Corporal punishment in schools
M. RAGHURAM
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When will the spectre of corporate punishment stop haunting children?
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Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy
Ultimate humiliation: Serves no purpose.
Corporal punishment in schools is coming back with a vengeance for all wrong reasons. Children are being punished for small things like wearing a red ribbon instead of the colour specified in the uniform code, for using scented erasers, a pencil with fancy decorations on the top and the silly things children always do in school.
Teachers and head teachers look and act even sillier when they get to the level of awarding corporal punishment for these childish things. There are terrible things some teachers do to get students to submit to their ‘rule of law’ in schools. Making them stand on the bench is still the old favourite; standing on one leg outside the classroom on the corridor is another. Making them squat under the table of the teacher for the entire period can do terrible things to children.
There are instances when the teacher throws a chalk piece or a duster at students yawning in class. The worst treatment that a teacher could mete out to a child is to make her or him to do homework on the shoe stand.
Adverse effects
The poor children and their hapless parents swallow the insults and the ill treatment for fear of more trouble and act as if everything is all right. The managements of educational institutions also don’t reprimand the teacher for fear of the teacher associations creating a ruckus. In such conditions the Parent Teacher Associations also cannot come to help the children.
According to paediatrician, Shantaram Baliga, corporal punishment in schools has profound effects on the child’s personality. It wrecks the child emotionally and infuses a fear complex that might seem like an anxiety disorder later in life. The humiliating experience of corporal punishment in front of classmates makes children feel inferior and might trigger serious inhibitions later in life making kids introverted and result in them being unsuccessful.
There are worse things happening in schools. In one local school a boy was made to lower his underpants and was whacked by the teacher in front of fifty other children. When the boy refused to go to school or to any other school the parents had to seek help and rehabilitate him.
Important rules
The Delhi State government promulgated a cohesive set of School Education rules in 1973 which restrains corporal punishment. Relevant portion of Rule 37 of The Delhi School Education Rules, 1973 is as follows:
4(a) Corporal punishment maybe given by the head of the school in cases of persisting impertinence or rude behaviour towards the teachers, physical violence, intemperance and serious form of misbehaviour with other students
b) Corporal punishment shall not be inflicted on the students who are in ill health
c) Where corporal punishment is imposed, it shall not be severe or excessive and shall be so administered as not to cause bodily injury
d) Where cane is used for inflicting corporal punishment, such punishment shall take the form of strokes not exceeding 10 on the palm of the hand e) Every punishment inflicted on a student shall be recorded in the Conduct Register of such student.
Child Counselor and director of the Prajna Counseling centre in Mangalore Professor Hilda Rayappan says corporal punishment has taken on newer forms including psychological and tactical forms where children are humiliated, embarrassed, insulted and rusticated and made to spend long hours at school even after the school hours. Colin Farrell, U.S. researcher, on corporal punishment feels that corporal punishment has the potential to become a full scale rule unto itself. Even musicians like the late Syd Barrett along with his co musician Roger Waters of the rock group Pink Floyd have aired their dissent over the corporal punishment in schools. A television interviewer once asked Barrett after the launch of ‘Another Brick in the Wall II’ in 1979 which featured the number ‘…. We don’t need no education…’ why was he so vocal about corporal punishment?
Barrett replied “Ask the children how it feels when the teacher whacks them in front of 50 other children.”
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