Scourge of corporal punishment must stop
A M K Ccowdhury
Corporal punishment denotes causing deliberate pain or discomfort for undesired behaviour by students in schools. It often involves striking the student either across the buttocks or on the hands, with an implement such as a rattan cane, wooden paddle or leather strap. Any physical punishment intended to cause twinge is ‘corporal’ punishment. There are further non-physical forms of punishment that are also brutal and degrading and thus irreconcilable with the principle. Punishment belittles, denigrates, scares or ridicules a victim child. Attributable to fear children often remain silent and acquiesce violence without inquiring why they are spanked.
Violent disciplinary method
Each year, hundreds of thousands of students are subjected to corporal punishment in schools. Aside from the infliction of pain and the physical injuries which often result from the use physical punishments, these violent disciplinary methods also impact students’ academic achievement and long-term well-being. Despite significant evidence that corporal punishment is detrimental to a productive learning environment, there is currently no federal prohibition in the US on the use of physical discipline against children in public school. In fact, children in some states receive greater protections against corporal punishment in detention facilities than they do in their public schools. For this reason and others, the ACLU and HRW are encouraged that this subcommittee is seeking to address the problems stemming from corporal punishment in schools. (Vide Human Rights Watch report “Corporal Punishment in Schools and Its Effect on Academic Success” Joint HRW/ACLU Statement, April 15, 2010).
Aside from the infliction of pain and the physical injuries which often result from the use physical punishments, these violent disciplinary methods also impact students’ academic achievement and long-term well-being. Despite significant evidence that corporal punishment is detrimental to a productive learning environment, there is currently no federal prohibition on the use of physical discipline against children in public school. In fact, children in some states receive greater protections against corporal punishment in detention facilities than they do in their public schools. For this reason and others, the ACLU and HRW are encouraged that this subcommittee is seeking to address the problems stemming from corporal punishment in schools. (Ibid )
A 2014 UNICEF study found that about 80 percent of parents spank their children worldwide. In the United States, about half of all parents spank their children at least some of the time, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in December 2015. And 76 percent of men and 65 percent of women agree that children sometimes need a “good, hard spanking,” according to a 2014 U.S. study by Child Trends, a nonprofit research center based in Washington, D.C. A 2014 report by UNICEF found that 80 per cent of the world’s children are subject to some form of violent punishment at home. (See https:/ /www.livescience.com/54591-spanking-makes-kids-defiant.html )
Spanking is thought to be the most studied aspect of parental behaviour, with reams of research published since the 1960s. Almost all of it finds that physically punishing children can have disastrous consequences in later life.
Scourge of corporal punishment
Sir Frank Peters, royal goodwill ambassador, humanitarian, and a foreign friend of Bangladesh, is a great crusader for banning the scourge of corporal punishment. He wrote last week (the Holiday, October 20) about the adverse consequence of the bad practice. He wrote: “A slap in the face is considered to be one of the biggest insults one human being can give another, but a school ’teacher’ this week has taken it to a new low level. The incident occurred in the Haryana’s Rewari district. The ruthless ‘teacher’ didn’t use his hand, but a shoe! Not once, but several times. Imagine sending your child in his smartly-dressed starched uniform to an expensive, exclusive top-level school, expecting the school to do all that’s right in helping to develop your loved one, only to have him slapped in the face with a shoe.
It stands to commonsense just from the above that corporal punishment must be stopped and the ‘bad apples’ in the teaching fraternity who disagree must be kicked out. The use-by date of the archaic practices is well and truly over in a modern enlightened civil society. Any parent who sends his child to a school or madrasah that practices corporal punishment without offering the child support or protection, fail to be good parents.
A good news
Here is good news. According to an article written by Jessica Hamzelou published in the New Scientist on 20 October 2017, Scotland has banned smacking children – so should everyone else. Smacking children was outlawed in Scotland this week. Remarkably, parents in the rest of the UK can still use physical violence to punish or discipline their children, provided it can be considered “reasonable punishment”, a term not properly defined in law. Smacking is allowed in the majority of other nations.
