Awareness of teachers to stop corporal punishment in schools

Rakib Hasan, a seventh grade student of BAF Shaheen College, Dhaka attended the final exam of the last day of 3rd term examination. While coming out of exam hall, he was stopped by his physical education teacher to check the length of his hair. In the name of controlling discipline in school, the teacher cut the sickly student's hair unevenly as part of punishment. The pain took longer than a week to be alleviated. Such types of corporal punishment are the regular affairs of thousands of schools of Bangladesh. Punishments on children vary from physical to psychology and they are highly practiced both at schools and homes which are the most important places of their upbringing and learning. Most of the physical punishment stories are not even revealed due to the fear of exam marks. Adolescent students from various schools shared their personal stories to the writer with an assurance that their names will not be revealed. Many teachers follow different ways while executing their absurd ways of punishment. Their favourite disciplinary punishments include standing on the benches with a leg lifted, belt, ruler or cane strokes on hands or bottom sides, kneeling down, sitting like a chair, confinement in a classroom, slapping, pinching, pulling ears and doing sit-ups, pressing a pen in the middle with two fingers and cock position ('murga') in which a victim is made to sit with arms under the legs and the hands holding the ears. Punishments like these in front of teachers, and students especially before junior students are quite humiliating. It is a matter of great shame for us that children are still suffering from the terrors of such corporal punishments whereas such kind of punishment is defined under human rights law as "any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort". Recently the government of Bangladesh, after a series of injurious incidents, has banned corporal punishment in all types of educational institutions. Though the brave decision seems to be one of the finest in the history of the human rights of young minds in Bangladesh, physical punishments are being practiced in various parts of the country; reasons being the lack of mass awareness about it. Just a week ago an English teacher of Khaled Haider School in Dhaka was sent to jail for beating up 37 students of class six for failing to remember their holiday homework. Sadly, our present classroom managements are not up-to-date due to the insufficient resources, untrained teachers and excessive teacher student ratio. So in fear of losing the control in the class, teachers behave with absurdity going beyond the reasons. Our educationists slate those schools that use corporal punishments. They opine that students need a safe, enjoyable, interesting learning environment and nobody can have that with fear and severe punishment. Moreover, schools with such abusing manner often have poorer academic achievement. They are in fact behind the high dropout and truancy rates. The concept that leads the teachers to physical punishment on children is to create feedback that the children dislike so that they will wish to avoid a repeat of that feedback. For example, if someone does not do his or her homework or behave in an improper way regularly, they will get the same painful feedback. So they would rather do their homework regularly and behave well to avoid such things to happen. According to psychologists, every single child reacts differently to stimuli and feedback as he or she is different in characteristics. So such punishments to children may result in injuries that produce anger in them and the negative side-effects weaken the relationship between teachers and schools involved. To avoid any kind of unwanted situation, students should be motivated to behave properly and in discipline as per the rules and regulations of schools. However, on the part of teachers, they should be trained up well to create a learner-oriented classroom situation. As we believe that excellent lesson plans and preparations would keep learners continually on task and interested in the lessons and as a result, they will be interested to participate and will not cause problems to others. Thus, ours is a community in which parents request teachers to beat their children if they see irregularities in them. Most parents don't even intend to attend the parents' meeting with class teachers to listen to the problems of their children. They think their job is done as they send their issues to schools. Though belated, our education ministry has taken commendable decision to provide sufficient trainings on classroom management techniques for our teachers at primary and secondary level. So physical punishment in schools and their fatal impacts will be reduced dramatically. But we want their decision to be implemented soon. Under such trainings, generally new teaching methodologies and management principles are focused. It is imperative that teachers need to be good performers in their own classrooms to make them role models for their students so that their students get exposed to the true meanings of education which is appealing and creative. It is interesting to note that Bangladesh takes initiative to ban corporal punishment though in 21 states of USA, the corporal punishment remains legal. This is high time to change the mindset. To improve the behavioral attitude and retain the quality in children, teachers, parents, and children should work coherently. Children have the right to enjoy their due human rights getting free from all kinds of physical and mental violence. In doing so, children need their teachers' support to demolish all psychological barriers in between them and help them to boost them up to act independently in classrooms with full participation and interaction. The writer can be reached at jamdani85@yahoo.com