Head teachers have a duty to find ways that put pressure and which teachers encounter with the main intention being to try to find solutions so as to help bring cohesion in our learning institutions even with the Children’s Act 2001 around.
As the country commemorated the ¡No Kiboko Day¢ and the International No-Hitting Day that are celebrated every year we still have to remember that corporal punishment in Kenyan schools was banned through a Kenya Gazette notice on March 13th 2001. Parents and teachers have a major role in modifying the young minds and they should thus not wait for problems to occur then decide to punish their children. Upbringing, both at home and school determines how one would be in society. Caning is only an ¡emergency¢ measure during desperation and not a solution to indiscipline. Teachers and parent should know that there is more to guiding and counseling than mere talking to pupils when problems occur. Many teachers fail in this important area. Sometimes I blame our society for the ills that affect our students in terms of instilling discipline. Do we spend time with our children or do we go out for drinks and to other social gatherings and come home late at night instead of being with our children yet parents are the best teachers so far?
Do we really have to wait for ¡our fruits¢ to rot in the school basket than to ensure any rotting doesn’t take place at first?
Certainly, caning as an obsolete form of punishment is most degrading and non-ennobling to student learners, for ferule and whip only serve to harden and worsen attitudes of students as opposed to instilling discipline and obedience.
Caning is shameful cruelty committed in the name of discipline that only modifies and transforms bad behavior into another and not its cessation. A single caning could easily transform to kicks when students show immunity and contempt of the cane. Schools should thus cease to be mini-penitentiaries. Certainly caning leads to suppression of indiscipline and not its unlearning. A new and modified learning is but introduced with high chances of acquiring adaptations. There is proof that extreme caning only increased misbehavior and poor performance in schools. Students only end up being tearful and fearful toward their teachers and that limits concentration in class, for extremes beget obstruction. This cruel and unmanly behavior of caning makes students believe that it is the only way to bring conformity in schools only for the same students to use the same machinery against their own colleagues and society. Form one students have been victims of monolizaton. The senior students take advantage by imitating their teachers by punishing their juniors. Once students leave school they understand violence through punishment to be the only way of getting things done their own way. They end up dissembling society by being violent wife-beaters in their homes and rapists in society after reaching maturity age but without character.
In my practice I have had a chance to come across students and women with bruises and swollen arms and some with lacerated and severed backs due to this savagery and brutal attacks all in the name if instilling discipline in homes and schools. I’m interested to understand the right measure and type of behavior modifier as opposed to brutalities met on students as a result of ethical, medico-legal and psychological concerns. I also wonder whether we have put superstition, tradition, culture, ignorance and savagery when dealing with caning which is not the instrumentality of civilization. Certainly any kind of lash and whip irritates than soothes for school dungeons, faggots and scaffolds are seeds of primary torture in the making. The infamous traditional doctrine of caning has unfortunately polluted the imagination of those who underwent this destructive type of punishment as this has hardened their hearts against civilization and has exacerbated ignorance in relation to education and learning. This could be a reason as to why we have many young civil offenders, wife-beaters, robbers and rapists in society as a result of such similar crude upbringing.
Regards,
Mundia Mundia
Jnr.
Clinical
Physiatrist
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Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:39:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: mundia mundia
Subject: CORPORAL PUNISHMENT HARMFUL TO STUDENTS
it is unfortunate that we just adopt foreign policies and laws without looking into their long term benefits. in any case we should have asked ourselves are these the best “rights” why is there no right to deny a child of wrong doing? only wright to deny the up bringer the opportunity to instill principles into the child at an early stage, principles that will guide such a person when away from the guardian to decide the right from the wrong and stop pursuing the later.
In America for example there are cases of school shooting because of indiscipline and the so called “rights” which themselves are not right, this would have guided us on the path to follow on the adoption and implementation of the foreign laws and policies further more where the owners (developers) have reached is not the same as our level hence we cant use them above all dynamism of demographic characteristics of our case are far not the same to theirs.