[caption id="attachment_5534" align="alignleft" width="197" caption="Corporal punishment"]
[/caption]Ernest Dempsey - This morning’s Urdu newspaper in Pakistan, Ausaf (Peshawar edition) brought another set of disturbing news: two school-age teenage kids violently tortured by their teachers as punishment, something which is accepted by the culture but proves harmful to children over time.
One incident took place in hometown Hangu’s ages-old government school, one this writer attended in chldhood. In the Government High School No. 1, a student of class 10 named Mohamamd Kamran who was brutally beaten by a school teacher, almost lost consciousness. Consequently, he had to be taken to the hospital for treatment. The second incident wasn’t reported with details, but a picture of a boy from Charsadda, approximately the same age as Kamran, was published with the caption “Student of New Islamia Public School, Charsadda, showing wound marks caused by teacher’s torture”. All violence aside, the sickness of these teachers reflected manifestly in such news – something that has become ingrained in the culture of Pakistan.
Corporal punishment in its most violent forms is known to prevail in Pakistan in many private-tutoring clerical schools, known locally as madrassas. In extreme cases, children have been killed due to torture by religious teachers. Some even include group torture such that a child being taught to pronounce Koran in Arabic by a teacher (including female religious teachers) are beaten violently by two or more family members at the teacher’s school (usually run inside their houses). And this practice of torturing kids is emulated in government schools, too, which is regrettable and alarming.
Mild forms of physical punishment are accepted and even asked for by parents too in Pakistan, as it is in other places in the world. It’s part of many cultures. Allowing a teacher to hit the child has been a defining trait of parents who are culturally considered ‘caring parents’. When you ask a teacher to hit your kid, which some believe is needed in the line of learning, it demonstrates the highest regard for education.
In the opinion of this writer, a teacher who hits a child, is harboring the same self-deceptive thought: serving the child and the nation with an iron hand. What these ‘caring’ parents and teachers don’t recognize is how the child may be scarred as a result of physical torture that goes way beyond a light slap or a gentle poke in the flank. In cases as reported in today’s paper, and countless times that have been reported earlier, physical punishment in fact becomes active, brutal torture. The type of case reported in the Pakistani newspaper locally reflects the unhealthy psychological state of the teacher (or parent) who indulges in such a display of anger at a child.
Like Star Trek TNG, in which the android "Data" was frequently asked by Captain Picard to “theorize”, perhaps we should "theorize" a little about brutality inflicted on kids and whether that tactic can hurt in the long run. For most of the average middle and lower class persons in our Pakistani society, life is tough and bitter. Few opportunities and lack of a broad, positive environment make it easy for frustrations and grievances to get bottled inside us. And we bring these scars to the workplace. Generally, the older a teacher, the deeper the scars of frustration on his/her soul. The result becomes an ingrained, vengeful temperament. In institutes of higher learning, this vengefulness materializes in enslaving students and junior employees (but not the accountants, of course, who are said to be aware of details of corruption in the institution and hence a tough object to vent one’s frustration on), stealing their research, and even sexually exploiting them.
At a lower level, this vengeful, frustrated mini-volcano in the classroom erupts in the form of severe corporal punishment. A teacher who has had a bad day is a dangerous force to disobey, or fail to impress, for he/she is the master of the class, the one holding the cudgel and fearing no accountability or strict action. Worse though, he/she believes that he/she has every right to hurt the object of his/her anger—not caused but triggered by a child’s failure in keeping discipline or following instructions. This is certainly a traumatic experience for the child, many a time not even forgettable at all. And we can be sure that this child, unless turning reactive to the torture and determining not to hurt anyone (I think this won’t be very common), will not spare kids like him when he takes the cudgel and gets to teach a class. Thus the self-perpetuating story of torture continues to rob children of care and compassion. What is lost, however, is the hope for healthy development whereby a child gains the courage to stand for the oppressed, the endangered, the powerless.
What suggestions can someone writing on this topic suggest, after examining the issue and determining how serious the problem of corporal punishment can be. These are few, given that rules in the part of the country where this journalist lives aren’t followed. Furthermore, in case of violation of rules, very few care or think about caring about the students themselves in relationship to how corporal punishment as severe as illustrated in recent newspaper articles in Parkistan can impact children throughout life. One recommendation is social advocacy that suggests teachers and parents just say NO to severe forms of corporal punishment. And it won’t hurt if, in the line of learning, we place reminders in our homes and classrooms stating, "Children innocent and should not be harmed. These techniques would go a long way towards healing the scars of the past and the tears of bitterness and frustration which can hurt a child deeply
