Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO: Government To Ban Corporal Punishment in Schools

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Feb 6 2001 (IPS) - Seven year old Shanice Belfon does not support the decision by the Trinidad and Tobago government to ban corporal punishment in schools.

“Now they (the students) will feel that they can do anything and get away with it,” she says.

Ten-year-old Chalesia Rosila agrees that school children should be beaten. However it should not be done to the point of having “bruises and marks on their skin.”

“Licks sometimes help children to show respect to teachers,’ she adds.

But eight-year-old Sajeedah Mohammed disagrees. “I think they should try a different type of discipline or give extra homework or something,” she adds.

Their views are reflective of those of the society ever since Education Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar announced last month, the government’s new legislative initiative to ban corporal punishment in schools.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child is an old adage that should stay in the archives, not in schools,” she said adding that a “carrot rather than a stick is more desirable”.

Persad-Bissessar recalls her elder sister being expelled from school “because she confronted the teacher for raining blows on me”.

The Ministry of Education says it would be holding discussions with its Education Guidance Unit and the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) to discuss “possible alternatives to corporal punishment”.

TTUTA has said it welcomed the initiative and was open to discussions on the matter.

The government says there are also social implications for banning corporal punishment in schools.

“If we fail at the school level, we will continue to face it at the social level. Research carried out in North America and Europe suggests that children who are constantly beaten see physical violence as the only way to resolve differences between themselves and others,” Persad-Bissessar said.

Former co-ordinator in early childhood education with the Toronto Board of Education in Canada, Ramona Khan, says its important for the country to understand that the system used 20 years ago was no longer acceptable in societies that are evolving.

“We need to help children develop responsible behaviour,” says Khan, a member of the Trinidad and Tobago Coalition for the Rights of the Child (TTCRC). She believes there is need for “retraining our teachers, instructing them to use alternative methods”.

TTCRC in a statement said that it welcomed the new initiative to ban corporal punishment saying, “there are many non-violent alternatives that can be used to modify negative behaviour”.

“Schools are a place of reason not force. We believe this measure is a positive step towards the elimination of violence in our society,” the TTCRC said.

Dr. Marilyn Atherley of the Study Centre, an education and family resource organisation, said that while it was commendable of the authorities to ban corporal punishment in schools, “let us not forget the deep- rooted effect corporal and other punishment has had on our teachers themselves”.

She says while teachers will now have to deal with their “own thinking and feelings about the issue”, they will also be required to face “their own fear and anxiety” in implementing alternative measures to “maintain discipline in their classes and get their students to learn”.

“Remember a large number of our teachers have had no training nor understanding of the social and emotional aspects of teaching and learning, and, therefore, were of the misguided perception that beating a child will get him to learn or sit quietly in class,” Dr. Atherley adds.

She warns education authorities that handing the teachers a “manual with suggested alternative punishment and talking at them about it in a two-day workshop is not going to change attitudes and behaviour”.

The issue of corporal punishment has dominated the media here in recent weeks, especially after 11-year-old Justin Joseph committed suicide after being spanked by his mother.

Clinical psychologist Isolda Ali-Ghent said that even though Joseph’s parents admitted to spanking him only when “it got overbearing” severe scolding could also have a traumatic effect on a child.

There were no reports of the child being abused by his parents and Ali-Ghent said it was an “interesting” coincidence of the youngster being spanked before his death and the ban on corporal punishment.

“It is necessary for adults to examine the kind of hurt, punishment physical or verbal can do,” she said.

Psychological counsellor Franklin Dolly said that children of Joseph’s age “don’t really want to kill themselves. They want to draw sympathetic attention. Unfortunately for some of them they do it so well, they die”.

He said a child might exhibit suicidal tendencies after a particularly traumatic experience between the child and parent.

The Express newspaper in welcoming the government’s ban on corporal punishment said that children needed to be nurtured and taught, and not made to fear teachers and schools.

“Too many teachers expect children to be magicians and mind readers. They do not realise that teaching takes patience and understanding. Children have to be taught many things that are not in the curriculum,” the paper said in an editorial.

“It is good that we have pout our horrific history of beating children in school behind us for it does nothing but conjure up images of domination. It is a colonial burden we must rid ourselves of if we are going to develop as a free and independent nation,” the paper added.

But the increasing level of violence at schools, particularly where students attack teachers has led to calls for maintaining corporal punishment at schools.

“Indeed, the pendulum of discipline has swung so heavily in favour of children and their rights that a few “taps” to their head could cause 11 year olds to either attack their parents or teachers, or if they feel deeply hurt, show their defiance by committing suicide,” wrote columnist Raffique Shah.

He wrote that many secondary schools had now become “battle zones in which ill-disciplined students take out their rage on hapless teachers”.

“Now instead of having to deal with deviants who them to their faces ‘Miss you can’t beat me’, teachers are using the easy way out. They are absenting themselves from school or when they do attend ignore infractions of the worst kind, sticking to the blackboard and chalk,” Shah said.

But Persad-Bissessar said that her Ministry was seeking to deal with the situation and was spending approximately 6 million dollars annually on security to deal with the upsurge of violence in schools.

“The violence that concerns me includes teacher to pupil, pupil against pupil, pupil against teacher or other staff, parent against teacher and sometimes parent against another child,” she told a seminar on alternative methods to corporal punishment last month.

 
Republish | | Print |

Related Tags



  • BLACK56104

    16 years later and children have become criminals, no respect for their elders, disobedient to parents etc. Thanks Aunty kamla! Smh

sports psychology book