Whenever the issue of corporal punishment is mentioned then it is as if the teacher enjoys caning students. In a US setting the teacher’s job is o just academic and the parents job is to train his or her child well to be able to receive academic guidance from the school.
In a school like Galaxy International School or GIS, l do not think the teacher will have headache with majority of the students not doing their homework. I do not think you will have trouble with lateness or absenteeism in large numbers.
In the above schools, parents are seen to be playing their roles better hence the teacher has less to do. In most schools in the foreign land, the guidance and counselling sector deals with students with behavior disorders and when a child misbehaves beyond certain limits the parents are called in to come take their ward away. And by law, the parents dare not refuse an invitation by the school.
So the issues of corporal punishment hardly surfaces. Parents are as expected responsible.But in most of the schools here especially public ones, the opposite is the case. Untamed and untrained children are thrown into the school for the teacher to deal with. The teacher is the first point of call for moral training for the child.
A teacher finds him or herself in a mist of indiscipline students whose actions hamper academic success. The teacher is burden with a lot beyond the academics to deal with. Beyond academics ,the teacher is expected to impact moral training which the parents failed to teach their wards.
In trying to inculcate discipline, there will be punishments of different sorts ranging, advise ,rebuke to corporal ones. When an issue of teachers are put on the media, the impression is that the public school teacher is lazy and has no interest in working to make the grades just like the private schools.
But many have forgotten that these schools are full of parents and students who have no interest in their academic work. The public school teacher even in this situation coupled with the lack of infrastructure and teaching materials tries to make the students pass, the media feels and social media users feels they know better than the teacher.
They feel they know how to better deal with students without the cane than the teacher. Forgetting the teacher has and continues to try different measures to discipline the students including guidance and counselling. Indiscipline continues to dent the effort of teachers in public schools and no one seem to care .
The live of teachers have been threatened and no one seem to care. Do you know how it feels when you sacrifice for the benefit of children yet its not visible due to indiscipline? The teacher is handicapped, you can not even rebuke a child who is distracting others because he has a right.
Surprisingly, a society which is quick enough to quote the scriptures and culture when it comes to same sex marriage says we should not quote “spare the rod and spoil the child” from the same scripture nor traditions of our culture. Funny, right?A confused nation l must say.
Currently, the teacher has also learnt to mind his own business and enjoy his 4% in his home not jail. Currently l have developed an attitude where l even applaud students who enjoy absenteeism.
When l informed the parents, they where like “oh sir lddi don’t do that”? . And l asked them if you, whose final year student sits home and comes to school at will, sees nothing wrong with that, what then will you have me do? My conscience will hunt me when l see wrong a student going astray and l fail to help. But no one will come to my rescue if something goes wrong in my quest to guide the child to the straight path.
So why won’t l choose to be on a safer side?Currently, students feel it is their right to decide when to come to schoolThey feel it us their right not to learn and but they have the right to be allowed to copy in the exams hall, else they will beat teachers, destroy school or teachers property. The student now has solace in violating school rules because he knows he us fully backed by the media hence the teacher cannot do him anything.
I have no qualms if we decide to go the European way by banning corporal punishment but in doing so we have to employ measures they put in place to maintain discipline a d deal with indiscipline students. Top of which is the prioritising of guidance and counselling in our schools. We need to put systems that will let the teacher assume role we want of just teaching so as to live discipline in the hands of the parents and GES.
The new codes of discipline measured outlined by GES unfortunately, cannot work in our environment and should be looked at again.
Credit: chief Iddi
