Scourge of caning at schools
EDUCATION Minister Angie Motshekga said this week that corporal punishment in schools is an issue that has once again “raised its ugly head”.
While recent news and disturbing videos suggest that she has support for her statements, there is ample evidence to suggest that Motshekga’s metaphor is misleading.
In the 15 years that I have been working with youth enrolled in township schools in Port Elizabeth, the monster of corporal punishment has had its head raised all along.
Corporal punishment has been proven time and time again to be ineffective in changing the behaviour of students.
What students learn from corporal punishment is that the appropriate way to respond to unwanted behaviour is with violence.
We need to look no further than the prevalence of domestic abuse for evidence of this.
I am all for discipline, but it ought to match the behaviour of the students more closely.
My students report receiving beatings for being late, for not completing homework, for giving incorrect answers, and for not standing when they address a teacher.
Students in my after-school programme represent 17 different primary and high schools within Nelson Mandela Bay.
Every one of my 100 students has a story of excessive abuse carried out on them and their classmates.
I once witnessed a teacher hit a fifth-grade student for hitting a classmate of his, her hand slapping his arm with each word of her declaration that “it is wrong to hit other people”!
Another teacher struck a boy for sneezing during class.
Students have reported that when a teacher returns from class to find noisy students, they are all beaten.
One student had been told, “You look like a madam, reading a book in class. You’re no better than the rest of us!”
When the teacher returned to class one day to discover the child reading again, the student was beaten.
Poverty is at the root of behaviour that leads to the corporal punishments of many students.
Several of my students have been beaten for not attending the school’s over-priced farewell and for not contributing to compulsory fundraising events.
Students are beaten and dismissed from school when they do not have the proper uniform.
Many of my students walk great distances to their schools regardless of the weather and whether or not they have eaten breakfast, or dinner the night before.
While students pay less taxi-fare before and shortly after school, this often results in taxi drivers dropping them on the side of the road in exchange for a full-paying adult.
This often results in students being late and either beaten, sent home, or given detention.
The latter two responses have made them victims of robbery or worse, as they are travelling from school at off-peak hours.
Some teachers who pride themselves on the fact that they do not physically abuse students exalt themselves for their magnanimity, but then have students stand or kneel in front of class, or force them to pose in awkward positions for uncomfortably long periods of time.
Teachers who employ corporal punishment are not genuinely concerned about the education of the children in their classrooms.
They may be concerned about discipline and student behaviour and classroom control – all of which might be appropriate concerns for all teachers – but I have been privy, and witness, to countless examples of teachers for whom actual teaching is the least of their concerns.
Of course, it is critical to a child’s education that there are teachers in the classroom who are devoted to the safety of the students in their charge.
It is important that they foster an environment in which students respect themselves, respect each other, and respect their teachers.
It is important to create an environment of respect and love for learning as well, of intellectual curiosity and human decency.
But when students so often enter a classroom in which there isn’t even a teacher, or when their teachers are busy screaming into their cellphones or eating in the classroom, when the extent of their pedagogy is writing notes on the board and expecting that students learn without guidance or modelling or structure, we should not be surprised that students participate in behaviour that warrants address and attention.
But we should be horrified at any instances of corporal punishment employed for disciplining students.
We should be horrified when children are slapped for being late to school, when they so often arrive at classrooms unattended by teachers.
While we acknowledge and recognise and fight against corporal punishment in the home, there is no good argument for its place in the classroom.
Let’s not be fooled. Corporal punishment is not rearing its ugly head again after long absence. It has neither rested, nor is it rare.
But let us not forget that there are many other ways that teachers work against the health, safety, and educational development of the children in their classrooms.
Instead of turning so quickly to corporal punishment, let’s consider actions far more likely to make our classrooms more effective. Let’s put pressure on our teachers to show up in the classroom.
Let’s put pressure on them to actually teach, to prepare for class, to turn their cellphones off, to leave the rod and the switch at home, and to show more genuine concern for the students’ minds and hearts.