no report tried to find out from the student’s angle why he came late.
As a headmaster for nearly 34 years, I used to come across late-coming almost daily. In a school of nearly 2,000 students, about 10 to 15 students would come late. It is not a big figure.
Once a habitual late-comer was sent to me for admonition. On seeing me, he began to cry and spelt out reasons for his coming late. He had to fetch water from about 5 km away and prepare lunch for both of his parents who would go for their work early morning. However much he tried he was not able to complete the chores on time. I thought his reasons were genuine.
Often students come late due to reasons beyond their control such as household duties, cycle puncture, bus breakdown, unwashed uniform, etc.
Similar is the case of students not doing their homework. Some of them get help from their parents or private tuition-masters while many of them do not have anyone to assist them. Copying from other students’ notebooks is generally resorted to in the full knowledge that no teacher cares to go through the homework and find out whether the student has done it on his own.
Once I came across a student whose father, an alcoholic, did not want him to study but go to work. He was living in a single-room hut which was the bedroom, kitchen, dining hall, all rolled into one. As there was no electricity, he had to study when there was sunlight before his father returned home. Often he couldn’t do it. But he was an eager learner. Teachers not knowing his deprivations administered the standard punishment of asking him to stand outside. What a shameful experience for a good boy!
It was Rousseau who began his educational classic Emile with the words “God makes all good, but it is men who meddle with them and they become evil.” Every teacher should keep these prophetic remarks in his or her mind before coming to judgment on students’ (mis)behaviour.
A fine understanding of students’ viewpoints will make the schools a better and safer place for the children. I have often found during my interaction with teachers that almost all of them are ignorant of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children (UNCRC). It is therefore highly gratifying that our erudite and humane judge has called for enacting a child rights code.
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