Reach out to curb discipline problems
MANY parents have become very vocal against corporal punishment as they consider their children so precious that no one should have the right to lay a hand on them.
Discipline cannot be maintained by just following the guidelines or standard operating procedures (SOP) drawn up by the Education Ministry.
Children in different areas – urban, semi-urban, rural, squatter, new village or estate – behave differently, and the SOP or guidelines have to be interpreted clearly by principals and teachers, and communicated to all students and parents before implementing them firmly.
Unless the principal and teachers of a particular school really understand the culture prevailing in the areas where the children come from, they will not be able to put into operation the general SOP and guidelines given by the Education Ministry.
Principals and teachers must interact with the community and political leaders, NGOs, youth organisations, village/new village heads, officials at the various government agencies and anyone who may be opinion leaders in the area serviced by the school.
The type of punishment to be dispensed on students with disciplinary problems, and this should only be as a last resort, will depend on the locality, prevailing culture and child-rearing patterns.
I know many principals and teachers feel this is an unnecessary burden as it is not within their scope of work. But the task of educating can never be prescribed through a manual. Teaching is a profession that demands teachers to understand their charges as well as possible before they can effec- tively carry out their tasks.
If teachers think that students are the same everywhere, and as the curriculum is the same for a particular age group throughout the country and text books are also the same, they are bound to face problems. Such an attitude may be possible in a residential school but not in a normal day school where the problems of discipline and bullying are getting out of hand.
Parent-Teacher Associations should be correctly constituted with representatives from all areas as well as from the students’ ethnic communities so that they are able to reach out to all the parents and make them interested in what’s happening in the school.
One important aspect is to keep all divisive features such as politics and religion out of the normal administration and management of the school and PTA.
Further, although there is a special senior teacher in charge of student affairs, it does not mean the other teachers do not have any role in student behaviour and discipline. The principal as the head of the institution has to create a school culture where all teachers contribute towards moulding a sound group of students with proper curricular as well as co-curricular activities.
Co-curricular activities, if well conceived, planned and implemented, will have a positive effect on students’ behaviour even if they are from areas beset by social problems.
Getting police officers to enter schools to maintain discipline must be the last resort. It is also an indication that the educators have failed in their roles.
The Education Ministry should fine-tune the key performance indicators (KPI) for principals and teachers at various levels and also provide the right mechanisms to motivate them to make schools relevant to the locality. The KPIs must take into account the cultural as well as religious differences in the population and the resultant attitudes that have to be faced by the school principals and teachers.
Solutions to problems may be found “out of the box” but they need support from all stakeholders, including the state director of education.
The current bullying and other disciplinary problems will not be resolved if we just rely on the Education Ministry’s directives and circulars without effecting changes on the ground especially in the schools concerned. K. NARAYANASAMY Melaka